UKSG November Conference 2022 - diversity, equity and inclusion through multiple lenses

Tasha Mellins-Cohen joined the scholarly publishing industry in 2001. She has held roles within learned societies and commercial publishers across operations, technology, editorial and executive functions. In 2020 she launched Mellins-Cohen Consulting in response to requests for help in developing and implementing learned society-appropriate OA business models. From 2022 she took over the running of COUNTER, the global standard for usage metrics, alongside her consulting work.

Josie recently returned to her Research and Scholarly Communications role (Information Services) following a secondment as Management and Information Systems Manager (Research & Innovation Services). She is a Staff Disability Network Co-Chair and an Equality Diversity & Inclusivity (EDI) Representative.

Josie co-established the Research and Innovation Services EDI Working Group, and is an invited member of the Publishers Association Accessibility Action Group.

She recently received two separate awards recognising her commitment to embedding inclusive practices at the University of Kent, and for the local and global impact her work has had for different communities.

Dr Jennifer Leigh is a Reader at the University of Kent. She is a Co-Chair of their Staff Disability Network, Co-Lead of the Visual and Sensory Research Cluster at the University. She is Co-Lead of the National Assocoation of Staff Networks (NADSN)'s STEMM Action Group, and Vice Chair (Research) of the International Women in Supramolecular Chemistry (WISC) Network.

Her recent books include Ableism in Academia: Theorising experiences of chronic illness and disability in Higher Education (UCL Press), Conversations on embodiment across Higher Education: Teaching, Practice, and Research (Routledge), Embodied Inquiry: Research Methods (Bloomsbury), Women in Supramolecular Chemistry: Collectively Crafting the Rhythms of our work and lives in STEM (Policy Press), and Boundaries of research: Between qualitative research and therapy, art, education, and science (Policy Press, forthcoming

Nancy spent 20 years in the publishing sector working in production and operations for companies ranging from Penguin to Cambridge University Press. She is now the founder of Umbrella, a tech startup which uses data analytics, AI and machine learning to help businesses realise the benefits of a more diverse workforce. She is also Head of Technology and Content at Maverick, providing specialist consultancy to publishers, and co-director of Management in Publishing, delivering management and leadership development to the publishing sector. She has a PhD in Postcolonial Feminist Literary Theory and an Executive MBA from Cranfield University. She is deeply passionate about social justice and the importance of data in monitoring and achieving this goal.

Martin Whiteford is the Publication Development Manager for Healthier Lives at Emerald Publishing. He was actively involved in the conversations and collaborative efforts that led to the development of the Emerald Indigenous Voices advisory board. Prior to taking-up his current post with Emerald, Martin was a Research Fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University. Martin has also held research appointments at the University of Liverpool, where he was the recipient of National Institute for Health and Care Research funding. Martin holds a PhD in sociology and has published widely in the field of inclusion health.

Ana Luiza is a Ph.D. in Management at Unisinos Business School (AACSB accredited) Brazil, Faculty Member in the Management Department of Unicruz, Brazil. She is a Social Innovation Researcher and for her expertise, she is an Indigenous Peoples Advisory Board Member in Emerald Publishing. In addition, she was recognized in with the "Most Impactful Educator" Award (2021) and the "SBC Ambassador Award" (2022) in the Social Business Creation in Montreal, Canada.

 

Dr Shaouli Shahid, originally from Bangladesh, is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies, Curtin University. Shaouli obtained her PhD in International Health from Curtin University in 2011. Before this job, she won Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Early Career Research Fellowship and worked in the area of cancer and palliative care. Shaouli has also got a master’s degree in International Cooperation Studies from Nagoya University in Japan, and completed her Bachelor and another Master degree in Sociology from the university of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has a strong background in research and published extensively in the area of Aboriginal health.

Dani is a Library User Services Coordinator at Imperial College London. She works in close collaboration with the User Services Manager to ensure the provision of effective library services, membership accounts, service development and front-line user enquiry services. Dani contributes to project groups, to further develop library services and supports the User Services Manager with training a team of Library Assistants, recruitment and managing team rotas. Dani completed her PG Diploma at The University of Sheffield in 2021, and has since started CILIP Chartership alongside her coordinator post.

Hannah is the Research Data Librarian in the Research Support Team at the London School of Economics, where she specialises in open data, data management, data protection and secure data access. She is also the Co-Chair and co-founder of EARLL, a professional network for new and early career librarians in academic and research institutions based in and around London and the southeast of England. EARLL are supported by UKSG and are the recipients of the UKSG Innovation Award 2019.

 

Tom is currently undertaking a secondment as the Research Culture and Open Monographs Lead at Lancaster University Library. Within this role he leads and coordinates programmes of activity to develop an Open Research Culture as well as exploring options to facilitate open monograph publishing. In his substantive post he works across the areas of Open Access, Research Intelligence and Research Data Management to coordinate and deliver a range of projects, services and initiatives as an Open Research Officer. Tom is also co-editor of the UKSG e-News.

Elaine Sykes is currently acting as the Associate Director (Content and Open Research) at Lancaster University where she leads the teams that deal with all content and scholarly communications activities. Her substantive post is the Head of Open Research where she has strategic lead for scholarly communications, research data management and research intelligence.

Her research interests include open access publishing and data visualisation. She is widely active in the library sector including involvement with SCONUL, RLUK and the Library Performance Measurement Conference, where she acts as a Director. She has recently joined the Ebsco Academic Advisory Board.


 

Nuala McLaren is the Head of Reader Services and Academic Support at Goldsmiths, University of London. Nuala has previously worked in leadership and management roles in public libraries and arts organisations. Her professional interests include customer service, UX, Civic and community engagement, EDI, Access & Inclusion and learning space design.

Nuala is part of Liberate our Library working group and led on creating a Positive Action Graduate Trainee Post as part of the EDI work at Goldsmiths Library.

Judith has spent 30 years in the scholarly publishing industry, specialising in areas from editorial to marketing and product management. Her experience includes working for non-profit society publishers and publishing services providers. She has been with DOAJ since 2015 and is a senior member of the editorial team.

Toby, Publisher, Policy Commons and Co-Founder of Coherent Digital, has 35+ years experience in scholarly, policy and professional publishing. Previously, he held a variety of senior roles with OECD Publishing and Elsevier Science. Besides the formal stuff, Toby has wrestled with data publishing and is now trying to tame grey literature. He is a regular speaker at publishing and librarian events in Europe and North America. He serves as expert advisor to the Open Research Community. Previously, he was a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing Board and Chair of ALPSP. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9601-9130 https://twitter.com/tobyabgreen .

Biliamin is a vibrant, multi-skill academic librarian, researcher, and information and Knowledge Management consultant from Nigeria. He holds a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Studies and he’s presently the Systems, Scholarly Communications & Evidence-Based Medicine Librarian at the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo City, Nigeria. He was a Fellow of the Carnegie Next-Generation Librarians Programme at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and a Cunningham International Fellow with the Medical Library Association, United States of America. He has published widely and presented papers at several conferences within and outside Africa.

Joanna Ball is Managing Director for DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Before joining DOAJ in 2022, her career was based in academic libraries in the UK and Denmark, most recently as Head of Roskilde University Library, part of the Royal Danish Library. She is currently Chair of UKSG.

Hannah Crago is the Open Research Development Librarian at the University of Essex, where she leads the Research Services team. Hannah's role includes promoting open research practices across the university, as well as providing training for researchers on publishing, research visibility, and copyright. Hannah's role also involves management of the institutional open access fund, and advocacy for alternative models of open access publication.

Lindsay is the Data Librarian for Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) since September 2022, working with the research community to locate manage and publish datasets (RDM).

Prior to this, Lindsay worked in Teaching & Learning at TU Dublin where she established the Building MultiStories initiative; embedding information and digital literacies into university curricula, to teach and enable students to diversify their reading and referencing. From this a framework for diverse curriculum development was developed.

Lindsay’s interests centre on incorporation of equitable principles and practices, as well as sustainability, in library services. Lindsay sits on the university EDI Committee, is an advisory board member of the Students Learning With Communities Project and is an affiliate of the Rince Research Centre on Inclusive and Equitable Cultures.

