| A Day in the Life of... A Science Editor |
| Sunday, 01 October 2006 | |
Peter Stern takes us behind the scenes of a scientific publication and tells how he can “make a career, but not break a career”Any scientist trying to survive in the academic world will undoubtedly face the realities of the publish-or-perish philosophy. To begin and then sustain one’s research career, results must be obtained and manuscripts must be published. Not only that, if one dreams of tenure or even a professorship, then these manuscripts have to be published in high-impact journals, journals like Science, which receives over 12,000 manuscripts per year, of which fewer than 8% are published.These journals are making careers and guiding the focus of research. Peter Stern has been a Senior Editor, specializing in neurobiology, at Science for the last eight years. How does a Senior Editor at Science pass the working day? You have to read—you have to read all day long.You have to read all the manuscripts that are being assigned to you; you also have to read the major journals in your field. So, most of my time is spent looking at the computer screen and reading.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job? In a broad sense, the idea that you always have to be ahead of the curve.You have to see developments even when they are not there yet.We try to be at the forefront of research, constantly scouting where the new things are. Also when I have to say a certain field has matured and is no longer of note to Science.
What is the best part of your job? The best part is the opportunity to see such a broad field—to see the development in my particular area many months before others will see it. Another thing that I like is this: I have always been interested in the sciences in very general terms; being in constant interaction with my colleagues who are experts in physics, chemistry, palaeontology; and being told by them what the latest paper is that they are accepting. Also being told the context; why this particular paper is really important and the discussion that has been going on. It broadens your horizons immensely.
How do you ensure that you are always aware of the hot topics? Going to scientific conferences is very important.You have to go to the plenary talks and the symposia. I spend a lot of time at the poster sessions where very often the hot stuff is being presented. It is very often presented by the youngsters— so this is extremely enlightening for me. There is another side to the meetings; the social aspect. It is important to get to know many people on a personal basis. That improves your understanding of how they tick, in terms of what their experiments are, what their strategies are and when they are submitting their papers. Also when I ask people to review a paper for me it is often very good to know the personality of the individual. The other aspect is laboratory visits. These give you a feel for what is going on and for what certain technologies can achieve.When people tell you about all the problems they have and the many experiments that fail, it gives you some feel for the effort and sweat that has gone in.
Do popular media influence what you consider to be a hot topic? In a way this is unavoidable because we are just part of the general discourse in society. On the other hand, we try to be the leaders in that we want to show where discussion should go in the future. Very often we try to publish the first papers that really trigger an avalanche of further submissions. To give you an example, some of the first papers on climate change were with us.The media later jumped on the band-wagon and elaborated and now it’s in the public domain.
How does Science ensure equal coverage of all fields of research? We have a general formula. Over the course of a whole year there should be 40% physical sciences and 60% biological sciences. We usually manage quite well to do this. I have to say that I find it magic that it works out because every editor has his field and you want somehow to serve your field and publish more papers from that area. It means a kind of co-operative spirit; you have to keep the benefit of the magazine and the benefit of the scientific community at large in the back of your mind.
Are the authors of rejected manuscripts often hostile towards you? Of course there is a certain level of frustration when you (an author) are rejected. But if I try to make it clear that this is a transparent process—that it has not been done by tossing a coin—that there is a great deal of intellectual input that came to that decision, very often people will accept it. I also tell people that I can make a career but I can’t break a career.
What quality controls does Science implement in the selection of a manuscript? The first quality control is the Board of Reviewing Editors. They are high-profile scientists in their field.Their job is less to go into the fine details of the manuscript,more to step back and look at the broad developments in the field and how this fits in.After their verdict,we send the manuscript out to the in-depth referees, usually active scientists. This is the review process common to many journals.You also discuss the manuscript broadly with your colleagues. Imagine publishing a paper that turns out to be wrong and dozens of postdocs around the world try to replicate it.They may waste their time if you publish something that turns out to be a dead end, and resources get wasted.This is why we try to be very conscientious when it comes to ultimate decisions.
What prompted Science to pre-release manuscripts on the Internet? Science is published by the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is a non-profit organisation.We are there to serve the community; the slogan is “Advancing science, serving society”. So, time and again, we try to find out what our readers and the people publishing with us want. One of the important aspects has always been speed. A scientist wants to be the first when they have a new result— they don’t want to be scooped.We tried to react to that by releasing the paper online before publishing it in print. In the meantime, many other journals have copied us and do similar things.
