Howard Ratner

Executive Director

Howard is the driving force behind CHORUS.  Over the past two decades, he played a key role in developing innovative technology solutions that have transformed scholarly communications. He co-founded and chaired the not-for-profit ORCID – Open Researcher and Contributor ID system, and was active in the establishment of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and the founding and technical development of Crossref and CLOCKSS. He was President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) from 2014-2015 and served on its board from 2010-2012 and 2013-2016. He is an active member of the Metadata 20/20 and Scholix initiatives and the STM Future Labs. Howard received the NFAIS Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture Award in 2012. He is a frequent speaker on digital production and new technology themes


Before joining CHORUS, Howard was Chief Technology Officer, Executive Vice-President, for Nature Publishing Group where he was in charge of global web and mobile development and operations, content management, production and manufacturing, and information technology across all NPG products.  Howard also held positions at Springer-Verlag and John Wiley & Sons.