{{Short description|English paleontologist (1988–2020)}}{{Infobox scientist | name = Jon Tennant | image = | birth_date = 6 May 1988 | birth_place = Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire, England | death_date = 9 April 2020 | death_place = Ubud, Bali, Indonesia | workplaces = ScienceOpen | thesis_year = 2017 }}

'''Jonathan Tennant''' (6 May 1988 – 9 April 2020<ref name=":2" />) was an English open science activist, science communicator and vertebrate paleontologist.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=Obituary: Jonathan Tennant (1988–2020) |url=https://www.egu.eu/news/646/obituary-jonathan-tennant-1988-2020/ |access-date=2023-03-30 |website=European Geosciences Union (EGU) |language=en}} {{Third-party inline|date=June 2023}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Jon Tennant (May 6th, 1988– April 9th, 2020) |url=https://systass.org/texts/jon-tennant/ |access-date=2023-03-30 |website=The Systematics Association |date=30 August 2020 |language=en-US}}</ref>

== Early life and paleontology == Tennant was born in 1988 in Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire. His first 18 years were in Leicester with his parents and two sisters, Rebecca and Sarah. Jon attended Granby Primary School, Bushloe High School and then Beauchamp College.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}} He obtained a PhD from Imperial College London in 2017, on a potential extinction event at the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary.<ref name=":3" /> He also published research on atoposaurids, an extinct group of small early crocodilian relatives.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tennant |first=Jonathan P. |last2=Mannion |first2=Philip D. |last3=Upchurch |first3=Paul |date=13 July 2016 |title=Evolutionary relationships and systematics of Atoposauridae (Crocodylomorpha: Neosuchia): implications for the rise of Eusuchia |url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/zoj.12400 |journal=Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society |language=en |volume=177 |issue=4 |pages=854–936 |doi=10.1111/zoj.12400|hdl=10044/1/29026 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

As a science communicator, Jon was a regular contributor to ''Discover'' on paleontology.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jon Tennant {{!}} Discover Magazine |url=https://www.discovermagazine.com/author/jtennant |access-date=2023-03-31 |website=www.discovermagazine.com}}</ref>

== Open Science movement == alt=Jon Tennant|thumb|Jon Tennant "holding up the Science Pillars", REBIUN 2019 (León, Spain) A key advocate, speaker and activist in the Open Science movement, he was a supporter of open access to knowledge and cultural change within the scientific community. He was an Editor for the PLOS Paleo Community, executive editor for ''Geoscience Communication'', part of the Mozilla Open Leadership Cohort, and worked as Communications Director for ScienceOpen.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /> With Jennifer Beamer, Jeroen Bosman, Björn Brembs, Neo Christopher Chung, Gail Clement, and others, he wrote an influential guide and strategy on open access and open research.<ref>{{Cite report |url=https://osf.io/b4v8p |title=Foundations for Open Scholarship Strategy Development |last1=Tennant |first1=Jonathan |last2=Beamer |first2=Jennifer Elizabeth |date=2019-01-30 |publisher=MetaArXiv |doi=10.31222/osf.io/b4v8p |last3=Bosman |first3=Jeroen |last4=Brembs |first4=Björn |last5=Chung |first5=Neo Christopher |last6=Clement |first6=Gail |last7=Crick |first7=Tom |last8=Dugan |first8=Jonathan |last9=Dunning |first9=Alastair|doi-access=free }}</ref>

He was a panelist and keynote speaker at various academic and scholarly publishing conferences worldwide.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Open Scholarship |url=http://fossilsandshit.com/open-scholarship/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220926103522/http://fossilsandshit.com/open-scholarship/ |archive-date=2022-09-26 |access-date=2021-04-11 |website=Green Tea and Velociraptors |language=en-CA}}</ref> Among his talks are

