Scientist Stories: Magdalena Skipper, Scientific Publishing

I'm Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature.

How did you first become interested in science?

I did not grow up in a household where people talked about science. It's actually quite interesting. My parents were not scientists, although I would say they were possibly scientists at heart, so very rational, focused individuals who are quite pragmatic about the world around them. But I think my interest in science just sort of naturally evolved, and really from a very early age. I think I had an idea that I would be some kind of a biologist ever since I was a child. It was a very, very early interest. Which subsequently developed further when I went to school. But that, that inkling, that interest was there very early on.

Were there any teachers early in life who got you interested in science?

So, not exactly, I would say. But there is an event, I guess, associated in the— so I've always been interested in biology in particular. There was something that fascinated me about life sciences and sort of life in general, particularly in the context of of evolution. I remember very clearly, I did have a very good biology teacher. I had many other excellent teachers as well. But at some point, and this perhaps reveals to you something about my personality, at some point, as we were learning more and more biology, we touched on genetics and inheritance in particular. And I was a fairly good student, And suddenly, there was something about genetics as I was discovering the principles of inheritance that I actually found quite difficult to grasp initially. And so, the teacher spent a bit of extra time with me, and I think it was that time, the fact that it was something that didn't come to me necessarily naturally, straight away, that piqued my interest in this particular discipline. And ever since then, once I got it, if you like, understood the principles, And then I just thought it was the most fascinating, interesting thing. And then from then on, it wasn't just biology or life sciences, but it was specifically genetics and inheritance and how that plays out that got my attention.

Tell us a little bit about your academic path as an undergraduate.

So interestingly, you know, I did my studies in the UK, and the education system in the UK is such that you can specialize quite quickly during your education. So, I actually went to study genetics in particular. So, I did that at the University of Nottingham. So, at that point, I already knew that I wasn't necessarily interested in studying biology or life sciences or broader subjects, but it was specifically genetics that I wanted to explore. And then, of course, in the different modules, you know, learnt a lot about molecular biology, underlying inheritance, evolution, gene expression, gene regulation, and so on. And interestingly, this was in the days before we really completely understood how these processes worked, and certainly how— we certainly did not have genome sequence at that point.

And what brought you to the University of Cambridge for your graduate work?

So, actually, the prominence of Cambridge was not part of my decision-making process. It was specifically the topic that I could research there. So, I studied, I went to Cambridge for my PhD. At the end of my time in Nottingham, I knew already that I wanted to do research, that was one thing I was focusing on, and I was very particular about the subject area that I was choosing. I knew that I wanted to continue with genetics, use very much the genetic approach to dissect problems, and I wanted to use model organisms, because at that point, interestingly, I thought that human was actually a very boring system in which you could not experiment, therefore I was not going to pursue that in any way at all. So, I considered a number of labs in the UK, actually, studying different types of organisms, and in the end, I went to visit the different labs and talk about different possibilities of what I could study, to explore the subject areas that were available. And it was my conversation with Jonathan Hodgkin in Cambridge at the LMB which really piqued my interest in particular. And then, so then I set about applying for grants to actually go to that lab to do a PhD. And, you know, Cambridge has this unusual system that you also have to apply to a college So if you don't get into a college, you won't be able to study there. So this was this multi-layer process of applications. And of course, I, I sat nervously in my bedroom, you know, waiting for the results to come. And of course, the rest is history.

Can you tell us a bit more about your experience working at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, LMB?

So the LMB was a really fascinating place. To work at. Of course, a place with tremendous background and history. It was a very free and unconstrained place to work at. In many ways, it wasn't easy because the minute you started working there, even if you were just, you know, the lowly graduate student from day one, you were treated with great independence and actually quite a lot of respect. And no special account or measures were offered to you, just because you just started and you did not have a former career or former experience to rely on. On the one hand, this was a great introduction to how to do research and how to defend one's position and drive research of one's own accord. On the other hand, if you can imagine, as a sort of freshman graduate student, it's actually pretty tough because you are sort of on your own. But it was a truly interesting and supportive, in many ways, environment where one can sit at lunch with any number of Nobel Prize winners and discuss all sorts of topics. I remember very clearly, ranging from, you know, the latest paper published in Nature or some other journal, through to, at some point I remember discussing Pulp Fiction with one of the Nobel Prize winners, because it just happened to have come out and everyone was talking about it and critiquing the film. So, it was a truly dynamic, vibrant environment. As I say, the support was offered very much on the intellectual level, but you were also very much on your own, and you had a sense of responsibility for your own research and your own actions. Something that actually, from perspective of time, I have come to value enormously, because it makes you grow very quickly and take responsibility, as I say, for your research.

