James Butcher Joins Clarke & Esposito as Practice Lead, Europe
April 28, 2022
Washington, DC, April 28, 2022 – Management consulting firm Clarke & Esposito (C&E) today announced that James Butcher will be joining the firm as Practice Lead for Europe.
“James ranks among the industry’s most accomplished publishers,” said Michael Clarke, Managing Partner. “He brings to the firm experience in leading one of the world’s most notable publishing and scientific brands, growing journal portfolios at scale, and developing open access models that work across a range of titles. At Nature, James led a portfolio that included both the world’s largest journal and the most selective journal. We welcome him to the firm and look forward to bringing his experience and insights to C&E’s clients.”
Butcher’s work will span many of the firm’s practice areas, including strategic and operational assessments, open access strategy, portfolio development, editorial development, market analysis, and product development. He is based in the United Kingdom and will both lead the firm’s UK and European practice and provide C&E clients with insights into how European funder mandates and other EU and UK regulations may affect their organizations and the global STM marketplace.
Butcher joins the firm from Springer Nature, where he was Vice President of the Nature journals. He managed a team of 500 editors, journalists, and publishers who produce Nature, the Nature research journals, the Nature Reviews journals, and Nature Communications. He was responsible for the Nature journals’ editorial and commercial strategy.
Butcher contributed heavily to the group’s open access strategy, which included the publishing development of Scientific Reports, the Communications journals, and Nature Communications, as well as overseeing the OA transition for Nature and the Nature research journals.
Butcher also led the new-launch program from 2014 to 2022, launching 26 Nature journals during that period, which expanded the group into new subject areas across the natural, clinical, and social sciences.
Following a PhD in neurophysiology from the University of Bristol, Butcher joined The Lancet as a Senior Editor in 2000 and launched The Lancet Neurology as Editor in 2002. After a brief period at PLOS Medicine, he re-joined The Lancet as Executive Editor.
“I am absolutely delighted to be working with Clarke & Esposito, which has an outstanding reputation as one of the leading strategy consultancies within the STM industry,” said Butcher. “I am looking forward to using the knowledge and skills that I’ve developed over the past two decades at Elsevier and Springer Nature to help the firm’s clients succeed both editorially and commercially.”
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About Clarke & Esposito
Clarke & Esposito is a leading management consulting firm focused on supporting organizations that produce, curate, or disseminate professional and scholarly information. Our clients include publishers, professional associations, universities and university presses, libraries, software companies, and other organizations serving the professional and academic marketplace.
For more information, contact:
Michael Clarke, Managing Partner
Clarke & Esposito
1050 30th Street
Washington, DC 20007 USA
+1-202-545-7254
mclarke@ce-strategy.com