Ruth Mallalieu has a professional background and extensive experience in scholarly communication, publishing, and author rights, and has worked in strategic management roles in the UK Higher Education sector for a number of years.

She is Head of Open Scholarship Support, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. The Open Scholarship Department provides a central point for advocacy and strategy in the areas of open scholarship and open publishing, Research Data Management, copyright and licensing, digital preservation and digital innovation. She is Chair of the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance (LACA) and of the Scholarly Communications Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. She is a member of the European Alliance for Research Excellence (EARE), the LERU Info Policy Group, and the UUK Copyright Negotiating and Advisory Committee (CNAC). She is a current LLM candidate in Intellectual Property Law at The University of Edinburgh.

A keen amateur clarinettist in her spare time, she is involved in a number of research initiatives relating to music and auditory neuroscience.