Arend Küster will discuss his reflections on Open Access, drawing on a wide range of publishing experiences he has gained throughout his career.
Abstract
This talk will look into the specific challenges smaller publishers face when they need to achieve scale and global reach to remain competitive. With a growing global market for research papers, everyone will have to target new markets and adapt their operations to survive in an increasingly technological and competitive environment. The talk will be looking at the rapid rise of global articles, where they come from and how publishers today will need to react to attract and source articles from an increasingly global research pool. Having worked with, built and launched Open Access publishers in unusual places, whether in Qatar or in Australia, this talk will share some key lessons learned and what that means for smaller operations and publishings portfolios.
Since Arend Küster changed his position and rejoined Springer Nature as the Country Manager for India since accepting the talk, he will speak in a personal capacity.
About Arend
Arend Küster has been working in the publishing industry for over 30 years as an international senior executive across different geographic locations. He has deep experience in STM business strategy, sales and marketing, and academic & professional journal development. Arend’s background is entirely in publishing, where he started with an Ausbildung (Vocational Training) at Herder Verlag in Freiburg, worked as a Sales Representative for Rowohlt Verlag, a Sales Manager at Chadwyck-Healey and later Publisher German Literature and Medieval History, at Bertelsmann wissen.de and heading the European operations for Publishers Communication Group (PCG) before joining Bloomsbury Publishing. After working in Doha as Executive Director for Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation where he set up an Open Access Publisher from scratch, Arend joined Springer Nature in 2018 as Director Open Research, Greater China and transferred to Berlin in 2020 as Director Academic Affairs. He left that role at the end of 2023 to lead CSIRO Publishing in Melbourne, Australia. In May 2025, he rejoined Springer Nature as Country Manager India and is now based in Pune, India. Arend is passionate about developing sustainable and innovative publishing solutions and contributing to the global transition to Open Research.
