 Hello and welcome to the National Human Genome Research Institute's seventh and final event in our genomics and the media series. I'm Sarah Bates. I'm the communications chief for NHGRI. I'm excited to give a short introduction this morning for today's event and introduce our distinguished moderator and then I will introduce our distinguished guest. Today's topic is Reflections on Modern Scientific Publishing. The definition of scientific results in scholarly journals has long been a pillar of the scientific enterprise. There's been a system by which the community has worked to ensure accurate science is being shared by a peer and editorial review. That system has had to adapt first to the internet and then to the COVID pandemic with many events in between, including the movement for increased access to and sharing of scientific data. In fact, the field of genomics has been at the forefront of open science conversations. The first human genome sequence was published in open access format in 2001, then the mouse genome in 2002, and the chimp in 2005 and hatbap in 2004. This is one reason why we have invited the editor-in-chief of Nature magazine to join us here for our final session in the genomics media seminar series today. How does scientific publishing fit within the current science communications landscape? How do journals keep up with the current flood of information, especially as the popularity of pre-prints, manuscripts posted publicly prior to formal peer review, for those of you who don't know, continues to rise? Please start now to submit your questions in the Q&A box if you're joining us here on Zoom. For our special guest today, Dr. Magdalena Skipper, we have her here for the next hour to answer your questions about how she approaches for work. This event, as I said, is the finale in our series that has featured trailblazers in science communications, talking about their craft with someone here at NHGRI. Our goal with this series was to talk about the different ways of communicating about the fast-paced field of genomics, to give you a behind-the-scenes stories about breaking news. Looking back at our events, I can say that we truly have explored such a vast range of communications approaches with our guests, and I want to thank each of them again and thank you for all of your questions and your wonderful engagement during the series. You can find details and recordings of each event posted at genome.gov slash GAM. Now it's my pleasure to introduce NHGRI Director Eric Green, he's the moderator for today's event. Dr. Green has led NHGRI since 2009 and has held many leadership positions at the Institute prior to that. He has played an integral role in the human genome project as well as many other scientific endeavors. He's a big fan of both baseball and baseball movies, if you didn't already know. He will relay your questions submitted today to our guest, Magdalena. Dr. Magdalena Skipper is a geneticist by training and has considerable editorial and publishing experience, having started in Nature Publishing Group in 2001. She was the editor, I'm sorry, the chief editor of Nature Reviews Genetics, senior editor for genetics and genomics at Nature, and more recently executive editor for the Nature Partner Journals before joining Nature, so many editors in there. She was editor-in-chief for Nature Communications, oh, Magdalena, you really love editor-in-chief titles. She is passionate about mentorship, transparent science, and clarity in science communication. Eric, I know you and Magdalena have known each other for a long time. Do you want to start by telling us how you've worked together to communicate about genomics? Sure, happy to do that and to also add my own welcome to Magdalena for joining us today. I can't think of a more fitting person to feature in the last of what I think has been a very successful and engaging series than to pick a great friend of the field of genomics, a great friend of NHGRIs, and actually a very close personal friend of mine, I regard Magdalena as one of the great scientific colleagues that I have for more decades than either one of us want to admit have interacted with and have always enjoyed interacting with. I would love to say that Sarah and her team had choreographed this perfectly that we wanted Magdalena to be the last one. I just think it worked out scheduling-wise because it turns out Magdalena is a very busy person and it just worked out that we couldn't get her scheduled today. But let's just pretend that our choreography was totally by design and she's joining us today because we wanted her to be the last. But welcome, Magdalena, and thank you for joining us. I want to let people know, as I was thinking about this, I am quite sure I could sit and chat with Magdalena for at least two to three hours, but we only have an hour for this. So I'm going to have to hold myself back and I don't want to be the only one asking questions. I want to make sure some people who are listening in have a chance to get their questions answered. So I'm just going to foreshadow what we're going to do. We're going to have like four sections. I'm going to try to just work with Magdalena to sort of cover. I want to hear about her journey and her professional career. A second thing is I want to hear about her engagement and relationship and a special place in her heart with genomics because I think you're going to hear her. That's where I got to know her personally. I think we have to touch base on the fact of the historic appointment of Magdalena as the editor-in-chief of Nature for reasons we'll get to if you already know them. And then I think we should end talking about the broader ecosystem of scientific publishing because it's such a complicated ecosystem, one that Magdalena is such an important part of and there's so much happening in that space even at the present time. So we have to touch base on that. So we're going to try to get through those four areas. I don't know how we're going to do it because there's so much ground to cover, but we will try to keep moving things along. So Magdalena, start off just give a brief general explanation of your life, your professional journey. Where were you born? How did you come up academically? I know that from the moment you were born, everybody didn't think you were going to be the editor-in-chief of Nature. So there must be some twists and turns along the way. Tell us about those. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. And first of all, before I start answering your question directly, let me thank you for this opportunity to be part of this series, to be part of this conversation with you. It means really truly an awful lot to me. It's a real privilege, a real honor. I feel the genetics and genomics have been such an important part of my journey through life, especially my professional life, that talking to you here today is really very significant. And one of the beautiful things about it, I think, and significant things is, of course, that when I first started as a geneticist, not really a genome scientist, but when I started as a geneticist, genomics was really quite in the very early stages of its existence. But when I started, I never could have anticipated that actually at this point in time, genomics would be all-pervasive across life sciences, across biomedicine and, of course, medicine itself. And that really is quite beautiful and very fitting to my current role. So let me get back to your question. So I was born in Poland in Warsaw, and I definitely did not plan to be editor-in-chief of Nature. In fact, at some point, I wanted to be a firefighter. I felt that was going to be a very useful profession. And very quickly, I think I realized that I probably would not be very successful in that particular profession. And then I discovered my real love for biology. And then specifically within biology, and this was when I was in high school, genetics, the science of inheritance really got my attention. This put very simply something that this audience, of course, understands really well. Why is it that we resemble our relatives? Why is it that we have so many common features with our families and why we differ from others, et cetera, et cetera? I just found that really fascinating. The most interesting part of biology, as I was discovering it at school. And then, so subsequently, I decided to move to the UK, where I live now, to study genetics. So in the UK, you're actually able to focus right from the very beginning as an undergraduate on quite a narrow topic. And so my first degree is in genetics. And then I did my PhD in very classical genetic setting, C. elegans developmental genetics, sex determination in particular. You can't think of a more classic genetics model, really. And what's interesting that I was doing my PhD in C. elegans sex determination at the time when the genome, C. elegans genome was being sequenced. So I was a graduate student in Cambridge in the LNB. And of course, right down the road, very close just outside of Cambridge was what was then called Sanger Center, now Sanger Institute, which of course made such important contributions to the human genome sequencing, but of course, many other genomes. And at the time when I was in Cambridge, C. elegans genome was being sequenced. And John Selston was really instrumental in driving that particular genome, of course, made really important contributions to the human genome as well. And John ended up being external examiner of my PhD thesis, in fact. So they were a gradual transition from genetics to genomics. And here we are today. But you finished your PhD, where was the fork of the road where you moved away from academic science and found your world of scientific publishing? So that was actually at the at the next stage, if you like. So when I finished my PhD, I very much wanted to continue in academic research and also continue my genetics approach. So of course, genetics very clearly is science of inheritance, understanding how inheritance plays out. But it's also a way of approaching problems, a way of thinking of addressing questions. And so to me, the genetics approach, genetics as a tool was a really important way of addressing problems. So I did a postdoc in what was then Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Today it's called Cancer Research UK. My research did not directly focus on cancer itself, but again, it was developmental genetics now focusing mainly on zebrafish, but also a little bit of mouse and some some chick experiments as well. And it was after it was during my PhD, my postdoc, but I began to think about what else how else I could contribute to research. And if I can say that the single most important factor that led me to leave the bench, if you like, and move to science publishing was the fact that I was just interested in too many things. And of course, as we know, especially in the early stages of research career, one really has to focus and perhaps I'm revealing a little too much if I say that patience is not my virtue. So I was not I was not prepared to wait until I was established to to then broaden out my interests. I have to say, though, that I'm leaving the lab and becoming an editor. And you heard from from Sarah in the introduction, being an editor features very prominently in my career. So making that move from a postdoc from the bench to being an editor was really a great move for me, I feel very satisfying. What I find interesting about hearing you explain this now is that even when you went to scientific publisher first, a lot of times you were ricocheting around genomics. We're going to get to that in a minute. But but you but then when you became editor in chief of nature, I mean, that that's like the ultimate smorgasbord, right? Because every day you're seeing the full breadth, not just of biological sciences, but all sciences. So in some ways, you really got your ultimate really matched your personality trait in terms of really loving this, the ability to just have complete flexibility across the full spectrum of science. That's right. It's interesting. I had not thought of it in those terms. I definitely thought that starting my scientific life, if you like, as a geneticist and then really embracing genomics more as an editor and stood me in very good ground for, as I was saying earlier, how genomics has really infiltrated pretty much a whole of life sciences, biomedicine and then medicine. And then, of course, we know that DNA itself is also being used in material scientists and computational scientists and so on. So I certainly thought about it in those terms, but I like the way you fitting it all together as if it all had been a master plan, which, of course, doesn't exist for any of us. Absolutely. So you are an amazingly accomplished and extremely busy person, because I just know any time you and I need to interact or coordinate, it always takes a long time for our schedules to jive. But you also have outside interests and I know that you are you are not just a science nerd like me. You have a lot of other interests as well. I also think you have some artistic skills and interest. Maybe tell us a little bit about that side of your life. I think we may have a photo that we're going to show people. Sure. Well, well, thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. And I should say, however, Eric, that knowing you