ORCid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7642-5326

Aisling is the Open Scholarship Librarian for Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) where she manages the institutional repository, Arrow; engages in outreach and promotion of Open Research; delivers training to academics, staff, students, and researchers on a variety of Open topics; is a member of the European University of Technology (EUt+) project. Aisling is a member of two LAI special interest groups (Library Publishing and Open Scholarship); the IOAP; EARMA; is a founding member of OSCAIL, among other groups. Aisling has a special interest in OER and Gamification, including delivering the Open Access Escape Room, Lego Serious Play and the new OER Escape Room.

ORCid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4272-3648

Keith Nockels is the Academic Librarian for courses in medicine and healthcare, providing library support to undergraduate and taught course postgraduates, and also sharing in support offered to people undertaking systematic reviews. He also chairs the Library's Inclusive Collections Group, which guides the library's work on inclusivity of collections and metadata.

Heena began her career in public libraries, working as a library assistant for three years with Leicester City libraries. During this time she worked at HMP Leicester library as well as the central and local library branches. In 2016 Heena was awarded the Sheffield Postgraduate Scholarship to undertake her Master’s degree in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield. Since 2018 Heena has been working as an Academic Librarian at the University of Leicester supporting subjects across the College of Life Sciences and the College of Science and Engineering. She has led on a number of student engagement projects and was selected as one of University of Leicester's 'Inspirational Woman' in 2022 for this work

Khadidja Kelalech is a fourth-year PhD researcher at the University of Leicester. Her PhD project focuses on the influence of social media representations of female university students on women's education in Algeria. She currently works as a graduate teaching assistant in the School of Education, University of Leicester and a teacher of languages (Arabic, French, and English) in private schools. (Please feel free to amend the form of this biography to fit with the rest of the biographies or the scope of the conference, if necessary)

Robyn is currently on secondment as the University of Liverpool Liaison Librarian for the School of Law and Social Justice, however her permanent role is as the Academic Services Librarian within Special Collections and Archives at the University of Liverpool Library. She coordinates the Special Collections and Archives departmental project work in regards to colonial legacies.

Jenny has been Head of Special Collections & Archives at the University of Liverpool since 2014, and is currently seconded to a role supporting planning, governance and cross-sectional strategic projects. One of her main roles is to co-lead the University's project on addressing colonial legacies in the University's heritage collections alongside academic colleagues in the Centre for the Study of International Slavery.

Robyn Price is responsible for bibliometric analysis and education at Imperial. She has established a bibliometric service to deliver responsible metrics support to staff and students. She is interested in equity in scholarly communications and research, alternative metrics, grey literature and open access. Previously, Robyn worked in the editorial teams of open access and subscription journals.

Simon has been a research manager and administrator for 30 years, and is now an independent research consultant. He is co-chair of the NISO CRediT Standing Committee, a board member of EARMA, the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators, and past chair of ARMA, the UK association. He is a member of Journal of Research Administration’s Author Fellowship Scheme, and an editor of the Journal of Research Management and Administration. Simon holds a professional doctorate in electronic research administration, leads the Research Administration as a Profession (RAAAP) projects, and teaches on the Johns Hopkins’ masters in research administration.

Tom is currently a Laboratory Technician in the School of Geography at QMUL – conducting analyses, running and maintaining instrumentation, supporting teaching, and ensuring that the labs are always ready for use. Previously Tom has worked in laboratories at Imperial College London and at the British Geological Survey. As well as working indoors, he also has experience in geological and geographical fieldwork within the UK and abroad, having undertaken field research in the Arctic Circle and the Amazon, and most recently on Lake Victoria (Kenya).

With a background in peatlands and environmental pollution, he has published more than 15 peer reviewed journal articles, including a co-authored article in Science.

 

Amina Shah is the National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland. She has more than 25 years' experience across the library and literature sector, including both public and academic libraries. She was a previous CEO of the Scottish Library and Information Council and Director of Programme at the Scottish Book Trust and is President of CILIP in Scotland. Amina has a strong interest in diversity and inclusion and the role libraries, literature and culture play in empowering individuals and communities. Appointed in October 2021, Amina is the first woman and first person of mixed cultural heritage to hold the position of National Librarian.