eLife is pleased to welcome five new appointments to its Board of Directors: Dinesh Natesan, from UC Santa Barbara, US; Kamran Naim, from CERN, Switzerland; Fiona Watt, from EMBO, Germany; Huda Zoghbi, from Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, US; and Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan, from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), India.
Image courtesy of eLife’s new board members
These appointments follow the recent announcement of Timothy Behrens as eLife’s new Editor-in-Chief, further supporting the organisation as it pushes ahead in its mission to improve the review and communication of research. Working with the existing members of the Board, they will help determine eLife’s strategic priorities around its publishing, technology and research culture programmes, as well as develop policy and maintain high standards of probity within the organisation.
The new members were selected following an open call to scientists across the world with a proven track record of active leadership and driving positive change. The nominating committee included representatives from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Wellcome, alongside Joanne Hackett, Chair of eLife’s Board of Directors.
“We’re delighted to welcome these exemplary individuals to the eLife Board,” Hackett says. “The collective experiences they bring from across the research and open science spaces, as well as their passion for eLife and the vision we’re working to achieve, made them the clear choice for us. We’re excited to have them with us as we work together towards a fairer and more open future for research communication.”
Dinesh Natesan is a Postdoctoral Researcher at UC Santa Barbara, California, US. He investigates the neural basis of navigation in fruit flies and insects generally, combining expertise in neuroscience, computational modelling and technological innovation – he is currently building a naturalistic virtual reality system for insects for his upcoming experiments. As the representative for early-career researchers on eLife’s Board of Directors, he will also help coordinate and support the work of the eLife Early-Career Advisory Group.
Natesan says: “I’m honoured to be made a member of eLife’s Board. As someone who really believes in eLife's mission and has been part of its community initiatives, like the Ambassadors programme, I am very excited about the prospect of contributing even more to these efforts. In particular, I want to help make eLife the go-to place for submitting scientific studies for open peer review. I really believe that the ‘publish, review, curate’ model, which emphasises the rapid communication of ideas, open peer review and article versioning, will promote scientific progress further. I look forward to helping eLife establish this model as the default mode of scientific publishing.”
Kamran Naim is the Head of Open Science at CERN, Switzerland. A global expert in open science policy and practice, he is known for developing equitable open-access models, managing major international initiatives at CERN including SCOAP3, partnering with global organisations such as UNESCO and NASA, and driving innovation at the intersection of science, education and technology.
Naim says: “eLife is pioneering innovation in the face of immense systemic inertia and I’m thrilled, and beyond humbled, to be included among the illustrious members of the Board and support its efforts to challenge the status quo. I’m particularly excited to support eLife as it challenges many of the systems and conventions of the traditional scholarly communication system that have inhibited scientific advances and restricted the adoption of open science.”
Talking about the broader move towards more open research communication, he adds: “It’s encouraging to see the increased interest and momentum on community-driven open-access models, as well as the increased recognition, adoption and support of the ‘publish, review, curate’ model employed by eLife to bring greater transparency and integrity to scientific publishing. It’s time to disrupt the wider landscape and accelerate towards an open future. Humanity simply can’t afford to continue to suffer at the hands of commercial interests that treat scholarly outputs as commodities to be bought and sold.”
Fiona Watt is the Director of the non-profit organisation EMBO in Heidelberg, Germany, and was one of eLife’s founding Deputy Editors. She has pioneered research in stem cell regulation, skin biology and cancer, while holding key leadership positions including Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council, UK, advocating for women in science, and influencing UK government investments in stem cell research.
Watt says: “eLife provides an important platform for rethinking how research outputs are shared. I really enjoyed helping to launch the journal back in 2012 and am honoured to be appointed as a member of the Board.”
Huda Zoghbi is a Distinguished Service Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, US. She is also Director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, and an HHMI Investigator. She is renowned for her research into the genetic basis and neurobiology of conditions such as Rett syndrome, autism, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. She joins the eLife Board after serving previously as a Senior Editor for the journal.
Zoghbi says: “I am looking forward to working with the Board to ensure the sustainability and success of eLife. As I was one of the Senior Editors when eLife launched, I appreciated all of the practices that it implemented, from open-access publishing to the consultation between editors and reviewers during the review process. These practices inspired change at many journals that adopted consultation sessions and developed a path for open access.”
Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan is a DAE-Homi Bhabha Chair Professor at NCBS, Bangalore, India, and former Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. He is recognised widely for his scientific contributions as a geneticist and developmental biologist who has deepened our understanding of muscle development through studies in fruit flies. He has also served as a Senior Editor for eLife.
VijayRaghavan says: “eLife provides a very necessary solution to a publishing system that has remained inefficient for researchers for too long. I have enjoyed watching eLife’s progress over the years to become one of the foremost innovators in research review and communication, and I’m delighted to play a guiding role as it continues to push for wider reform.”
While welcoming these new members to the Board, eLife also bids farewell to those who have stepped down over the last few months, including Jane McKeating and, most recently, Georg Botz, who had served as an alternate member for the Max Planck Society since eLife’s beginning.
“We are extremely grateful for the dedicated service, advocacy and expertise that Jane and Georg brought to eLife,” Hackett says. “While we are sorry to lose them from the Board, we wish them the very best for the future.”
More information about eLife’s Board of Directors is available at https://elifesciences.org/about/people/directors.
To read more about Timothy Behrens’ appointment as eLife Editor-in-Chief, visit https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/25f827d5/elife-appoints-timothy-behrens-as-editor-in-chief.
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eLife
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eLife
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About
eLife transforms research communication to create a future where a diverse, global community of scientists and researchers produces open and trusted results for the benefit of all. Independent, not-for-profit and supported by funders, we improve the way science is practised and shared. From the research we publish, to the tools we build, to the people we work with, we’ve earned a reputation for quality, integrity and the flexibility to bring about real change. eLife is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.
