eLife is pleased to announce Anna Akhmanova, Professor of Cell Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, as a new Deputy Editor. Working alongside Eve Marder (Brandeis University, US) and Detlef Weigel (Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany), and reporting to Editor-in-Chief Randy Schekman (University of California at Berkeley, US), Akhmanova will share a range of responsibilities. She will join the other Deputy Editors in assigning new submissions across the life and biomedical sciences to eLife’s Senior Editors, help to maintain eLife’s standards for scientific excellence, and contribute to policies and processes that ensure fair and decisive peer review.
Akhmanova has been on the eLife Editorial Board for over three years, serving first as a Reviewing Editor and as a Senior Editor beginning in 2016. She takes over as eLife’s third Deputy Editor from Fiona Watt, who leaves her position at eLife in order to serve as Executive Chair of the UK Medical Research Council (MRC).
“Anna is a passionate advocate for reforming peer review,” says Schekman. “As a long-time member of the team, she has worked hard to help realise eLife’s fair and consultative approach. Anna has also been a strong voice for early-career researchers at eLife, championing training and credit in peer review. We are extremely pleased to have her join us as Deputy Editor.”
Akhmanova says: “It is an honour to be made Deputy Editor for eLife. This is a great opportunity for me to play a more significant role in improving the publishing climate for the life sciences. I look forward to being more involved in thinking up and testing new ways to make eLife an even stronger journal for the scientific and wider community.”
Akhmanova studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the Moscow State University and obtained her PhD at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Her work is now focused on investigating how the cytoskeleton of a cell is built from its molecular components. She says the next challenge is to piece together a picture of how these components work together and self-organise to generate complex intracellular structures. She is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Schekman adds: “As Anna joins the eLife leadership team, we’d like to express our deep thanks to Fiona for her seven-year commitment and dedication to establishing eLife as a respected and trusted resource for the scientific community. We wish her all the best in her new role at the MRC.”
While looking ahead to the opportunities presented by her new position, Fiona Watt reflects on eLife’s achievements to date in our latest blog post: https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/0292f4ee/fiona-watt-thank-you-elife
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eLife aims to help scientists accelerate discovery by operating a platform for research communication that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours in science. We publish important research in all areas of the life and biomedical sciences, which is selected and evaluated by working scientists and made freely available online without delay. eLife also invests in innovation through open-source tool development to accelerate research communication and discovery. Our work is guided by the communities we serve. eLife is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, the Wellcome Trust and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.
