
About DataSeer
Uncover. Advise. Verify.
DataSeer fills the urgent need for a low-cost, scalable solution to show researchers how to comply with stakeholder data sharing policies.
DataSeer was conceived by Tim Vines while he was manually checking compliance with the journal Molecular Ecology‘s data sharing policy –instead of going through an article line-by-line for 30 minutes, why not have Artificial Intelligence do the same job in 2 seconds?
DataSeer fills the urgent need for a low-cost, scalable solution to:
a) show researchers what they need to do to comply with data sharing policies, and
b) allow stakeholders to precisely monitor compliance with their data policy.
Our PeoplE
DataSeer personnel
Tim Vines, PhD
Founder and Director
Tim Vines is the Founder and Project Lead on DataSeer. Prior to that he founded Axios Review, an independent peer review company that helped authors find journals that wanted their paper. He was the Managing Editor for the journal Molecular Ecology for eight years, where he led their adoption of data sharing and numerous other initiatives. He writes for the industry-leading Scholarly Kitchen blog, and has published research papers on peer review, data sharing, and reproducibility (including one that was covered by Vanity Fair). He has a PhD in evolutionary ecology from the University of Edinburgh and now lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Kristen Ratan
Strategy Consultant
Kristen Ratan is a seasoned executive and open science advocate with 20+ years leading transformation in scholarly research and research communication. Kristen has a successful track record creating and driving vision, strategy and technology innovations in research, knowledge production, discovery and access. She co-founded the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation (Coko) and was Publisher at PLOS prior to that.
Heather Staines, PhD
Business Development Consultant
Before joining DataSeer, Heather was Head of Partnerships for the Knowledge Futures Group, building open source infrastructure for publishers and libraries. Her previous roles include positions at Hypothesis, Proquest, SIPX (formerly the Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange), Springer SBM, and Greenwood Publishing Group/Praeger Publishers. She is a frequent speaker and participant at industry events including the COUNTER Board of Directors, the STM Futurelab, Society for Scholarly Publishing, the NISO Transfer Standing Committee, the NASIG Digital Preservation Task Force. She has a Ph.D. in Military and Diplomatic History from Yale University.
Our Advisory Board
DataSeer draws on a wealth of Open Data expertise
Nokome Bentley
Founder, Stencila
Nokome was originally a marine scientist with over twenty years experience in research for sustainable management of marine resources. He is the Founder of Stencila, which produces living documents that link tables and plots to the underlying datasets. It serves a platform for reproducible research that bridges the gap in collaboration between coders and non-coders. Nokome is based in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Theo Bloom
Executive Editor, BMJ
Phil Bourne
Founding Dean, School of Data Science, University of Virginia
Erin Clary
Curation Coordinator, Portage Network
Erin is the Curation Coordinator for the Portage Network, an initiative of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, now supported by Canada's New Digital Research Infrastructure Organization (NDRIO). She reviews new dataset deposits for the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR), and as a member of Portage’s Curation Expert Group, she is engaged in developing resources to support a national curation community of practice.
Mercè Crosas
Research Data Management Officer, Harvard University
Mercè is a data technologist and researcher, currently holding two roles at Harvard University, as the University Research Data Management Officer, with Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT), and the Chief Data Science and Technology Officer at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Her career journey has included research in astrophysics, design and implementation of software for astronomical observations, development of learning and data management systems for education and biotechnologies, and now leading software platforms and tools for research data sharing and analysis, applied to all research fields.
Martin Fenner
Technical Director, DataCite
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
Publisher, Open Research at Public Library of Science
Daniella Lowenberg
Data Publishing & Data Metrics Product Manager/Dryad Product Manager
Daniella is the Product Manager for Dryad, a global open data publishing platform. She also directs the Make Data Count initiative focused on building the infrastructure for research data metrics. She also educates researchers/research stakeholders within the University of California system and globally on open research data publishing, open data metrics, research data ethics, and sharing of protected human data.

Jason Roberts
Senior Partner, Origin Editorial
After earning a doctorate in Geography from Loughborough University, Jason worked at Blackwell Science in Oxford, UK. He switched to the editorial team and eventually rose to be Senior Editor of US-based medical journals. In 2010 he left Blackwell to found Origin Editorial, offering his journal management expertise to a much wider range of journals. Jason was the founding president of the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors. He works closely with the EQUATOR Network to encourage improved reporting standards among journals, editors, and publishers.