When did you first learn of the Human Genome Project? What were your initial thoughts?

You know, of course, I sort of deliberately told you that I didn't think much about human as a model, not least because I myself find it quite endearing to think about opinions I used to have as a very young woman. I think we all tend to think about things very much in black and white when we're very young, and clearly my thoughts about how valuable the human was as a model were a little ill-informed at the time, but fortunately things have moved on. Now, doing my research in the LMB was actually coincidentally, considering what we're discussing, a particularly fortunate place to be, because we were, of course, just down the road from what was then called the Sanger Center, where the beginnings of genome sequencing were really taking off and taking shape. So, a fellow C. elegans researcher at the time was John Sulston, who was there heavily engaged in the sequencing of the genome of the worm. And in fact, I remember as a researcher on C. elegans looking up on the database whether my particular favorite part of the genome had been sequenced already or not, and, you know, waiting anxiously to see exactly what was there around. So, I was aware of the importance of genome sequencing, not just in the human, but of course, in model organisms quite early on. And there wasn't any particular moment when it sort of came into my sphere of existence, if you like. Everyone talked about it, and we talked about it on a daily basis. We used to have worm meetings with the researchers in the Sanger Center at the time and the LMB. There was, you know, enough of us for those regular meetings. So, it was very much part and parcel both the human genome sequencing effort, but also the C. elegans and then other model organisms.

Can you tell us some more about your experiences and interactions with John Sulston?

John Sulston was based predominantly in the Sanger Center, as it was at the time, so in Hinxton, so some distance away from where I was at the LMB, which is really much closer to Cambridge itself. But we did used to meet on a regular basis. I have very fond memories of John. Actually, John subsequently became the external examiner of my PhD thesis. So then, of course, I got to know him a bit better, albeit in somewhat stressful circumstances. So, I don't know if you realise, the defence of a thesis in the UK is a private affair, so you really have just your examiners in the room, and it can go on for quite some time depending on how satisfied, how quickly they become satisfied with your responses. But I do have very positive and very fond memories of my viva, of the examination of my thesis. It was a very interesting discussion. I know some graduate students feel very much put upon in these circumstances, and they really feel like they're being examined, whereas I very much had a feeling that it was a conversation of equals. So, the other examiner was Peter Lawrence, a fly geneticist. So, I really have a tremendous memory of this. And John, at that point, of course, you know, had been— had done a lot of work on the lineage mapping, and then subsequently involved in genome sequencing. So, his focus in research was very different from mine. I was studying sex determination, interested in understanding, really, as it turned out, a role that one gene played in the very early stage of this cascade that determines sex determination in C. elegans. So, it was a very different type of research. And perhaps because of that, I was particularly interested in what John was doing. He was really creating resources for the whole community to use in this very defined methodical way, different approach, but incredibly valuable, of course. So I have very, very fond memories of him, and he was indeed part of a larger sort of ecosystem. The lab I was in, the lab of Jonathan Hodgkin, was part of the cell biology division, so there were a number of prominent cell biologists there at the time. I learned an awful lot about vesicular transport inside a cell, because many labs worked on this, and we used to have regular meetings to talk about it. And then, of course, the greater LMB bringing people together, many structural biologists talking about that. I learned From discussing their own work with them, and from the presentations they were giving, I learned so much more than I did during the years of my undergraduate studies. This is really, you know, arguably the real learning starts when you sort of leave school, if you like.

Why did you decide to do your postdoc at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund?