well, I don't think you just the science nerd having been to your office. I have seen some wonderful photography. So I think you have a few parallel interests as well. So indeed, I make ceramics when I am not thinking about science per se. And incidentally, I should say that making ceramics for somebody who has science training is a little bit frustrating. Glazing, putting colours on ceramics is a little bit like broken chemistry. So it's a chemistry for the non-scientists. So if you have a scientific background, it's a little frustrating. But so thank you for this opportunity. I feel a little bit embarrassed to be honest, to have my my work so prominently displayed here. It's a wonderful hobby. It's a hobby I fell into, which is why I called myself an accidental potter in the context of my pottery and my ceramics. I never thought I had any artistic ability to be honest with you. And I really enjoy that interaction between, you know, a potter and a potter's wheel. So almost everything I make is thrown on a potter's wheel. It's an incredible way to relax. It's an incredible way to be transported into some other world. And of course, it is so, so different from what I do on a daily basis. One final thing I would say, and it's something that really came into its own during the during the pandemic and the various restrictions that we've all experienced. So I make my ceramics in a shared studio with some other potters. And of course, at the very height of the pandemic, we were all locked down. Nobody was going to the studio, but then gradually we were we were coming back and the studio was open while essentially nothing else was open. So I ended up spending a bit more time doing ceramics with my fellow potters, none of whom has a science background. And so in that context, I was actually able to help them understand what COVID-19 was like, what SARS-CoV-2 was, why it was such an amazing feat that that we had vaccines that were developed in such a short space of time, et cetera, et cetera. It was an interesting, really interesting experience, fitting actually to the topic that we have today about these community, communicating science in in a very ordinary, everyday setting. Yeah, no, I think that's a I think all of us experience that have continued to the pandemic really you've got drawn in, whether it's your neighbor, whether it's somebody at the grocery store, whether it's just amazing how much we've had to explain and help understand and to keep people calm. So so let's shift gears now. And I want to talk about your entree into genomics because in some ways you caught up, right? I mean, you were you were you were a graduate student down the street from John Salston, he was on your committee. Genomics was hot. They were doing lots of stuff. And but somehow you ended up going from being a genomic geneticist in training to all of a sudden having very prominent editor responsibilities for some very important genomics initiatives. So what was your entree and what was your first sort of significant interactions with the genomics community, which by about the time you and I got to be friends? Yes. And, you know, so that that really started with my role as an editor at Nature Reviews Genetics. So I joined that journal as an associate editor just six months into the life of the journal. So it was a very new publication. What year was that? What year was that? So that was 2001. 2001. It was the spring of 2001. And, you know, at that time, it already began to be essentially impossible to talk about genetics without weaving genomics into it. Of course, not to the extent that we do today. And in fact, you know, some would argue that the very notion of a genetic model organism is a little upmoded because of course, genomics has opened up the way for other organisms to become models in a way that certainly when I was doing my studies and then became an editor, what was not really possible, the tools were not that for it. So it was really that transition. I think the first transition was at Nature Reviews Genetics. And and there as an editor, so I was associate editor to begin with. And then for many years, chief editor of the journal. And the way that the Nature Reviews Genetics and also other titles in that series work is that the editors themselves really drive the content. So they go out and commission researchers to write reviews, often actually bringing different researchers together to really co-create in some way, you know, cutting edge and novel reviews. And that was really the very first stage when I got to know the key genomics players at that time. And then seven years later in 2008, I actually joined Nature itself now to be an editor looking after primary manuscripts or original research. And that was really the time when, you know, my interaction with the genomics community in particular really blossomed because the field itself was booming. It was booming in terms of discovery and charting the sort of individual genome landscapes and then, of course, moving on to population genomics and evolutionary genomics and so on. But also in the context of disease, understanding, you know, later on in the context, for example, of cancer genomics, so doing somatic genomic sequencing and so on. It was really tremendous, tremendous time of of real discovery. It really was discovering new territories, new lands, charting these new landscapes. So it is if each genome was a landscape to be charted and described. And the thing about being a Nature genomics focus editor is, and I'll use my favorite analogies with baseball is, you know, you get a lot of really valuable singles and doubles and triples, you know, in terms of individual papers or pairs of papers. But every once in a while, you get packages of major papers or major initiatives. So remind the audience. And I know at least one of the answers is in the second phase of ENCODE. And maybe we could bring up that slide. What were some of the really big packages that you were responsible for? Because this is when the editor sort of consortium relationship gets to be a very big one and an extensive one. Well, absolutely. And I have to say, these are these are some of the the more exciting and really special memories that I have. Of course, every paper that's submitted, you know, I should also say, perhaps it's not so obvious to to those who are listening to our conversation. But as an editor, I talk about my papers, papers that I published in Nature very clearly, I am not an author, but it's that intense personal relationship with all the papers that I handle. But indeed, this community in particular has led the way in these large packages, you say, because, of course, when you begin to sequence