Renear is a Professor at GSLIS, where he teaches courses and lead research in information modeling, data curation, and digital publishing. He also has an appointment in the philosophy department.

Prior to coming to GSLIS, he was the Director of the Brown University Scholarly Technology Group. he received an AB from Bowdoin College and MA and PhD from Brown University.

Renear's current research is focused on issues in the development of formal ontologies for scientific and cultural objects, and the exploitation of those ontologies in data curation, scientific publishing and information system design.