Mark A. Parsons
2019-2024 (co-editor-in-chief with Matt Mayernik 2021-2024)
Mark A. Parsons is a Research Scientist and geographer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville working in NASA’s Chief Science Data Office to help align data, software, and information standards and processes across NASA’s science divisions. Mark has more than 30 years of experience in researching and developing data stewardship policies, practices, and systems. He has repeatedly and effectively built dynamic, functional collaborations across all sorts of differences in language and professional cultures. Mark was the first Secretary General of the Research Data Alliance. He has helped coordinate stewardship of a broad range of data from satellite remote sensing to Indigenous knowledge of Arctic change. He led the data management effort for the International Polar Year and helped establish the Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA). His published work has guided national data policies and practice and has contributed to educational programs. Mark lives in Colorado and likes to ride bicycles, bake bread, and play outside.
Sarah Callaghan
Editor-in-Chief 2015-2018
Dr Sarah Callaghan is the Editor-in-Chief of the Data Science Journal. Her research background is in radio propagation, mixed with atmospheric science, and she is a recognised international expert in academic publication, particularly for the publication of non-traditional research outputs such as data.
She is a senior scientific researcher and project manager for the British Atmospheric Data Centre, part of the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA), at STFC Rutherford Appleton, UK. She currently project manages several large scale projects including the EU FP7 project CLIPC and internal JASMIN super-compute cluster development and operations. She is Communications Manager for the NERC Data Operations Group – working with members of the other NERC data centres, and is also a co-chair of the RDA-WDS Working Group on Publishing Data Bibliometrics. Previously she project-managed Metafor, an EU FP7 project devoted to collecting and standardising the metadata required for the 5th Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), which fed into the production of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report.
She has experience of both creating and managing large datasets, and so understands well the frustrations that scientists can experience as a result of dealing with data!
Professional Details: ORCID; ReseachGate; Google Scholar; LinkedIn.