Amy Brand (born October 20, 1962) is an American academic. Brand is the current Director and Publisher of the

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

, a position she assumed in July 2015. Previously, Brand was the assistant provost of faculty appointments and information at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

and vice president of Digital Science.Dizikes, Peter. MIT News Office
"Amy Brand Named New Director of the MIT Press."
MIT News. MIT University, 15 June 2015. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

Early life and education

Amy Brand grew up on the

Upper West Side The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper We ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, where she attended

Barnard College Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...

. She moved to

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

in 1985 for graduate school and has lived mainly in the

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

area since."Professional Profile: Amy Brand."
Society for Scholarly Publishing. Society for Scholarly Publishing, January 2009. Web. 19 December 2016. Brand received a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

with a major in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

from

in 1985 and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1989.

Career

Brand was a

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

from 1989 until 1992, conducting research in child language development, but ultimately decided to switch careers and move into

academic publishing Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes Research, academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or Thesis, theses. The part of academic written output that is n ...

. Her first position was as an acquisitions editor at

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in the United Kingdom that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, CRC Press, Routledge, F1000 Research and Dovepress. It is a division of I ...

in 1992."Professional Profile: Amy Brand."
Society for Scholarly Publishing. Society for Scholarly Publishing, n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2016. In 1994, Brand joined the MIT Press as a cognitive science editor for Bradford Books, MIT Press' cognitive science imprint. She was instrumental in developing CogNet, MIT Press's digital cognitive science collection – one of the first online academic communities of its kind.Manaktala, Gita
"Meet New Press Director Amy Brand (part Two)."
MIT Press. MIT Press, 1 Oct. 2015. Web. 19 Dec. 2016. From 2000 to 2008, Brand served as CrossRef's director of business and product development.Manaktala, Gita
"Meet New Press Director Amy Brand (part One)."
MIT Press. MIT Press, 12 Aug. 2015. Web. 19 Dec. 2016. In 2008, she joined Harvard University as the Office for Scholarly Communication project manager. She was later promoted to university-wide Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments and Information. Beginning in early 2014, Brand served as vice president of academic and research relations and

vice president A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

at Digital Science.“Amy Brand."
Digital Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

MIT Press directorship

After an extensive search led by a committee of MIT affiliates and external academic publishing experts, Brand was named director of the MIT Press in July 2015. Chris Bourg, director of the MIT Libraries, stated that Brand's “breadth of experience across many sectors of the scholarly communication system makes her the ideal leader of the MIT Press at this time of tremendous change and opportunity in scholarly publishing.” As director, Brand leads the Press through all areas of development, including trade acquisition and growing MIT Press’s books and journal digital offerings.Laloup, Jen
"Scholarly Books in the Digital World: An Interview Featuring Amy Brand."
PLOScast. 12 July 2016. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

Affiliations

Brand currently serves on the boards of several information and media organizations, including the

International Science Council The International Science Council (ISC) is an international non-governmental organization that unites scientific bodies at various levels across the social and natural sciences. The ISC was formed with its inaugural general assembly on 4 July 20 ...

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

, the

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the ...

, and th
Coolidge Corner Theater Foundation
She is on the Research Data and Information Committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.Policy and Global Affairs Division
"Members."
Board on Research Data and Information. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016. Web. 19 December 2016. She previously served on the Board of International Scientific Organizations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the

DuraSpace DuraSpace was a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 2009 with the merger of the Fedora Commons organization and the DSpace Foundation, two of the world's largest providers of open source Digital library, digital repository software ...

board of directors, and she chaired the academic advisory board of Altmetric, a commercial service that tracks how works of scholarship are discussed online.Liu, Jean
"Introducing the Altmetric Advisory Board."
Altmetric. 19 May 2016. Web. 19 December 2016. Brand was executive producer of the documentary '' Picture a Scientist'', a 2020 selection of the

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...

that highlights gender inequality in science. Brand co-created the CRediT

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

to track contributions to team-based research outputs reliably."Working Groups."
CRediT. CASARI, n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2016. She was a founding member of the ORCID BoardOrcid
"Amy Brand."
Orcid: Connecting Research and Researchers. Orcid, n.d. Web. 19 December 2016. and advised on several community initiatives in digital scholarship.

Awards

Brand was awarded the Laya Wiesner Community Award (2021) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award (2021). In 2015, Brand was awarded the Award for Meritorious Achievement by the Council of Science Editors (CSE). This award is the highest given by the CSE and is given to “a person or institution that embraces the purposes of the CSE – the improvement of scientific communication through the pursuit of high standards in all activities connected with editing.”Digital Science
"Amy Brand, Digital Science, Receives 2015 CSE Award for Meritorious Achievement."
PR Newswire. Cision, 18 May 2015. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

Publications

* On the emergence of syntax: A crosslinguistic study * Neuropsychological reasons for a transformational analysis of verbal passive * Language acquisition and syntactic theory: A comparative analysis of French and English child grammars * The acquisition of passives in Spanish and the question of A-chain maturation * Negation and functional projections in early grammar * Crosslinguistic evidence for functional projections in early child grammar, Language acquisition studies in generative grammar * CrossRef turns one * CrossRef: the reference linking backbone for scholarly electronic publication * Metadata demystified: A guide for publishers * Linking evolved: The future of online research. * Publishers joining forces through CrossRef * CrossRef and the research experience * CrossRef Search, Serials 17 (3) * CrossRef: beyond journal reference linking. * CROSSREF: From linking to cross-provider search * Mini-profile: a day in the life of a business development executive * CrossRef: Towards the future, with T. Kumagai * Key Issue: CrossCheck * Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences * Beyond mandate and repository, toward sustainable faculty self-archiving * Planning and Promoting the Creation of Scientific Knowledge: Three Perspectives * Faculty appointments and the record of scholarship * Point of View: Faculty Appointments and the Record of Scholarship * Credit where credit is due * Beyond authorship: attribution, contribution, collaboration, and credit * Publishing returns to the Academy * Report from the "What is Publishing?"(1) Workgroup * Demographics of scholarly publishing and communication professionalsGreco, Albert N., Robert M. Wharton, Amy Brand
“Demographics of scholarly publishing and communication professionals.”
Learned Publishing, 2016.

Personal life

Brand lives in

Newton, Massachusetts Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located roughly west of Downtown Boston, and comprises a patchwork of thirteen villages. The city borders Boston to the northeast and southeast (via the neighborhoods of ...

, with her husband, Matthew Brand, and has three children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brand, Amy 1962 births Living people Barnard College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology people MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni People from the Upper West Side