Vitek Tracz
Vitek Tracz is a London-based entrepreneur who has been involved in science publishing, pharmaceutical information and mobile phone-based navigation.
Early life
Tracz was born in 1940 in Poland. He studied mathematics in Warsaw and Jerusalem, before studying film-making at the Slade School of Fine Art. He collaborated with Israeli writer Hanoch Levin on the 1978 feature film Fantasia Al Noseh Romanti.Business career
In academic publishing, Tracz is known as the founder of the Current Opinion journals, and open access publisher BioMed Central.In 2004, Tracz was invited to give oral evidence to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee as part of its .
Tracz's group of companies, currently known as the Sciencenow Group, previously published The Scientist, and currently publishes Faculty of 1000. 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, Current Biology and the Current Opinion journals, and Global DataPoint. Other businesses founded by Tracz include Current Drugs, and Telmap, a mobile phone navigation company.
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 and research articles. 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 branded , alongside , 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.
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 as 'the Picasso of science publishing'.