genomes, when you begin to actually, in the case of ENCODE, go beyond genomes to other owns, there is so much data and so much analysis that you couldn't possibly give a justice in one paper. And in fact, it's almost like several installments that have to be published at the same time. So ENCODE 2 is special in many ways. And we can go into the details. And in fact, you're showing some of the details on this screen right now, I'm happy to comment on them. But of course, there were many others. There were packages associated with human genomics, in particular, population genomics. So there was the HABMAP papers, the 1000 genomes, papers, as I mentioned, already associated with cancer genome sequencing. There were really quite a few of them and they continue to come out of this community. But importantly, other communities have taken a leaf out of this book of genomics community. And so we're beginning to see and we have seen for quite a few years now other communities following in that pattern, realizing that there is strength in numbers there is real benefit to capitalizing on the ability to generate and analyze data collectively in a collaborative fashion. I think that's a really important direction in which research itself, but also scientific publishing has moved over the years. You know, the other thing that I think is really important for people to appreciate and especially I think even thinking about the ENCODE 2 package is that you don't you don't operate alone at nature. That and I think this is something also part of the genomics community that's a little unique is the word community. And maybe it's partially because the field is relatively small, the consortium, while they feel big, it's still a very small community of researchers. And but there's also a relatively small community of publishers. And then and when there's a big crescendo event, like a big package of papers around HapMap or around 1000 genomes or around ENCODE 2, there's a lot of choreography that goes on among the editors. And so, you know, there's a photo we can show now from 2010. It was just happened to be at one of the annual gatherings, a genomics gathering. We're a bunch of editors. It actually is I think the slide might be labeled nature editors, but it involves some nature editors and some non-nature editors. And as somebody who's involved as an editor of another journal, Genome Research and here in the photo is Hillary Susman, the second one from the right, who is our executive editor. But but say a few things about that part of the community, which in some ways are your good friends and in some ways are your competitors because they're also trying to get the same papers to call their own, just like you want to get the papers to call your own. I'm not sure people appreciate what goes on at this level. And this is just a nice photo that illustrates the friendliness of this group. Thank you very much for finding this photo, actually. It brings back really, really lovely memories. And, you know, you I mean, just just by looking at us in that picture, you can see what fantastic time we had. And exactly as you said, we were colleagues. And of course, I say it's in past tense because this particular group has moved on to, you know, various things. But editors from different publications, from across different publishers, are colleagues, they are competitors, but it's very similar to what happens to researchers in the research community. And I should say that this sort of competition and collaboration happens between and within editorial groups, but also across editors and researchers. It really is very much a community. Just focusing on the editors. I think it's incredibly important that editors from across publications work together, because if there's one thing that we as editors do is we support the research community and we can't support the research community if we don't work together. So, indeed, you know, many, in fact, almost everyone on this slide at the time of ENCODE 2, we were working together very closely and, you know, genome research, of course, is not published by spring and nature. At the time it was Macmillan publishers. Genome biology was not published by the same publisher at the same time. But in the interest of coordinating publication, in the interest of doing something beyond that, that to place in the case of ENCODE 2 so that we could publish and explore that landscape of data and analysis in the richest possible way, the editors from different publishers actually shared manuscripts in confidence before they were published. To the best of my knowledge, that was unprecedented, but it was absolutely 100% in the interest of the community. And that's something I really value in my colleagues as editors, but I also value the trust that the research community placed in us and actually places it in us as editors all the time. Every time you submit manuscripts to us, you allow us to peer review them and guide you towards publication ultimately. You know, you look at this picture, I mean, again, I want to emphasize, these are quote unquote competitors in some ways, but you could tell this is not a competitive situation. And I just want to put a pin in this because the fourth thing we're going to get to today is we're going to talk about the incredible challenges and complexity of the publishing ecosystem. And I can't stress enough from an NIH perspective when we're dealing with open science and we're dealing with data sharing and we're dealing with, you know, issues around irreproducibility and so forth, that it is so important for this level of collegiality to exist across the portfolio of scientific journals because we need them working as a group, working with us as funders and working with the scientific community to solve these problems. None of this is easy and is not going to be solved by any one person. So we'll put a pin in that and come back to it. But that's an important point. I do want to show one other humorous picture from that same meeting a little bit later in the evening. I predict or maybe it was earlier in the evening on that 2010 AGBT meeting to show comfort level of collegiality in the genomics community. You know, that includes the two of us at a younger age getting into the theme of a Star Wars party that evening. And to the extent that it's not something about the two of us that we're willing to be put those ears on and we're willing to be photographed and 12 years later, neither one of us is even cringing the showing the photo because it's like, what the heck? You know, lights too short. This is fun, but I'm comfortable doing this with my good friend and colleague. So I just wanted to close the disclosure. Point