Vitek Tracz (born 31 May 1940) is a

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

-based entrepreneur who has been involved in science publishing,

pharmaceutical Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the ...

information and mobile phone-based navigation.

Early life

Tracz was born in 1940 in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. He studied mathematics in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

and

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, before studying film-making at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

. He collaborated with Israeli writer Hanoch Levin on the 1978 feature film ''Fantasia Al Noseh Romanti''.

Business career

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 ...

, Tracz is known as the founder of the '' Current Opinion'' journals (which, along with the research journal ''

Current Biology ''Current Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that covers all areas of biology, especially molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, neurobiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. The journal includes research artic ...

'' and the early scientific community websites BioMedNet and Chemweb, were acquired by

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

in 1997), and open access publisher

BioMed Central BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific open access publisher that produces over 250 scientific journals. All its journals are published online only. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open a ...

(acquired by

Springer Science+Business Media Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

in 2008). In 2004, Tracz was invited to give oral evidence to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee as part of it
inquiry into scientific publishing and open access
Tracz's group of companies, currently known as the Sciencenow Group (formerly Science Navigation Group), previously published '' The Scientist'' (a

popular science Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written ...

magazine with all print and web content freely available online), and currently publishes Faculty of 1000 (a subscription-only current awareness service highlighting recent biological and medical research). Other companies that have been part of the group in the past include Current Medicine, a publisher medical books, journals, websites and the Images.MD medical image database (both acquired by Springer in 2005),

and the Current Opinion journals (acquired by

), and Global DataPoint. Other businesses founded by Tracz include Current Drugs (acquired by

Thomson Corporation Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organization and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to form Thomson Reut ...

in 2002), and Telmap, a mobile phone navigation company (acquired by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

in 2012). In recent years, Tracz's business has focused on activities under the Faculty of 1000/F1000 brand. Faculty of 1000 began as a literature evaluation service, but more recently allowed the publication of original scientific posters (F1000 Posters) and research articles (F1000 Research). F1000 has generated some controversy with its use of an innovative and rapid form of peer review. In January 2020, F1000 Research was acquired by Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Company. Sciencenow Group continues to offer the literature evaluation service, now brande
Faculty Opinions
alongsid
Sciwheel
a reference management solution. Sciencenow Group is also responsible for Web of Stories, a collection of multi-hour video interviews with leading scientists and other major cultural figures, looking back at their career and work. Each video is divided into short segments which are connected together to create a "web of stories", showing differing perspectives on major themes such as the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

. Tracz remains chairman of Sciencenow Group, which acts as an incubator for his new businesses. Tracz's businesses have been largely self-funded, without external investment. Tracz has a reputation as an innovator in a tradition-bound industry, being described by Richard Smith (former editor of the BMJ) as 'the Picasso of science publishing'.

Interests

Tracz is an art collector, with a focus on

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

References

External links

Sciencenow GroupFaculty OpinionsSciwheel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tracz, Vitek 1940 births Polish emigrants to the United Kingdom Living people Polish expatriates in Israel