You know, I've always made my decisions based on following the topics and the ideas that really interested me. So, you know, when I was talking about the Cambridge days, how I chose my PhD, it was really the topic itself, the fact, in this particular case, sex determination, how it was determined, and without going into too much detail, what really interested me was how the zygote effectively translated a digital quantitative signal into a qualitative one, which meant that it, you know, an embryo developed into a male or hermaphrodite, as is the case in C. elegans, but that's just the technicalities, so effectively a male or female. So, when I came to choose my postdoc, I knew very well that I wanted to switch model organisms. I wanted to look at more complex organisms, so I wanted to move into vertebrates. And— but I still wanted to continue with the genetic approach to addressing questions in biology. It just seemed the most elegant way of addressing questions, and so I was looking for a genetic model. And so, the two obvious choices within vertebrates were either mouse or zebrafish. And in the end, I decided to go to pursue questions in a lab that primarily used zebrafish, but also used mouse and chick. As it happened, I ended up using chick to address a couple of specific questions. But again, I was very much driven by my desire to carry on with the genetic approach to solving problems.

[Speaker:JOSHUA_ELKINGTON] Could you elaborate on what you mean by the genetic approach to solving problems?

It's interesting, because I never really thought about it. I've always talked about the genetic approach as being sort of my way of addressing problems, and I always thought it was a particularly elegant way. But I never really thought about it in opposition to, let's say, biochemistry, the way you just articulated this. But now that you ask me, I think the crucial difference is that you, by definition, you have to work in vivo. So, you're addressing your questions in essentially almost like a systems biology way by definition, right? So, you're using your genetic mutations, which you either— well, which you're introducing or you're using existing mutants, and you're looking at interactions of potential effects of gene or genetic elements in vivo in the context of the whole organism,, which then in itself is in a context of a specific environment. So, in many ways, it's a problem which— or it's an approach which gives you perhaps more complex answers, but at the same time, they're immediately applicable in vivo, in the context of a whole organism, as I say. And I think that's what really drove me. And it is so important, because if you think about it, so, of course, at some point, at some level, science is reductionist, of course. We're trying to confine a system and peel away variables and layers so we can drill down to understand the mechanism. But then if you try and then make sense of it, so rebuild it again, nothing makes sense in isolation. It has to be taken in a context. And so, as a geneticist, and as somebody who is, of course, I suppose also in some way a genomicist, I can't imagine thinking about a role of a variant or a role of a gene without taking the context of the genome and then the whole organism, which in some way is an environment for the genome itself, and then the broader environment into consideration.

After your postdoc, what motivated you to go in a more editorial direction in your career?

It was a very interesting time for me. I was coming to the end of my postdoc. And I remember very clearly thinking at that point, okay, so, so what next? I was— continued to be fascinated by research and by science, and I knew very, very clearly that I could not really imagine wanting to get out of bed in the morning to a world in which there wasn't science around me. At the same time, I realized that in order to carry on in research, I had to specialize. I really had to specialize to the exclusion of other things in order to establish my own field of expertise or deepen it further, so that I may establish my own research group at some point. And I came to realize that it was an incredibly difficult decision for me to make, to I always thought, I always said actually, that science was a rather jealous profession, that whatever you studied you really had to focus to the exclusion of other things, and I really was not prepared to do that. So, I began to think whether there was another opportunity for me to stay immersed in science, to stay as part of and member of the scientific community, but not as an active investigator drilling into a specific set of topics. And as I began to think about it, quite honestly, by coincidence, I was actually looking through a copy of Nature, and I was looking at the back of Nature in the classified column, and there was an advertisement for a role of associate editor on the newly launched Nature Reviews Genetics journal, which is a review journal And I thought, this is very interesting, this, you know, this could be something for me. And I really, I had previously never thought of being an editor. I thought, well, I'll give it a go. And what happened, and it actually still happens on the reviews series journals, is when they're interested in a candidate, they actually send a series of tests for the candidates to perform at home. On the basis of which then they triage and invite a subset of candidates for further interview. And the tests essentially consist of the types of things that you might do if you were hired into the role. So you are given an anonymised review manuscript which you have to edit in the sense that it's referred to as developmental editing. So essentially to make the story better, to make the story flow better, disambiguate certain things, and so on, and return those comments as if you were writing a letter to the author of that review suggesting how that review may be modified and improved. Another part of the test is writing a short research highlight about a published paper of your choosing. Where you have to motivate why you chose that paper over, you know, dozens and dozens of others that were recently published, but writing that short piece, approximately 600 words, to explain what the paper is about and why it's important. And finally, effectively producing a table of contents of an issue of the journal, so suggesting what types of reviews ought to be commissioned and by whom, and why. And so I found it absolutely fascinating to perform this task. So I returned my test results, and I was subsequently invited for an interview. But I was so excited by the fact that I so enjoyed doing this task that I think I won them over in the interview by my sheer enthusiasm. And again, the rest is history. I ended up being hired into the role, and And that was in 2001, and I've essentially been an editor ever since.