out that you are just just an easy down to earth fun loving person. And I like to think of myself as the same, which is why we had no problem being photographed. So thank you, but Eric, who doesn't want to have who doesn't want to be Princess Leia, of course. And I told that I'm not sure I totally understand that, but there's other people in Star Wars I might want to be, but whatever. Any case, so so that's that's your foray in genomics. You were an incredible contributor to genomics. But but then your your journey, I know, took you a couple other places professionally. But then suddenly this opportunity for a long standing editor in chief of nature, stepping down, left a vacancy. And before I know it, I remember getting word that you were going to be the editor in chief of nature. I think I know I heard before it got publicly announced. And I I know I had the same exact feeling of so many people in the genomics community. It's like, oh, my God, this is seismic. This is historic. This is so cool. This is so wonderful. And, you know, I think all of us reacted that way at so many different levels. I mean, first of all, it was it was it was our friend and colleague, it was a genomicist of all things, you know, somebody who would sort of walk the beat of genomics among other beats. But in fact, that it was a biologist, my understanding of the first biologist to be an editor in chief. The fact that it ended up being a genomicist or someone with a serious genomics and genetics background was wonderful. And of course, the other thing that that was wonderful was you were the first woman to have this this very historic, prominent journal. And, you know, we also knew what a terrific editor you were by being part of our community on the editorial side. And then here you were going to run the whole kit and caboodle at nature. And, you know, you just didn't have a community that was had bigger smiles in the Chungha community when this word got out. You know, tell us about this obviously trans life changing transformative appointment. And, you know, when you applied or when you were approaching, you think you were ever going to get it. You view this as a long shot and you just went along for the ride. And then when you found out you were getting it, did you just did you believe it or did you just sort of go with the flow? I don't just just try to imagine what that's like. Yes. Well, first of all, thank you. You know, you said some extremely kind things a minute ago. I really, really appreciate them. Of course, I didn't believe I was going to get the job. I never believe I am going to get the job that I apply for. But there was something in me that just feels, you know, I maybe have something to contribute. So I'm going to throw my hat into the ring. So definitely did not think I would get it. But I just had to do it. I felt there were some ideas that I that I had about where. Research itself needed to go how nature should be changing in its own way. So I wanted to offer that as a as a proposition to consider to those who are who are selecting the next candidate. And, you know, it's when I found out that that I was offered the role. I was, of course, elated. I was also incredibly daunted by it. Because, you know, the journal and I think in the piece, you just put up on this on the screen. At that time, nature was 149 years old. And indeed, I was the first woman in the role. I was I'm also only the eighth editor-in-chief of nature. So there's this incredible history that precedes me. And very clearly, since there are only seven editors before me, you tend to stick around in this role. So you end up building incredible as a portfolio of achievements and the stature of the editor who's was moving that role is really, really incredible. These are very, very big shoes to fill. So an intimidating proposition, certainly. But I was I was elated. I was excited and I'm still elated and excited. There is so much to do. So so, Dave, I mean, the one thing I know about nature, editor or you know, this other day, you know, you walk in, you got the you got the life sciences down fine. That must be comfortable at all. So you're dealing with feathers and bones and physics and climate. And I mean, was that like, oh, my gosh, how am I ever going to learn about all of this? How do I help make any sort of of tactical decisions in these areas? I mean, what is that like? So, you know, the reality of it is that, of course, I have a very large team of editors with whom I work, each of whom is an expert in a specific discipline. You have a little bit like before I was the genomics editor for nature with my background in genetics and gradually acquiring my expertise in genomics in my editorial life. I have a number of editors who have research experience in specific disciplines and the key to success in a multidisciplinary journal such as nature is, of course, collaboration, collegiality and trust of colleagues with whom one works. And so one of the incredible things about being an editor on a journal such as nature and in fact, leading nature itself is that every single day I learn something new. And, you know, today, while genomics and genetics as fields have a very special place in my heart, you know, I tend to think about it as sort of my first love. I, of course, interact with many other communities and it's exactly as you might imagine in the context of interdisciplinarity when you begin to collaborate with researchers from other disciplines, you discover incredible contributions that you can make as a result of your own experience and knowledge. But then conversely, you learn things that to them may be completely obvious and sort of a daily bread type of an occurrence or practice. So it's incredibly enriching and that's that's the real boon, I suppose, the real highlight of working at nature, a multidisciplinary journal. But I absolutely work together with colleagues from whom I learn a lot on a daily basis. I will be very honest and say that there are some disciplines in which I feel much less confident than others. But it is a journey and, you know, I continue, I continue to learn. I'm going to insert a question that came in from the audience. It just seems really relevant at this juncture. I get asked this question all the time and I always struggle giving an answer. And you may struggle. Similarly is, you know, what is a typical day like for an editor-in-chief in nature? You know, I think a lot of people look at jobs like an institute director or an editor-in-chief of a journal really have a hard time understanding what does a typical day look like when you start your day? I mean, the truth is no two days of the same. But I'm just curious, is there a