Britton (pictured), had been head of strategy and transformation for PwC’s global data research and insight centre, r2i, for less than a year.

He joined the management consultant in March having previously spent eight years at YouGov. There he held a number of roles culminating in chief executive UK and head of global reports.

In the new role, Britton will be responsible for the open research portfolio across Springer Nature which includes BioMed Central, SpringerOpen, the open access journals from Nature Research and open access monographs from Springer and Palgrave Macmillan.

He will also sit on the company’s management board.

Steve Inchcoombe, chief publishing officer at Springer Nature, said: “As well as being an experienced and international leader with broad business acumen gained both within the market research industry and beyond, Tim has already impressed with his strong grasp of the unique opportunities and challenges within open research.”