Can you talk a bit about the legacy of the HGP, and specifically the importance of data sharing?

So, I talk about the Human Genome Project a lot to actually quite diverse communities of researchers, and beyond, to be fair. And when I talk about it, I actually tend to think— tend to focus on two things. One, perhaps rather obviously, is the role in which the Human Genome— the role that Human Genome played in data sharing and surfacing its importance. In fact, I talked about it earlier today, I talked about it yesterday, and I can imagine I will talk about it probably by the time this week comes to the end. There are still today a number of scientific communities who will claim that data sharing is impossible or too difficult, and it's at times like these that the Human Genome Project comes in handy as a fantastic example where the desire to share the data came from within the community itself. It wasn't imposed by any external body, by a funding body, or by a journal, or anything like this. The researchers themselves realized the value of making the data available immediately. I think this is a hugely important and influential example, which I sort of fear that from perspective of time, we may be forgetting about. Maybe we should be reminding ourselves of this more importantly, of its importance more often. So, that's one very important aspect, very important role that the Human Genome Project had. The data sharing itself and how the community orchestrated this data sharing, and how the community self-organized the rules so that the data generators were protected from potential scooping. Of course, that's one of the issues that many other communities surface as an obstacle on the road to data sharing. It's very satisfying to be able to point to an example where actually a whole community came up with a solution to overcome that problem. The other important aspects of the Human Genome Project, which I always mention, is It's really, within the life sciences, it's, in my view, it's really changed the way we do science. It was the collaborative project par excellence, of course. The part and parcel of what I'm talking about is indeed data sharing, but by definition, the whole endeavor had to be distributed. So many different researchers had to come together because it was such an enormous task. Today, sequencing a genome is trivial by comparison. Of course, at the time, you know, as the— if I can use the analogy, you know, as this vehicle of human genome sequence was being driven down the road, the road itself was being laid before it, right, because the technologies and methodologies both to sequence and to analyze, importantly, were being developed at the same time. And that, of course, is in itself an important part of the legacy of the project. But that way for collaboration, for community to work together, the Human Genome Project, I think, really was the beginning of the end of an era where you had papers published by one or two authors only, and increasingly we began to see see these very collaborative, international, diverse efforts, which we so increasingly see in life sciences today. I think that's a hugely important legacy, which is again, not talked about enough, I think, today.

From your perspective, what is the historical significance of the Bermuda Principles?

So, important part of my answer has to be a statement that, of course, I wasn't part of these discussions at the time, so my perception of it comes from perspective of time, and also as a sort of, you know, side observer, if you like. I wasn't an active participant of the community at that time. I do see it as an important change. It's a sort of a milestone, because while the data sharing was, of course, taking place before, this was really a way to deal with the fears in the community, certainly from some parts of the community, a way to deal with those fears for how you can at once share the data and protect the data generators and have a rule that the whole community will live by. And of course, there were subsequent iterations on that rule, but then the Bermuda Agreement was really instrumental. So, I do see it as a particular milestone in time with important historic significance.

How should we view the role of technology development in the context of large scientific projects like the HGP?

So, most emphatically, technology development was a hugely important aspect of the Genome Project. And in fact, it has continued to be a hugely important aspect of all genomic science projects ever since. If you think about all the other projects that have come since then, each iteration, each version or each stage of the project is associated with new set of technologies being developed, benchmarking these technologies, developing commonalities in approaches to analyses. And of course, the really important benefit from that is not only that now we have for that given point in time, state-of-the-art technology. But we also have agreed principles for analysis, of generating data, but also data analysis, so that we can merge these data, collect, collate them into meta-analysis, which of course is hugely important.

As an editor, how do you balance between investigator-initiated scientific inquiry and so-called big science?