rhythm? Is there sort of a standard set of things that you do? And what's the balance of time between meetings and emails and blah, blah, blah? Maybe you just sort of try to answer that. I know it's hard. It is hard. And you just said it. There is no such thing as a typical day, really. The only what I would say the only commonality is that my days tend to be quite long, obviously, but it's a mixture. It's a mixture of engaging with a wide diversity of research and the engagement can be through reading what's been published somewhere else, reading what is being submitted to us, what's being discussed, attending events, virtual or in person, being on panel discussions, listening or even indeed attending institutes or organizing specific visits. What's different in my role that I didn't engage in in previous editorial roles is that I am much more focused on the interface between science and policy. So in the recent years, I've become much more interested and engaged in learning how decisions, for example, at the UN level are made when supported by by research. That's a relatively new direction for me, but a very important one. And I think, of course, research itself has an important role to play there. But so does nature through what we publish and how we how we support policymakers and decision makers in serving research and science related information to them. And of course, I manage a very large group of colleagues. So there is a management aspect, which, you know, always getting together with colleagues now even more important than ever before. Because of course, we spend such a long time not seeing everyone, not getting together with anyone in real in real life. And then, of course, as with everyone, there are meetings which we all we all attend, some of which are very interesting, some of which are slightly less interesting. When I can't help but, you know, the challenges, of course, now pandemic related, I think now is a good time for me to ask this question, which I've really been meaning to ask you for a while, is how did nature and they're probably even struggling to the present time deal with the unprecedented circumstance of the most major public health crisis global crisis of your and my lifetime at a time where, you know, obviously, it's incredibly important to get scientific information about COVID. You could have made nature into a COVID journal and you probably felt like some days when you saw the submissions and then some days you probably had people opening certain issues of nature and felt like it was a COVID journal. How did you I mean, you had to lead that must have been a tremendous amount of decision making because there was probably two orders of magnitude more papers coming in that you could possibly publish and everything had to be rushed because it was most relevant if you could get it up. Did what was that like? And even now, how are you deciding how to turn the levers and balancing what you're publishing and so forth? Yes, so absolutely really, really important question and important crucial time to make decisions and making decisions was, of course, it was necessary to make decisions very quickly. So I need to answer your question on a couple of different levels just to give you a sense what the team went through. So, you know, first and foremost, just a reminder, of course, nature is a weekly publication, although we tend to publish online as well. But we actually we're printed publication weekly. And so in mid-March of 2020, literally from one day to the next, we discovered that we have to continue to publish nature from home. We had never done this before, right? We had our systems, of course, we were working from from our offices normally. And so the whole team, including production, had to pivot how to work from home. And there's a nobody had trialed that before. And it's a it's a real credit. I really have to give credit to to everybody on the team for pulling all the stops. We didn't miss the issue. It was published on time. It was incredible. And I would say for the first month, for the first four issues, we were, you know, running to stand still. And then it sort of became normal. And now it's just normal. That's what we do. We have done for the last over two years now. And then, indeed, the manuscript started flooding in and they were flooding in from the very beginning of 2020, of course, before we locked down. You know, just as a reminder, we published the genome, the paper describing the genome of the disease agent. At that point, nameless, of course, the disease was nameless. The disease agent was nameless. We published that in February. So just, you know, just under two months after the disease was really first talked about publicly. Incredible flood of papers. And then, of course, you have to balance the speeds and during a pandemic or any sort of public health emergency speed is of the essence, but so is rigor. So balancing the two was absolutely crucial and fundamental. And again, I have to, you know, give credit to my colleagues who, despite their own personal challenges, you know, schools were closing and family members, perhaps elderly family members, needed support, et cetera, et cetera. We didn't know at some point, you may recall, there were even concerns whether there would be food shortages. We just did not know we had never gone through anything like this. So it was it was incredible, the level of dedication of everyone in nature and, of course, other journals as well. And researches themselves was really astonishing and truly, truly. And you feel you're starting to get things more balanced. Are you sort of you think nature is getting back to the new normal with respect to figuring out how much COVID publications to actually have? Yes. Yes, I think so. I mean, of course, the so, you know, that your question is really a question of editorial strategy. Right. And for us, it was very clear that, you know, we are a multidisciplinary journal. We must publish across disciplines. I feel very strongly about this. But so does the team, actually. It was not a matter of explaining this to anyone, of course. We serve all the communities that we serve and we needed to support them. But very clearly at a time of a pandemic, when information, rapid, robust, reliable information is so crucial, we were publishing a very large number of papers, you know, in virology, in immunology, much more than we would have done otherwise and indeed in public health. It's changing, but it's changing for everyone. If you look at the output of publications in COVID, one thing that we did change very deliberately. So again, as a reminder, nature, there are two parts to nature, if you like, the original