He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1992 for research on Nuclear magnetic resonance data processing methods supervised by Peter Hore.

[5] In 2009, Jones joined in making Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit following a complaint by blogger Steve McIntyre that the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (UEA) had refused to release raw weather station data.

Jones made a Freedom of Information request for raw data which the university had shared with another researcher, but refused to provide to McIntyre.

The university worked with the Met Office to get meteorological organisations to waive confidentiality on raw instrumental data, most failed to respond and two refused.

Jones said "My sole aim [in pursuing the case] is to help restore climate science to something more closely resembling scientific norms".