Speakers

More details coming soon…

Katherine Stephan is the Research Engagement Librarian at Liverpool John Moores University. Prior to working within research support, Katherine worked as an academic liaison librarian, evening and weekend supervisor and a children’s librarian. She is the librarian member of Think.Check.Submit, on the Outreach and Engagement Subcommittee for UKSG and is passionate about open research and responsible metrics. You can find her on Twitter @msiowaintheuk where she tweets mostly about her home state of Iowa, the many gigs she goes to and libraries.

Judith Carr is the Research Data Manager at the University of Liverpool. Before joining Liverpool she worked in scholarly communications at Imperial College and Warwick University. She has been a passionate open research advocate for over 5 years, having written a dissertation on open data. When not at work or in Teams meetings she is often found open water swimming,

Phil Jones spent ten years in public libraries working in customer service, specialist and management roles, before moving to work on the university side at Worcester’s Hive library. He then worked in various roles across the liaison and acquisitions side of higher education libraries before eventually working as a Head of Content and Discovery which also involved overseeing the library’s research support function. It was in this role that he realised Open Access (OA) was his calling. As a UKRI-funded Licensing Manager at Jisc Phil’s role is to work with publishers, funders and libraries to provide UK researchers with OA routes to publication and assist in the transition to an open access scholarly communication system. He is a qualified and chartered librarian (in the process of revalidating) and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy with an MBA focussed on leadership in higher education. Although role is now more about negotiation and licencing, I still identify as a librarian.

Zosia Beckles is an experienced information professional with a background in health informatics and research data management in the higher education and research sectors. She has been a Chartered Member of CILIP since 2012 and currently works as a Research Information Analyst at the University of Bristol, specialising in support and training for academics in research metrics/bibliometrics and sensitive research data management. She leads the University of Bristol’s dataset disclosure risk assessment service to facilitate safe publication of sensitive data through the University’s research data repository, and manages the University’s SafePod. She is co-Chair of the LIS-Bibliometrics Committee (https://thebibliomagician.wordpress.com/).

Helen Sharp is Scholarly Publications Specialist at Cardiff University. In this role, Helen leads the University Library Service’s Open Access Team, responsible for advocacy and facilitation of Open Access publication. The role includes working with the Cardiff University Press Executive Officer to support the Board of the University’s academic-led press, and manage the Press publications platform, outputs and funding. Helen is a Chartered and revalidated member of CILIP. She has worked in the Open Research Team at Cardiff since 2016. Previous roles in HE Libraries include Research Librarian, Subject Librarian and Customer Service Manager. Prior to moving to HE Libraries, she worked for many years as a Library Service Manager in the chemical industry.

Robert Darby is the Research Data Manager at the University of Reading and a senior member of the Library’s Research Engagement team. For several years he has been active in the University’s initiative to build a culture of Open Research. Recently he has been involved in establishing a working group to implement responsible research assessment practices that include recognition of Open Research in recruitment and promotion procedures. He has also engaged with the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) since Reading joined in 2020. Earlier this year he and UKRN colleagues formed the Open and Responsible Research Reward and Recognition Working Group (OR4), which sits under the Research England-funded Open Research Programme. OR4 will develop a toolkit to assist institutions in implementing research assessment policies and procedures that include recognition of Open Research.

Dr Alex Freeman spent 17 years as a science and natural history documentary-maker before moving to lead the Winton Centre for Risk & Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge. Here she quickly became concerned about the effects that the current scholarly communications system was having on the research culture and came up with the concept of Octopus – a new primary research record. Now, with funding from UKRI and in collaboration with the UKRN and Jisc, Octopus.ac has fully launched.

Samantha King joined Northumbria University as Research Development Manager in 2011, working with academic colleagues to provide specialist expertise in relation to UK and international research funding. In 2021 she moved into a newly created role of ‘Researcher Skills Development Manager’ at Northumbria where she works collaboratively with Professional Support Services and academic departments to commission, develop and deliver a range of learning and development activities and online resources related to researcher skills development, supporting academics across all career stages. During her 10 years at Northumbria she has developed a close working relationship with colleagues in the University’s Library Scholarly Comms Team particularly around researcher development and research culture.

Hannah Crago is the Open Research Development Librarian at the University of Essex. In this role, Hannah leads the small Research Services team within Essex’s Library and Cultural Services, specialising in advocacy for open research, promoting opportunities for open access publishing, working on increasing research visibility, and delivering training and support for researchers at Essex. Part of this work includes managing the Essex Student Journal, and working closely with the Student Journal Editor. Hannah has worked in various roles within the Research Services Team at Essex since September 2019, and completed her Masters in Library and Information Services Management from the University of Sheffield in the same year.

Aimee Watson-Cook has worked at Newcastle University Library since qualifying in 2011. Prior to this she worked at the University of Glasgow on data entry for the research management system, evening & weekend supervisory library work and a part-time distance MSc. Since relocating to Newcastle, she has chartered, gained entry to the Higher Education Academy and collected the full royal flush of subject support, moving from Science, Agriculture & Engineering, to Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities and now works in her role as Deputy Librarian of the Walton Medical Library and Liaison to the Faculty of Medical Sciences. She co-chairs the University’s Responsible Metrics SIG across the professional services job family, sits on the Library Research support Group, teaches on the faculty’s researcher development programme, and co-chairs the North East and Yorkshire Academic & Research Libraries CILIP special interest group. This is her first time at DARTs, and she hopes to combine the trip with her love/hate relationship with running.