research that we publish, but then the magazine, the science journalism, the opinion content. So in the magazine part of nature, we did make a very deliberate decision to predominantly focus on COVID and the pandemic, especially at the beginning of the pandemic to put the research in context to quite frankly, prod the policymakers, prod the decision makers, the governments, compare how different parts of the world were dealing with the pandemic and call out governments, which were in denial of what was happening. And very clearly today, we know there was a real human cost to those decisions. So there in the magazine part, the journalistic part, we made a very conscious decision to publish much more focus on the pandemic. I can't help but point out that listening to describe what you to go through reminds me how these jobs that you and I and many other scientific leaders have, there are so many elements of it that we have no formal training or anything you find yourself at the helm of something. And you feel like how did it all the best training we got just to have common sense. But we would have never had any true apprenticeship like training for the circumstance we find ourselves in. And certainly it's not like a pandemic, but you see people rise to the occasion and successful leaders are very nimble and can adapt to other decisions. And as you will always point out, as I would always point out, you have a great team under you and everybody's got good heads on their shoulders and you work together, you figure it out. Before we transition to the last general topic related to the scientific ecosystem, I want to pick up on a thread you said earlier and just show a few pictures because your life has changed and you have been it's an exciting aspect of being at an editor chief level of a journal like nature. And if we could be ready on some photos, I know that, you know, some of that includes collecting some honors. I think you got an honorary degree from a university, but was that just shortly after this is from University of Nottingham? There's a nice picture we can show. Was this shortly after you were a name editor-in-chief or? That's right. So this was indeed just the year later. So I became editor-in-chief of Nature in 2018 and this was a year later. So University of Nottingham is my alma mater. That's where I did my first degree in genetics. And it was actually my tutor from the undergraduate years who I think put me forward for the honorary degree. It was really a very, very special, special time for me. No, and I mean, well deserved. But I know these honors mean a lot to people when you've got them. And I mean, I'm sure this was a very proud moment for you. Similarly, you were probably incredibly proud when because you pointed out how you became editor-in-chief near a very important odometer moment for nature and you got to preside over the celebration of nature's hundred and fiftieth anniversary. I know that included a lot of things, including publication stuff and but also include this symposium that I think we have a piece of art to show. And so I bet that was a fun time to be at the helm of nature to be able to celebrate Sinus Historic as a hundred and fifty years. It was a very special time. It was it was a real opportunity to look back at our history, reflect on what we've published, how we published, what we stood for and now look forward. And, you know, one of the things I could talk about this for for a long time, of course, you know, we have a very rich sort of back castle of a rich archive of nature, but probably the most important, the most significant thing that that I can say about this is that, you know, for a very large part of our history, we were, as I call it, slightly flippantly a multidisciplinary journal in the natural sciences. And we were focused on research which was focused on academic excellence. Today, of course, we continue to be focused on the natural sciences. We continue to focus on academic excellence, but we are interested, actively interested in social sciences, in clinical science, which is, of course, an extension of, you know, biology, then translational research and now clinical research. We're interested in applied sciences and engineering because all of this really comes beautifully together in in a in a journal, multidisciplinary journal, such as Nature. That's an important platform. If you think about it, so many problems that face us today in terms of sustainability, climate change, and solving hunger in the world and dealing with public health problems. All these problems require multidisciplinary solutions. And so a journal like Nature, which is the multidisciplinary journal, which can encourage that collaboration across disciplines, I think really comes into its own at a time like this. And of course, we have to think about it globally. We have to be more inclusive, not just in the topics that we publish, but also the the the provenance of research that we publish. So the anniversary was a real time of reflection of where science was and how science itself is evolving and where it's going and how we are evolving with it, of course. But what a great opportunity, because as you said, so much of it's also focused on the future and they have this new editor in chief and you're putting it now in place, implementing your vision for what how you're going to lead the journal for the next. What do I maybe another 40 years you'll be doing this? Maybe 50 or something like that. But the other thing about your the other thing about your new position and I think this happens to many of us when we get a new leadership position at the next level up is you find yourself in new venues, microphones in front of you, you know, sometimes in settings like this. But sometimes as you can see, if you can show the slide from the World Economic Forum, you know, you get these opportunities where you just thought, I never thought in a million years I'd be speaking at this venue and never thought in a million years I'd have an audience with this person I never thought in a million years I'd be interviewed for such and such. But I know that you recently participated in the World Economic Forum. Maybe just say a few words about not only this event, but also what these events are like and what some of the similar things you've got to do as editor-in-chief or wanted to do. Thank you. Thank you for bringing this subject up. And it sort of relates a little bit to what I said earlier about the role which I feel nature has to play in the context of policy and how policy is and should be underpinned by research. So the World Economic Forum, you know, first and foremost is a business meeting focused on economics. But it