Professor Alexander Grossmann started out as a researcher and lecturer in physics, working variously at the University of Tübingen, the Jülich Research Centre, and the Max Planck Institute in Munich.
He first took a position at Wiley-Blackwell, and then moved to Springer-Verlag GmbH in Vienna where he was Managing Director.
Subsequently, Grossmann became vice president at scientific publishing house De Gruyter.
In 2013, Prof. Grossmann partnered with Tibor Tscheke, a Boston-based entrepreneur and software developer, and together they founded a for-profit open access publishing platform called ScienceOpen.
At around the same time, Grossmann took a post as Professor of Publishing Management at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences.