Isabelle Boutron is professor of epidemiology at the Paris Descartes University and researcher at the INSERM- Sorbonne Paris Cité Epidemiology and Statistics Research Centre in the METHODS team. She is deputy director of the French EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Centre, deputy director of Cochrane France and co-convenor of the Bias Methods group of the Cochrane. Her research activities mainly focus on investigating how clinical research is planned, conducted, and reported. Her work on the peer-review process demonstrated the failure of the peer-review process to detect inadequate reporting and spin. She showed the discrepancies between expectancies of peer-reviewers and editors and highlighted the low level of evidence supporting the peer-review process.

The title of her talk is: “Improving peer review via controlled experiments”.

Hans-Dieter Daniel is professor at the ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. Psychologist by training, since 2001, he has been Director of the Evaluation Office of the University of Zurich and since 2002, Professor for Social Psychology and Research on Higher Education at ETH Zurich. Since 2009, he has been a member of the International Advisory Board for the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) “Audit – Internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions”. Since 2011, he has been a member of the Evaluation Committee of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat). He is one of the pioneers of quantitative studies on peer review. His book Guardians of Science – Fairness and Reliability of Peer Review is one of the most cited reference on peer review.

The title of his talk is: “Peer review and beyond: Randomisation at the Margin in the Selection of Research Grant Proposals”.

Irene Hames is an independent advisor on peer review, research integrity and publication ethics. Her experience in research communication and publication spans 40 years, including 20 years as the managing editor of a large scientific journal. She is the author of the book Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals, and in 2011 was the specialist advisor to the UK Parliament House of Commons Science and Technology Committee for its inquiry into peer review and the resulting report, Peer Review in Scientific Publications. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and in 2017 was awarded the Publons inaugural Sentinel Award for outstanding advocacy, innovation or contribution to scholarly peer review.

The title of her talk is “Ethical issues and transparency in peer review”.

Jennifer Richler joined Nature Research in 2016 as a Senior Editor serving Nature Climate Change and Nature Energy, where she handles a broad range of manuscripts from across the behavioral and social sciences, including psychology, sociology, political science, human geography, and behavioural economics. Jenn was named Acting Head of the Nature Research Social Sciences Centre of Excellence in 2017. Prior to joining Nature Research, Jenn was an associate editor at Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, where she handled manuscripts spanning all areas of experimental psychology, and a writer for the American Psychological Association. Jenn completed her PhD in psychology and postdoctoral work at Vanderbilt University.

The title of her talk is “Editorial policy and peer review efforts at Nature journals”.