Irene Hames
Irene Hames Consulting, York, UK
Irene Hames is an independent editorial consultant and advisor to the publishing, higher education and research sectors. After gaining a PhD in Cell Biology, Irene moved into scientific publishing and spent over 30 years working on scholarly journals and books. For 20 years she was the managing editor of The Plant Journal. She was the specialist advisor to the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee for its inquiry into peer review in 2011, and is the author of the book Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals: guidelines for good practice. Irene holds advisory roles with Sense About Science and the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors, and was a Council Member, Director, and Trustee of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) 2010-13. In December 2011 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and sits on the Society’s Research Dissemination Committee. She is also on the editorial board of Learned Publishing.

Mike Whitlock
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Mike Whitlock is a Professor in the Biodiversity Research Centre at UBC. His research focuses on evolution in structured populations. Mike has long been a strong advocate for standards in science publishing, and was instrumental in the adoption of the Joint Data Archiving Policy within evolutionary biology.