So, you know, if I can make a comparison between research science as viewed through the prism of publication outcomes and an ecosystem, I would say that every ecosystem, or any ecosystem, is only healthy if it's diverse. So, I would say It would be probably, almost certainly, a loss to progression of science if every single paper we published was done by a large consortium. It certainly determines— it's a type of science, it's a type of question that can be addressed, it's a type of resource that can be provided using that approach. I think it will be a sad day when I would sit here and say there is no room for individual investigator-led science. Most emphatically, I would not say that today. It is still true to say that it's extremely rare today to see single-author papers or papers with just two authors. It's not uncommon. These days, I would argue it's actually more common in the physical sciences than it is in life sciences, but nevertheless, there are some incredibly elegant papers that come up with fascinating results or hypotheses that come out of individual labs, rather small group of investigators focusing on a specific problem, maybe even arriving at this hypothesis as a result of large datasets that were generated by those other groups, working in the context of a large consortium. So again, as in every healthy ecosystem, these parts sort of interdigitate and work together.

How do you understand the respective roles of hypothesis-driven research versus hypothesis-free research?

So again, I would say that they really complement one another. I think the hypothesis-free exploratory type of science has its own advantages. By definition, it doesn't presuppose anything. We're simply going out there and surveying and exploring. And I guess I never thought of it in this way, but the way you asked the question, you could almost compare genome sequencing to sort of geographic discovery, right? You're going out there Right, exactly. You're going out there into uncharted territory and you're mapping it, right, whether you're mapping it through sequencing or some other way. But that should always be seen as complementary to this other approach that you just described as hypothesis-driven, because, of course, that's a very powerful and historically— well, approach which has a great history also. A very powerful approach of probing the world around us to understand how it works, or not, as the case may be. So, I see them very much as complementary, and the balance between them, I anticipate, really depends on the discipline that you're talking about. So, some disciplines in science are predominantly exploratory, others are much more hypothesis-driven.

What are your thoughts on the common criticism of genomics as being too much of a descriptive science?

So it's interesting when you— so I'm familiar with the, I guess it's a criticism that some would levy at genomics. This, the expression itself, saying genomics is merely descriptive, the way you say it already that implies that in some way it's not as interesting or not as sophisticated or in some way unsatisfying. And that, I think, is an incorrect way of approaching it. The fact that something is descriptive does not mean— shouldn't carry a value associated with it, right? It is a different approach. It's an approach which is complementary to hypothesis-driven. So, so I would push back against this. In fact, the construct even merely descriptive, because that tends to undervalue it. I think there's tremendous value in description of systems around us.

In retrospect, what are your thoughts on the different approaches to the HGP taken by Celera and the public project?

This is an interesting question, one which I can only answer in a sort of secondary way, because to be honest, at the time as this particular, these events were playing out, I was not very close to them. So my knowledge and awareness of them is based on sort of retrospection and reading of accounts of what happened and talking to individuals involved. And to some extent, history from Nature, because of course Nature as a journal got involved at some point and had to make a decision as to which output to consider and which not to consider. And that in itself is an interesting thing for me to think about as editor-in-chief of the journal now. As you well know, there are so many different comments, appraisals, and evaluations of what happened, how it played out exactly, and what the role of Celera's approach played on the public effort to sequence the human genome and its progress. I guess the most important thing that I would say, the way I tend to think about it now from perspective of time, is that competition is always healthy. So, others have said it already, and I tend to side with this argument, that I think as frustrating as it was at the time, and to some of the actors in this particular story, it was especially frustrating and painful. And as frustrating as it was at the time, from perspective of time, time, that push and that additional competition, I think, precipitated some of the results coming earlier, the publications coming earlier, and the public effort community organizing itself, perhaps with added vigor in the face of that competition.

Do you think the competition had any influence on ideas and policies around data sharing?

So, there were, of course, individuals who were very actively engaged in the public effort, who felt extremely strongly about the importance of open data and sharing data from the Human Genome Project, because of the very nature, because we were sequencing the human genome, it was so important that it was for everyone's benefit, for the common good, and therefore it had to be open. And I think that feeling was there independently of Celera's efforts. But I wouldn't be surprised, and I would be quite happy to suggest, that zeal was even further fueled by the opposition of what Celera was doing. I can see that completely, that would actually fit into quite a human aspect that I can imagine. So possibly there was that. Synergy. I don't think it was the only element, but quite possibly it added to the incentive.

Since the completion of the HGP in 2003, what developments in genomics have surprised you?

It's interesting, interesting question. I suppose two things that spring to mind that I remember thinking at the time. So, of course, the attention of the general public and the general media was very much on the promise in the clinic. That was something that was there right from the outset. And interestingly, the way the messages were being communicated, necessarily for the general public, they were somewhat simplified. But I think we, and certainly the research community, I think we probably underestimated the complexity of the genome and its interactions within itself, but also with the environment. We knew it would be complex, but just quite— exactly quite complex it would be to associate and map the genome function to then the phenotypic outcomes, most notably in the context of disease. I think it it's a tougher problem to crack than we anticipated in 2003. Am I surprised by it? In retrospect, probably not. But that's certainly different from what I imagined. That's one aspect. And the other aspect is to do very much with the biology of the genome. So, it was obvious that, you know, the finishing of the human genome was mainly in name only. That there was plenty of the human genome that was left unfinished and really quite uncharted. But there was simply no technology to tackle some of the most sort of tantalizing heterochromatic regions of the genome. And so, of course, we know today, and we actually, we had to wait quite some time for those technologies to come along, and I think That was probably another surprise, exactly how long it took for us to be able to begin to tackle, because of course, I cannot possibly sit here and say that we have understood that part of the genome. We do not. In fact, broadly speaking, we have such a long way to go. But it took quite a long time to get even the first technologies to crack that.

Can you tell us a bit about the many editorial positions you have held? What challenges have you faced?

Yes. So, I've held a number of editorial positions. Some of them were sort of manuscript handling, so as I mentioned, I started as a reviews editor on the reviews journal, and then subsequently moved to Nature itself to handle manuscripts in genetics and genomics, and that's really when I was closest to this community. Of course, I was part of that community as an editor on Nature Reviews Genetics, but I was most embedded in the community when I was at Nature handling manuscripts for that community. I then actually was curious about other research communities, so I deliberately stepped out of that role to actually become an executive editor for a number of different journals, including those in physical sciences, I was quite curious to see what other issues— what kinds of issues other fields in science were facing, what other problems they were tackling, to what extent they were similar or different from those within genomics or life sciences. And that was in itself quite informative, and in many ways, actually instrumental I would argue, for me taking on this role. But in the interim, I was also, as you said, editor-in-chief of Nature Communications. Nature Communications is an interesting journal for a number of reasons. It's of course a multidisciplinary journal, it's an open access journal, but it's also a journal that, as I said, multidisciplinary, publishes a rather large volume of selected papers. And there, the real challenge on that journal was actually to work with professional editors who select and curate those manuscripts. And within the editorial policies of one journal serve all these different communities, and that of course is indeed a challenge on Nature itself. So now, as editor-in-chief of Nature, I continue to consider and grapple that particular challenge, because of course, possibly the most important challenge for an editor is to serve her communities well. And we have this great diversity of communities. Increasingly, we are interested in publishing research beyond natural sciences, which— which has been traditionally the forte of Nature— moving towards translational and applied research, but also social sciences. Those research communities have a number of core common issues and needs, but of course each community has its own specific needs, and as I say, we as editors need to think how best to address them. The added challenge of being an editor-in-chief of Nature is of course that Nature is not is not just the research that it publishes, but it also is the magazine part, which is by and large produced by our science journalists, but also contributed to by researchers in the form of opinion and correspondence and so on. And that's an interesting challenge for one person to combine, of how to serve the collected research community through publishing primary research, but through also publishing news coverage and commentary of anything that is pertinent to a working scientist, so ranging from politics through ethics to policy. And these are really interesting challenges to be juggling and thinking about all the time. Fortunately, I work with some absolutely excellent and professional and dedicated colleagues. So, all of that makes for a really stimulating environment to be working in. And of course, the internal discussions complemented with the discussions with the community is what really makes it.

Can you walk us through your editorial process for a scientific topic which may be controversial?