Has pre-release of manuscripts on the Internet altered the editing process? No, the overall editing process has not changed. We did not speed up the reviewing process because we still want to have quality control. For example, I give my referees two weeks to review a manuscript. I think this is fair to the authors, as it is very unlikely that someone else will do the right experiment in just two weeks.
Do you ever have the urge to advise scientists on what experiments need to be done? I have this very often. I say, “Oh, this is the question that I was asking many years ago and here they are with their results.” I also see several papers, which may not come in at the same time, that give a kind of broader picture. Many pieces fall together like a jigsaw puzzle. I want to call everyone and say, “Folks, this is what you have to do here.” But, you don’t do this. As an editor, whenever something is on my desk I have to treat it with absolute confidentiality. No information is allowed to go out. You just don’t open your mouth—end of story.
How easy do you think it would be for an Editor to return to the bench? One of the problems in many fields is that you have to have hands-on contact with the machinery. There is a high turnover in technology. On the other hand, with the broad background and overview that an Editor has, an Editor could easily fit in the laboratory environment. An Editor knows much more on the theoretical side.The biggest challenge would be going back to the bench and learning to use the new equipment.
Do you communicate with the editors of your competing journals? Not really.We have a friendly meeting with our colleagues from Nature once a year. There is the famous Nature versus Science cricket match and it always happens here in Cambridge. Of course after a while you get to know most of your colleagues from other journals because you see them at meetings. Some of them are really quite pleasant people. They have the same sort of background and the same broad approach to things that we have. But, whenever a paper is with us, you stay ‘mum’.
How do you think your job has changed over the last eight years? My job has changed enormously. When I started we were dealing with loads of printed paper. Everyday big envelopes were arriving, sometimes containing four copies of a manuscript.We spent a lot of time using the fax machine and also on the phone. Now, everything is electronic. The majority of scientists submit their manuscripts through our website. In fact, these days I do not print out a manuscript until it reaches the so-called ‘pre-edit’ stage. This is when I really sit in a quiet room for several hours and go through the manuscript line by line. The editing process has also sped up. In the past, we sent the manuscripts to our Board Members by post. These days it takes a mouse click and it will appear on their screen. In a way, it is all handling of information.We also have a large database of the track record of scientists, their submissions and when they have reviewed a paper for us.
Does Science pay attention to impact factor? I personally don’t. I think at the moment impact factor is written too large.Too many committees, for example when they are awarding tenure, put too much attention on impact factor. I know that Science at the moment has the highest impact factor of all the general interest journals. But, I am happy to publish a paper that will only be cited a few times if I feel that this pushes the field forward. The scientific quality is more important.
What is Science doing in response to the push for open-access publishing? At the moment, we are just following the traditional publishing system, the ‘tried and tested’ way, but things may change in the future.We are not dogmatic in any way. Initially, I had the feeling that some of the open-access advocates were behaving like zealots. They wanted to change everything completely. So, in that sense an organisation like the AAAS, which has been around for 150 years, sees things a bit differently. In the meantime, we know that the open-access publishers have to increase their charges otherwise they can’t keep their costs low. At the moment everything published in Science is released for free after one year. There is some push that this should go down to six months from the grant-giving committees. I don’t think it will hurt us to go down because the impact of Science is its immediacy.We are quite relaxed, submission numbers are still going up; it doesn’t deter people to send their best stuff to us.
What advice would you give to a scientist who wants to publish in Science? Try to answer a fundamental question; dare to be innovative; be extremely critical with your own data: make sure that you have done all the controls and be critical with your interpretation so that what you see is what you really see and not what you want to see. I think the most important one is ‘dare to ask important questions’. Try to find out what is the big unanswered question and then go for it.
What advice would you give to an aspiring editor? Try to be as broad as possible within your own field. Most of the editors at Science have done at least two postdocs after their PhD, very often in different fields.They can judge experiments not only from what they have read in the literature, but from their own hands-on experience. Try to be excited by scientific findings; and maintain this interest. Love to be astonished by new things.Try to always stay young-at-heart so that you get excited by new ideas that come around.
In what area of neurobiology do you think the big discoveries are going to happen in the next year? The next 12 months are a relatively narrow period of time.We are thinking in longer terms. At the moment there is a great deal of different experiments that somehow need to be synthesized to try to understand higher cognitive functions. How does it happen that our brains experience space and time; how do we integrate all these different channels of input in a coherent picture of the world; how do we constantly update this with our memories? That is one of the big things that I am waiting for. Peter Stern was interview by Sheena Gordon, a PhD student in the Department of Biochemistry |
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