* "Open science is just good science",<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tennant |first=Jon |date=2019-08-16 |title=Open Science is Just Good Science |url=https://campus.dariah.eu/en/resource/posts/open-science-is-just-good-science |journal=DARIAH-Campus |language=en}}</ref> 2018 DARIAH Annual Event on Open Science (keynote)<ref>{{Cite web |title=In memoriam of Jon Tennant {{!}} DARIAH |url=https://www.dariah.eu/2020/04/14/in-memoriam-of-jon-tennant/ |access-date=2023-03-30 |language=en-GB}}</ref> * "Have we started a fire?",<ref>{{Cite web |title=Open Science Fellows: "Have we started a fire? – Yes. The fire rises." Jon Tennant – Wikimedia Deutschland Blog |date=4 June 2019 |url=https://blog.wikimedia.de/2019/06/04/open-science-fellows-have-we-started-a-fire-yes-the-fire-rises-jon-tennant/ |access-date=2023-03-30 |language=de-DE}}</ref> 2019 Open Science Fellows Program from Wikimedia Deutschland (closing event) * "Reproducibility: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Open Science", 2018 IEEE Conference Evaluation and Beyond – Methodological Approaches for Visualization (invited talk).<ref>{{Cite book |date=2018-10-21 |pages=i |doi=10.1109/BELIV.2018.8634081 |isbn=978-1-5386-6884-9 |s2cid=240114870 |chapter=Reproducibility: Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love open science &#91;Invited talk&#93; |title=2018 IEEE Evaluation and Beyond - Methodological Approaches for Visualization (BELIV) }}</ref> * Invited panelist at the international conference held in 2018 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of SciELO.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Panelists - Jonathan Tennant |url=https://www.scielo20.org/painelistas/jonathan-tennant/index.html |access-date=2023-03-30 |website=International Conference for the 20th anniversary of SciELO |language=pt-br}}</ref>

In 2014, Tennant and open access advocates drafted an open letter to American Association for the Advancement of Science expressing concerns about the journal ''Science Advances''. They cited issues with reuse restrictions, failure to meet Budapest Open Access Initiative standards, and high publication fees.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Opinion: OA Advocates Slam Science Advances|url=https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/opinion-oa-advocates-slam-science-advances-37005|access-date=2021-04-10|website=The Scientist Magazine®|language=en}}</ref>

=== Institutional initiatives ===

He was a founder of the Open Science MOOC and the preprint service PaleorXiv.<ref name=":2" />

=== Ban from OpenCon and sexual assault allegations === In 2018, Tennant was banned from open science conference OpenCon after violating the conference's anti-harassment policy. This ban was publicly announced by OpenCon in 2019. Tennant accepted that he had behaved inappropriately at a 2016 conference (which he claimed had involved an "isolated incident of dancing with a friend/colleague while at a party, and running my hands down their side") and apologised.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-11-11 |title=Response to OpenCon statement (Dr. Jon Tennant, IGDORE) |url=https://onscienceandacademia.org/t/response-to-opencon-statement-dr-jon-tennant-igdore/410 |access-date=2025-12-05 |website=On Science & Academia |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Tennant |first=Jon |date=2020-03-25 |title=The OpenCon saga, 5 month update |url=https://jontennant.substack.com/p/the-opencon-saga-5-month-update |access-date=2025-12-05 |website=Green Tea and Velociraptors}}</ref> Tennant was subsequently accused of rape and sexual assault, which Tennant denied.<ref name=":0" /> The ban and allegations had a serious negative impact on Tennant's standing within the open science movement and academia more broadly, causing him to lose positions in academic journals (among others) and speaking engagements.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" />

== Later life and death == He later lived in Berlin, Paris, and Bali. Tennant died from a motorbike accident in Bali on 9 April 2020 at the age of 31.<ref name=":2" />

== References == {{reflist}}

== External links == {{commonscat}} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20220928011857/http://fossilsandshit.com/research/ List and summary of paleontology works] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20220926103522/http://fossilsandshit.com/open-scholarship/ Full list of open science related publications and talks] * Nate Breznau's 2022 article [https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hfns2/ Legacy of Jon Tennant, ‘Open Science Is Just Good Science] posthumously co-credited to Jon. *[https://open-science-training-handbook.github.io/Open-Science-Training-Handbook_EN// The Open Science Training Handbook], of which Jon was a co-author.

{{Authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Tennant, Jon}} Category:1988 births Category:2020 deaths Category:People from Kirby Muxloe Category:British palaeontologists Category:Open access activists Category:Open science Category:People from Leicestershire Category:Activists from Berlin Category:Scientists from Berlin Category:Scientists from Paris Category:Alumni of Imperial College London Category:Writers from Leicestershire Category:Writers from Paris Category:Writers from Berlin