Robert Wheeler Email & Phone Number

New York, Ny

Directed the strategy and feature development of AIP’s online publishing platform, Scitation. Gathered, defined, and finalized requirements, prioritized feature development, and set the release schedule. Managed product planning and execution throughout the development and product lifecycles for the platform and products. Led stakeholders and cross-functional teams (publishers, development teams, Business Systems & Operations, the Project Management Office, Sales, Marketing, Business Intelligence, Scitation Operations, and vendors). Ensured stability, trust, visibility, transparency, and proper organization. Acted as product owner for any issues or conflicts, and in scrum/agile development environment: owned the vision, business plan, road map, release plan, and prioritized the product backlog for development.We built Scitation C3 as a foundation for agile development to exploit the full potential of XML for varied content types: journals, conference proceedings, books, and magazines. The infrastructure turned granular mark up into meaningful content services, reducing discovery and reading time by surfacing significant details previously buried in PDFs, dynamically connecting similar concepts, and exposing more related content, without user interaction (but within user control). We also built tools to enable publishers to easily add or modify content on their publication home pages.

Managed the Scitation publishing platform: hosting content from 30 publishers, with >2 million records, ~200 journals, >11,000 conference proceedings, ~1,000 books, magazines, & standards, >5 million visits per month, and hundreds of thousands of institutional and individual subscriptions.Managed the Scitation Operations team on day-to-day priorities to provide world-class online products, services, and support, including development, publishing, data syndication, e-commerce, SEO, ad management, and migration to the new online publishing platform. Spearheaded initiatives to help manage, report on, optimize, and track various business processes. Refined and improved operational processes and grew team’s technological skills. Liaised with Scitation publishing partners and AIP business managers regarding online services.Helped lead the development & design of new Scitation services and the new, award winning Scitation C3 platform (2010 MarkLogic Innovation Award), including eBook support and native mobile presentations. Worked with development teams to define, prioritize, schedule, track, test, and deploy all platform activity, including system upgrades and newly developed products, enhancements, features, user interfaces, and services; included the development and enforcement of procedures for testing, QA, and deployment of new services, software, and hardware.Accountable for the overall quality, performance, and uptime of Scitation. Managed service outages and diminished performance issues 24 × 7, communicated issues to all stakeholders, and implemented counter measures as needed.

Managed Production Operations Support Department and Graphics Production.Supervised production support specialists, providing operational and technical support to maintain cost-effective, timely production for print and online publication (~110 journals/300,000 pages annually). Team included following specialists/groups: XML (front-end conversion), XML/SGML (online hosting), Xyvision (page composition), Graphics, Electronic Copyediting Support, CD-ROM/PDF Production, and Training and Applications.Managed, prioritized, and deployed new development, system enhancements, change requests, upgrades, and new purchases for production-related hardware, systems, and applications; provided day-to-day troubleshooting assistance; recommended procedural changes; supplied documentation and training. Supervised in-house Graphics Production Team, freelancers, and graphics vendors. Provided quality graphics for composition/publication on time and below budget (~300,000 graphics annually). Managed annual budgets; negotiated, created and/or signed off on Purchase Orders, Statements of Work for software, services, hardware, freelancers, consultants; worked with third-party software vendors to modify/enhance existing tools used in Production; contributor and frequent lead of proposal writing team that responded to Requests for Proposals (RfPs); liaised with publishing partners and AIP business managers regarding production services. Projects included AIP’s workflow management system; SGML to XML migration; multimedia task force; electronic copyediting and eXtyles; various PDF enhancements; vector workflow; PitStop; Digital Expert (DX); cover redesigns/new workflow.

Small team devoted to the planning, design, implementation, and support of electronic initiatives across the enterprise to ensure final deliverables met or exceeded business/user needs, and were completed on time, within budget.Spearheaded a number of initiatives focused on XML content and digital workflows. Projects/tasks included Documentum Content Management System (CMS); new journal and book workflows; new DTDs; XML QA; Online Publishing System Redesign, Test, and Migration; eXtyles; XML Production System; Manufacturing Globalization; Author Resources, Tools, Support, and Documentation; Peer Review System assessment.

Posted and tracked content for 165 online journals. Reviewed, validated, and processed all submissions from typesetters for online publication. Worked with vendors for corrections as required.

Managed Preproduction Department, received 200–300 volumes annually, performed quality and completion checks, organized/amended materials to ensure efficient production, produced design specifications, assigned books to Production, and maintained initial metadata. Developed and maintained style guides and camera-ready instructions. Organized offprint orders, provided author support, and closed published books.

Prepared camera-ready volumes for production, evaluated and followed-up for required materials. Established Plenum’s first in-house book typesetting department.