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Fede Pelisch joins eLife Board of Directors

Published on 25 January 2023

Federico (Fede) Pelisch has been appointed to the eLife Board of Directors.

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He is appointed along with Jane McKeating, from the University of Oxford, UK; Freddie Quek, from Times Higher Education; and Joanne Hackett, from IQVIA.

They join at an exciting time for eLife, as they switch to a new model of publishing that eliminates accept/reject decisions after peer review and focuses on the public review and assessment of preprints. The model is a major milestone towards their vision for a future where a diverse, global community of scientists and researchers produces open and trusted results for the benefit of all. They are also working to make this vision a reality through their open-source technology development efforts and community engagement activities, all feeding into their overarching ‘publish, review, curate’ mission that puts preprints first.

The new board members were selected following an open call to scientists across the world with a proven track record in open science. The nominating committee included representatives from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Wellcome, along with Prachee Avasthi, Chair of eLife’s Board of Directors.

Avasthi says: “We are delighted to welcome these four exceptional individuals to the eLife board. With the progressive perspective on research communication that our new scientific members Fede and Jane bring, to Joanne’s extensive global experience across academic, business and clinical institutions, and Freddie’s work in scholarly publishing technology, they are well placed to help steer eLife forward in its mission. We’re excited to work with them to realise a more open and inclusive future for science.”

Fede Pelisch is a Principal Investigator at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. An advocate for preprints and open science, Fede has been a member of the preLights community, acted as a bioRxiv affiliate, and participated on eLife’s Board of Reviewing Editors. He received his PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has performed most of his postdoctoral studies at the University of Dundee. There he started his independent research program as a Medical Research Council Career Development Fellow, using the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model to study the regulation of chromosome segregation in oocytes.

Speaking about his appointment at eLife, he says: “I am extremely excited to be part of the change in scientific publishing that eLife has been bringing about over recent years. There has been an increasing sense of awareness about the many flaws in scientific publishing and communication, but positive initiatives have been emerging and gaining momentum. Within these, the level of disruption has varied between different forums. I feel that we all want disruption, but we are, in a way, also allergic to change. So I look forward to participating in discussions with the broad scientific community to help eLife bring about more positive change, learn during the ride, and hopefully see a net movement towards a fairer, more open way of sharing research.”

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