Sir Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and Principal of Jesus College. He is also the Chairman and Co-Founder of the Open Data Institute (ODI). Since 2009, Sir Nigel has acted as an Information Adviser to the UK Government, helping transform public access to Government information, including the widely acclaimed data.gov.uk site.
With over 500 publications he researches and publishes on computer science, artificial intelligence, open data and web science. During his career, he has also worked in philosophy, psychology and linguistics. Since 2000he has secured 17 projects as Principal Investigator with a value of over £20 millionpounds. He is currently Principal Investigator on a £6.14M EPSRC funded Programme Grant researching the theory of social machines – Web scale problem solving systems comprising large numbers of humans and computers.
In 2006 he was one of three founding Directors of Garlik Ltd, which in 2008 was awarded Technology Pioneer status by the Davos World Economic Forum and won the prestigious UK national BT Flagship Award. Garlik was acquired by Experian Ltd in 2011. In 2013 he was awarded a Knighthood for services to science and engineering.
Daniel Shanahan, Associate Publisher, BioMed Central
Daniel Shanahan is a firm advocate for transparency and reproducibility in research. He joined BioMed Central in 2013 as Associate Publisher, driving open science and research transparency strategies and initiatives across the company.
Daniel has been involved in several initiatives to improve the quality of published evidence used to inform biomedical research and practice. He is a member of the CONSORT and PRIMSA groups and has helped develop a number of research reporting statements, and is part of the steering group for the REducing research Waste And Rewarding Diligence (REWARD) Initiative. Daniel is Chair of the Threaded Publications (Linked Reports of Clinical Trials) working group, a member of the working group for the Trial Forge initiative to improve the efficiency of clinical trials, and is also participating in strategic efforts to encourage the wider adoption of reporting guidelines, and to improve policies to combat publication bias and selective reporting, among others.
Grace Baynes, Director of Business Operations and Policy, Open Research for Springer Nature
Grace is responsible for operational excellence to provide the best possible experience to authors, editors, peer reviewers and readers in the open access portfolios of Springer, BioMed Central, Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan. She is also responsible for funder relations, open access policy and business models. She was previously Head of Communications for Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Palgrave Macmillan. Prior to joining NPG in 2007, Grace was Head of Marketing and Public Relations for BioMed Central in the formative years of open access publishing. Grace began her career at Elsevier working in editorial and corporate communications.
Ian Mulvany, Head of Technology, eLife
Ian is head of technology at eLife (http://elifesciences.org) which is a not for profit Open Access publisher supported buy the world’s leading scientific research funders – the Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
He works on publishing platforms, innovative ways of displaying research content and on understanding how technology can help to improve scientific communication.
Timo Hannay is the founder of SchoolDash, an education data analytics company. Before that he was the founder and managing director of Digital Science. He has also worked for Nature Publishing Group, where he was director of nature.com, and as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. He holds a doctorate in neurophysiology from the University of Oxford and has written for a wide range of publications including Nature and The Economist.
Dr Michaela Torkar, Editorial Director, F1000Research
After completing her degree in biology (at Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich) and a PhD at the University of Cambridge (working with John Trowsdale on the immunogenetics and function of natural killer cell receptors), Michaela moved into publishing in 2000, at a time when the open access movement was still in its infancy: She started at BioMed Central, the first open access publisher, soon after its launch, as a member of the Genome Biology editorial team; she eventually became the Editor of Genome Biology and later BioMed Central’s Editorial Director, overseeing the editorial processes of BioMed Central’s rapidly growing portfolio of biology and medical journals and the development of several journals, including BMC Biology and Biology Direct, which have been experimenting with different peer review models. Michaela joined F1000Research at the start of 2014 – one year after its formal launch.
Moderated By Mark Hahnel, Founder and CEO of Figshare
Mark is the founder of figshare. He is fresh out of academia, having just completed his PhD in stem cell biology at Imperial College London, having previously studied genetics in both Newcastle and Leeds. He is passionate about open science and the potential it has to revolutionise the research community.
