Hi Diane, welcome to the team! Last week we announced that Peerwith launched dedicated services and activities for researchers from China. We are extremely excited about this next chapter for Peerwith and beyond grateful that you joined the team to play a major role in our China endeavours. We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you, Diane Wang – General Manager Peerwith China, to the Peerwith Community.
Can you tell us a bit about your professional background?
Most of my career has been in STM publishing. Back in 2005, I worked for Brill Academic Publishers in the Netherlands for six months after graduating from Leiden University, and during that time I developed strong interest in academic publishing especially in Open Access. From 2010 I started to work for BioMed Central (BMC, the first Open Access publisher and now part of Springer Nature) and set up its China operation from scratch. As time went by my responsibilities with BMC extended to SpringerOpen, and then to the full Open Access portfolios of Springer Nature. In June last year I temporary left STM publishing and joined a Chinese unicorn company for one year, and about two months ago I returned.
What inspired you to take the role of General Manager in China for Peerwith?
The opportunity was brought to my attention by Peter Hendriks, Chairman at Peerwith and my former manager at Springer Nature (Thank you Peter!). Once I started talking to the team, I immediately liked the fair and transparent peer-to-peer marketplace model. It is not about providing services, but about fostering collaboration to improve the quality of scientific output. And that is a great thing. Services like those provided by the excellent pool of experts on Peerwith definitely help in speeding up the publication process and increasing your chance of publishing in high-impact journals, but it was the collaborative peer-to-peer model that really convinced me to join the company.
Coincidentally, the Chinese unicorn company I worked for one year also adopted a very similar business model, just in a very different industry – it was in automotive industry which was a much larger market in terms of business volume but the essence is the same. I firmly believe in such a model – it has the beauty of simplicity and the power of empowering others. It’s Now and more importantly the Future.
What do you find, are the major benefits of Peerwith?
As I said, first of all it’s the peer-to-peer model. This model is just great and I can’t find another word for it. Byremoving many barriers with the old way of researcher services, this model makes a lot of things possible in the same time: high quality, low price, transparency, the variety of choices, real-time communication, etc. If we look at our daily life, many of other internet products and services are using this model. I also like the fact that such a model breaks geographic boundaries – on Peerwith it’s just so easy for you to connect with your peers from every corner of the world at any time. Isn’t it amazing?
Secondly, on top of the convenience of the model there is Collaboration, and that’s what makes scientific world unique. On Peerwith experts and researchers, when providing and receiving services, are actually working together. Collaboration will ultimately help to accelerate the publication process and the research process. This, in my view, is the real vision of Peerwith.
Thirdly, Peerwith perfectly fits the China market. The scientific research world in China is actually very open, plus internet business in China is predominant. With the huge volume of research output (currently No. 1 in the world) Chinese researchers eagerly demand high-quality and convenient researcher services in many areas and Peerwith perfectly meets such demands. In future, Chinese researchers will also provide a lot of services via Peerwith to their peers globally. There’s just so much potential I can see from China.
Last but not least, it’s the Peerwith team. As we know people are most important assets for any company, and it’s so true for Peerwith. Peerwith has a very strong team who have achieved a lot over just three years’ time. Not every company can do that, and we are committed to achieving more in future.
What is your number one piece of advice for researchers who want to engage with Peerwith?
All researchers probably have their unique experiences with Peerwith. So I’d suggest that they just use Peerwith first and tell us whatever we can do to help them further. We are here to listen, and to do better. And we really look forward to working with researchers all over the world to embrace future together. I can be reached by email diane@peerwith.com anytime. For any researchers from China you can also visit our Chinese page to get more insight.
Please feel free to welcome Diane to the team by commenting below or emailing her directly. You can always get in touch with Diane for questions, suggestions or feedback related to Peerwith China!
