John Sack: Organizing the Community of Scholarly Publishing for Over 40 Years

Abstract

From the early days of the World Wide Web, John Sack led HighWire Press from a fledgling technology organization based at Stanford University, to the premier content hosting platform for scientific and academic publishers. John is a scholarly publishing pioneer, innovator, and icon. In this interview, conducted by Heather Staines, Senior Strategy Consultant for Delta Think, John talks about how he became interested in technology via the old-fashioned card catalog, how Silicon Valley luminaries influenced his career path and approach to both organization and innovation, and how HighWire helped transform the scholarly publishing industry from a journal-based economy to an article-based economy. John also touches on how listening to diverse opinions can lead to innovative ideas, what he believes are the best uses for artificial intelligence (AI), and the benefits and drawbacks of remote work. This interview took place on March 30, 2023. Science Editor: You spent a substantial part of your career connected to Stanford University, but I always wondered, how did you end up there, and what were your early days like at the university? John Sack: Well, it’s probably a 40-year story, but I’ll try to make it more compact than that. I was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia in the 70s, and I was in an interesting program that allowed me to put together a mixture of studies in all sorts of areas. The upside was that it was a lot of fun, and I had some great professors, but I didn’t look like […]