It's of course a tough problem, it's a delicate problem. Fortunately, the solution to this problem involves a number of different individuals, and I work with all of them. So, when you consider the research in the first place as an editor, you of course first and foremost consider what the authors have written and how they have conveyed the message. And whether they need any help in contextualizing their findings in an appropriate way. The next step, of course, is appropriately reviewing a manuscript with appropriately qualified reviewers who can again help shape and push or pull the editors— the authors, I beg your pardon— in the right direction, so that the message is articulated appropriately is couched with appropriate caveats and presented in appropriate context. When then the paper is ready to be published, this is when, I guess, Nature, with its many formats, can come into its own. Our scientific journalists are very well trained to deal with the nuances of these topics. They are themselves former scientists, who have become journalists, many of them. They will talk to appropriate researchers, appropriate stakeholders, perhaps ethicists depending on the topic that is involved, to provide a truly balanced coverage of a topic in a given context. And then finally, and very importantly, we have press officers who will carefully craft a press release to appropriately inform journalists outside of Nature who may then wish to write about the paper. We can also provide advice to the authors on how to deal with media enquiries, of course depending on the paper and the nature of the research. So as you can see, a number of professions bring— come together to bring their expertise to ensure that we are able to communicate the research, showcase its importance and implications, but in an appropriate context, in a sensitive manner, and responsibly.

In your role as the editor-in-chief of Nature, what are some of your goals for the journal going forward?

So in terms of my own sort of forward vision, or my desires for the journal, from the perspective of my role, I would say a number of things spring to mind at this point, and I have been in the role for 6 months. The first one is continuing the efforts actually that my predecessor started to help researchers communicate their research in a transparent way. And of course, transparency is important because it feeds directly into reproducibility of science. So Nature has started on this journey already some time ago. I think it's incredibly important, especially today, that the research that researchers publish and perform is done robustly in a reproducible way. It's important for the sake of research, for the sake of researchers, but also for the sake of general perception of research in, in the broader community. So that's a very important strand of activities that I will continue to foster on the journal. I mentioned transparency. One of the things— so we have certainly increasingly been expecting that researchers are transparent about the way in which their research is done. To me, it therefore stands to reason that if we demand transparency of our authors, then we should reciprocate with transparency of our own processes. So that's something I feel strongly about, that we should increasingly be more and more transparent about our own editorial process, about our decision-making. I should say we've never been particularly secretive about it, it's just that we haven't particularly talked about it either. I think it's important that we surface it, that we explain how the process takes place and what are the factors that we consider. And we also surface, for example, aspects of peer review of manuscripts. And this, of course, will be an ongoing process. Another really important aspect is thinking about our contributors, contributors to the journal. And what I mean by this is, I am very interested in surfacing the effort of early career researchers in the research that they do, the contribution that they make to that research. Commonly when we talk about published manuscripts, we almost exclusively talk about the senior researcher whose lab the work was done in, but of course most of the work was in actuality done by those early career researchers. I think it's interesting for us as a prominent journal to think about how we can help surface those contributions and give the credit where it's due. To bring this back to the context of genomics and genomic science, there is of course a great example which goes back to data. As sort of lifeblood of genomics, and indeed science more broadly, being able to surface the contribution of data generators and give them the credit, those are the people, often they're early career researchers, not always, but often, they're often the people who are somewhere in the middle of the author list, so they don't get the credit for being a first author, nor for getting the credit of the last author. And so, that's just an example. If we are able to surface that type of contribution beyond what we already do, then we'll be helping to surface contribution of early career researchers. And of course, another aspect of this is thinking more actively about diversity amongst our contributors. We have begun already to think about how we can be more inclusive of the different players within the scientific community, be it through inviting them to peer review papers. Again, diversity here can be sliced in many different ways. Early career researchers to review reviews, of course, more diversity in terms of gender or ethnic diversity is also an important aspect. Another very clear way in which we can make a difference is in inviting authors to contribute to the journal through commissioned content, but also in our coverage, especially in the magazine part of the journal. The news stories that we write and the opinions we write, where do we focus our attention? Do we focus it primarily, for example, in North America and Europe, or do we actually begin to look more broadly at the whole world. And there is a— you asked in your question about how this can be brought back to genomics. There's a very interesting parallel in genomics. Of course, to begin with, and as I'm sure you know, the majority of human genomic output to date has focused on primarily Caucasian populations with European ancestry.— and it's only now that we're beginning to realize— well, I guess we've realized that a long time ago, but we're only now beginning to actually put our money where our mouth is, if you like, to actually analyze those other populations, working with local researchers to empower those research centers where they are, where the data and the information and samples, indeed, come from, so we have a truly global understanding. Of the role of genetics and indeed our genomes, wherever they come from.