I joined Elsevier in 1991 as a desk editor. In 1995, I joined the program to move from print to electronic ("p-to-e"), called the CAP project: Computer-Aided Production.
I was responsible for the systems and standards needed in Elsevier's editorial-production environment, culminating in the role of Chief Content Architect (a role that no longer exists).
For most of those years I wrote a monthly editorial for an internal newsletter, addressed to my colleagues in what we called the CAM department and later the Research Data Platform. The editorials were my way of thinking out loud about strategy, about data models, about the principles that I believed should guide the work.
This site collects the ones that seem worth preserving – edited to remove internal jargon and to give enough context for a reader who wasn't in the room. The recurring theme is the title of this site: True but Irrelevant.
I also worked on the content standards themselves — the SGML DTDs of the 1990s, the XML DTDs that replaced them, the Tag by Tag documentation, the typeset model standardisation programme. That history is woven through many of these posts.
Of course I did not do those things on my own. While I develop this site, I also want to pay tribute to the trailblasers that went before me, my own team, and all the colleagues with whom I collaborated.
I have never actively networked in the communities. As I am approaching my retirement, I realise that is much to be proud about.
Contact
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/robschrauwen