
About DataSeer
Uncover. Advise. Monitor.
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.
Souad McIntosh
Operations Manager
Souad is the Operations Manager and a Data Curator at DataSeer. She is our main point of client contact and oversees the various applications of our AI. Souad is passionate about efficiency, auditing, and especially Open Data. Previously, Souad was employed in the restaurant and customer service industries. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Simon Fraser University and lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Allegra Pearce
Data Curator
Allegra’s work has focussed on the ecology and evolution of aquatic systems, with an emphasis on data management and improving the transfer of knowledge through open science. Her love of nature drew her to study biology, where she found a new interest in data analysis. She has a MSc in Biology from McGill University and currently lives outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
DataSeer is an open-source project developed with the support of the Sloan Foundation.
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.
Martin Fenner
Technical Director, DataCite
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
Publisher, Open Research at Public Library of Science
Patrice Lopez
Founder, Science Miner
Patrice is a global expert on the application of Machine Learning to research articles. His previous projects include the pdf to TEI converter Grobid and the Deep Learning Framework For Text (DeLFT). He developed DataSeer’s core Machine Learning algorithms and remains actively engaged with the project.
Kristen Ratan
Founder, Strategies for Open Science
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.

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.
Heather Staines
Director of Community Engagement and Senior Consultant at Delta Think
Before joining DeltaThink, 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.