Anita de Waard is a highly accomplished researcher with a background in experimental physics. She has been working for Elsevier since 1988, holding various positions such as science publisher, business development manager, and disruptive technologies director. In 2003, she founded and led the Reed-Elsevier Data Standards Group, and since 1997 she has been a Principal Researcher for Disruptive Technologies in the Labs group. De Waard is focused on developing innovative product concepts, establishing collaborations between Elsevier and academic groups in information and computer science, and applying Semantic Web technologies for scientific communication. Her main interests are the development of new, semantic forms for scientific articles, and the prejudice and presumption in scientific knowledge creation. Currently, she is involved in several EU Grant proposals that aim to introduce novel forms of publishing and archiving scientific knowledge.

De Waard also holds a PhD from Universiteit Utrecht, a Masters of Arts from Tufts University, and a Masters (docturandus) of Science from Leiden University. She has participated in various research programs and has led the Elsevier efforts in the FP-7 EU funded OKKAM program. In addition, she is currently leading the W3C HCLS SiG Subtask on Rhetorical Document Structure and an ad-hoc group on representing scientific documents as hypotheses and evidence.