Initial submission assessment

Claudia oversees Elsevier's editor engagement program aiming to improve training, development and support of the academic editorial community. Claudia started her publishing career in 2005 when she became the microbiology editor for Nature, and led the life sciences editorial team at Nature Communications from 2012 to 2014. She then moved to Elsevier to launch the open access journal Heliyon, and has been in her current role since 2018. Claudia holds a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering – Biotechnology from the University of Applied Sciences in Mannheim, Germany and a PhD in Cell & Molecular Biology from the University of Hawaii, USA and carried out postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Christopher Tancock has worked in STM publishing for the past 16 years. He joined Elsevier in 2006 where he initially worked on social science book projects before moving to journals. He has managed various portfolios as a journal publisher including linguistics, history, education, sociology and political science. He is now Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's Editors', Authors' and Reviewers' Updates and works on related communications projects. Chris has degrees in European Studies and Linguistics from Royal Holloway and the University of Oxford respectively and is based in the Oxford office. In his spare time, he is a Community First Responder with the South Central Ambulance Service. Chris is founder of Pint of Life, an initiative which delivers free life-saving skills into the heart of his local community