Duncan Nicholas

Development Editor Reproductive BioMedicine Online, United Kingdom

EASE roles: President 2020-23; Past President 2023-25; Director; Finance Committee; responsible for web design and social media; overall co-ordinator of the Learning Hub project

Winner of the 2024 Pau Award for outstanding contributions and dedication to the success of EASE over a period of many years

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dnjournals
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/dnjournals.bsky.social
Facebook: facebook.com/duncan.nicholas.921

It was a pleasure to connect with you and to discuss the work and activities of EASE.

Visit our website to find out more about EASE: our calendar of regular webinars and courses, the benefits of membership, the work of our special interest committees and regional chapters and much more can all be found on the menu above. Head to our Home page now and follow us on our social media channels.

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Architect of the EASE rebrand in 2021

I was delighted to lead the team which created and implemented the new EASE brand in 2021/22. This heralded a bright new beginning for EASE and we are still implementing the later phases of the project. See my brand teaser video.

As part of the process of rebranding, I created article templates for all the different types of articles we publish in our Journal, European Science Editing; posters and graphics for web pages and social media posts for events, activities and all ESE articles, videos of webinars, conference sessions, explainers and interviews and much more besides. I manage the analytics on all our digital channels.

EASE Awards

I designed and implemented the EASE Awards Scheme and led the Committee which oversaw the nominations process and managed the event. We ran our first event in December 2022, to recognise winners from 2021/22, and our most recent event in February 2024 to recognise winners from 2022/23. View the recording of the event, which included awards for Best EASE Initiative; Rising Star; Community Contributor; Best Papers; Best Peer Reviewer and Best Conference Session.

Workshops, courses, webinars and resources

I have delivered several webinars and courses for EASE and have hosted many others with topic expert speakers from around the world. Most recently I delivered the module on Promotion and Indexing for the Editorial School for Journal Editors.

I have recently worked on our new guidelines for authors and researchers ‘Writing your research paper: tips from EASE editors’. We expect this to be published this summer.

Conference planning and organisation

During my time as President we all had to navigate the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which for us included hosting our first ever virtual event, ‘Editors and editing in times of crisis‘. The following year we extended the duration to 3 days with another online conference ‘Promoting sustainability in scholarly publishing: The role of editors‘. Since then we have held two further hybrid conferences ‘The manuscript journey: The editors’ perspective‘ and most recently ‘Quality Science Publishing‘.

This provided us with the opportunity to create Conference Packets, which bring together all the session recordings, slide decks and speaker information from each conference. You can buy them in our Shop.

A bit about me…

I am Director of DN Journal Publishing Services and Past President of EASE. I have nearly 20 years experience working in various roles the journal publishing industry, and currently works in a full time role as Development Editor for Reproductive BioMedicine Online.

My consultancy work has provided editorial development for major publishers, small independent publishers and learned societies around the world, implementing business development reviews and action plans. I have worked with hundreds of journals, across a range of subject areas, including behavioural and health sciences, veterinary and medical science, economics, engineering and chemistry.

I write and deliver training workshops and presentations to editorial staff and researchers of all levels of academic seniority on a wide range of topics, and was involved in the development, creation of content and recording for the Publons Academy (now Web of Science Researcher Academy). My workshops include skills editorial office management, writing and journal publishing skills, peer review, journal metrics, open science, science communication, social media and promotion, publishing & research ethics, and copyright & licensing. I have been the Advanced Journal Development trainer for the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).

I am also involved in other organisations and initiatives, such as Peer Review Week, and International Society for Managing and Technical Editors (ISMTE), for which I was Chair of the Conference Organising Committee from 2016-2018.