[ Publishing Workflows ] January 19, 2023
The year ahead: Morressier’s path forward on proven ground
By Sami Benchekroun
Last year was really special for Morressier: we found our ground, and established partnerships across the research ecosystem that will set us up for significant growth and innovation ahead. As we begin this year, I want to take stock of our journey so far, and look forward to our path in 2023 and beyond.
At Morressier, our vision is to advance the efficiency of research. While increasing the speed at which research outputs become available to the community and enhancing their discoverability and accessibility, we also want Morressier to be synonymous with research integrity.
Where to start with such a vision? We chose the humble conference poster as the first area where we could build value for researchers, institutions, conference organizers and societies. After establishing traction with the product, we rapidly branched out into new areas, creating conference hubs that facilitate online gatherings and foster collaboration. We built workflow tools and research libraries that make research and its related assets more accessible.
The first step change we went through as a company was the full integration of all our products into one single platform, offering workflow infrastructure for the scientific ecosystem’s essential outputs: conference content, proceedings articles, pre-prints, journal articles, manuscript submissions, raw data and multimedia output. We aim to make this platform so useful that it becomes an essential solution for the entire research ecosystem.
We’re seeing big gains in this ambition, having attracted leading publishers, societies and associations as customers and partners. It’s these relationships that are driving the next step change we have been working on, day in day out, as we transition from exploring our fit within the ecosystem to delivering high quality, scalability, and further innovation to our customers.
We are expanding our reach and impact in peer-review workflows to cover manuscripts. We already drive excellence in enabling practices such as double-blind reviewing, and we’re keen to do more. We provide AI-driven plagiarism checks, but we're exploring the other opportunities that machine learning and AI can bring – and challenges they may pose – to increasing research integrity.
From the outside, it’s the same Morressier. Within the company, however, there are organizational changes in our structure as well as in the drivers of our operational focus. We have introduced cross-functional teams to support: research integrity, efficient workflows, and innovation of the end-to-end platform. We have also made changes to our senior leadership, and I’m delighted to announce the following:
Usama Dar joins Morressier as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He will be responsible for leading the company's technology and data strategy, and work closely with the product and design teams to ensure that we continue to use technology, AI and machine learning to innovate and advance scholarly publication.
Jennifer Goodrich is now Vice President of Product. She is responsible for driving the company’s product strategy, working closely with technology and customer success to deliver peer-review workflows, research integrity and data services that enable publishers and societies to curate and publish high impact scientific content.
Othman Altalib is now Chief Growth Officer. He is responsible for ensuring that our customers have incredible success with the Morressier platform. Internally, he'll drive quality and value for our customers to ensure that we deliver enterprise-level excellence, and design and implement an integrated go-to-market strategy.
The hardest part: in the context of restructuring, we evaluated the team for its fit with our new priorities and we identified several roles that we no longer need. Our focus at this time is in supporting the great people transitioning out of the company. It’s hard to see valued colleagues and friends depart and we want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of them for their contributions, which have led us to where we are today.
Our operational focus is now moving away from pure product discovery. We have found our ground and we know where we can deliver, and for whom, in order to fulfill our vision. This feels good and will provide opportunities in the months and years ahead for us to innovate and significantly grow. We’re looking forward to the journey with our partners, in the name of advancing the efficiency and quality of early stage research.