offers an incredible opportunity for science and scientists to be really put in front of economic and business leaders. And that's the opportunity that I embrace in this context. This particular panel was actually a discussion panel with focused on international scientific collaboration. I think we would all agree that the direction of travel in terms of thinking globally in a collaborative way is not as promising as it was just a few years ago. So this was a great opportunity to talk with a very actually international and also multidisciplinary audience about the importance of scientific collaboration. You know, on the on the panel, then I had with me the director of CERN. I had the head of European Research Council, so a very influential funding body in the UK and also a science and education minister from United Arab Emirates. Really interesting perspectives on this particular topic and it illustrates the kinds of discussions that can unfold in the context of World Economic Forum meetings and projects that they engage with, you know, just to give you one example. Last year, for example, UN organised a food system summit which was very much underpinned by research across different disciplines that feed into this particular topic, recognising that really the food system needs to be transformed in order to be respectful of biodiversity, to provide nutritious and plentiful food to the world globally. And the World Economic Forum got very engaged in this, not just from the economics perspective, but also research. And that's very satisfying to be able to have a seat at that table. And it's so important that we have the seat at that table. I mean, science represented in that way. So time is flying by. I'm looking at the clock. I realise we just have way too much to cover. I wanted to have you talk a little bit about the big challenges in the ecosystem of scientific publishing that you and other editors have to deal with, whether it's open science, whether it's reproducibility, whether it's open access, whether it is pre-prints and how that's been destabilising and stabilising in different ways. Maybe the best I could do, because I also want to spend the last four or five minutes taking a few questions from our audience, maybe you could just, maybe in like two minutes, give your highlight real of what you think are the big challenges that you find you're spending a lot of time trying to engage and solve with respect to the general ecosystem of scientific publishing. You know, I, so my glass is always half full. So I think about challenges as opportunities. But since you asked about challenges, I think the challenge for all of us in the research ecosystem is to move, to extend the way that we evaluate research output. I think for too long, we've been focused on publishing papers. And, you know, one of the things that this community, the genomics community really showed so well that sharing data, publishing data, and of course, today, data records have DOIs. So in principle, they should be treated on par with publications, with papers, which have of course DOIs themselves. This community really led the way in this particular space. And, you know, as I mentioned in another context, other communities have taken a leaf out of this book. It's an opportunity for us as editors and publishers to think how we can support researchers in this actually very diverse way of sharing their findings, the data, the papers, the code, putting them in the context, broader context, sharing that information in a way that is accessible to non-experts, non-specialists, and of course, to colleagues who can build on what was done. And sharing, you know, I talked about data and code, and you mentioned preprints as well. Preprints, of course, are not new. They've been around for as long as the Internet has been around, initially only really embraced by my physicists and then more recently by biologists, life scientists and very recently in the pandemic by clinical researchers and particularly public health practitioners. All of these are opportunities. You know, we throughout this conversation, we talked about research as an ecosystem. We all know that a healthy ecosystem is a diverse ecosystem with many different niches and it's also an ecosystem that continues to evolve. And I think that's what we have to remember in the context of research and of course, publishing is part of research. Which is why our jobs are not, and your jobs are, is not turn the crank. It's not, there's so much that has to be constantly reinvented and refined and updated. So I'm gonna ask Sarah Bates to join us now. I'm gonna actually propose Sarah, we might wanna go maybe five minutes over because I see we only have three minutes left in the hour. It won't be the end of the world if we want five minutes over. And I know that our hundreds of people who have been participating and listening in, many have submitted questions and you've been curating them. And I have not been able to keep up with them, but I asked you to try to prioritize them. So maybe you could pick a small handful, let's go another five, six minutes of coming into using would be most relevant for Magdalena to try to answer. Yeah, absolutely. This has been a wonderful conversation. So thank you both. I think the questions that have been coming in have been on two or three general themes. One of them is Magdalena, what advice would you have for people who are looking to get into editing, for researchers who are getting into editing, sort of mentoring advice, I think, especially we had a lot of young women who were interested in particular, I think, and also learning about how, what it's like to be a woman in the publishing world. So I would say, I mean, I can only recommend this as a way of spending many hours during every day, basically. For me, it's been a tremendous way of contributing to the research ecosystem. The best way to get into editing is to simply try it. There are no courses that prepare for you, that prepare you for it. Of course, talk to the editors. I should say I became an editor without really talking to many editors before, but it is great to talk to editors. It's great to talk to editors full stop if you're a researcher. Invite an editor to come and give you a talk about how they work, what they do on a daily basis, what their experiences are like with interacting with the research community, but also with other editors. You know, remember, Eric talked about that it really is a very collegial group. And I'm very happy for you to talk to me if you're interested in more specifics. But one simple way to just have a go before committing is for example, to look at a parental leave cover. So on most journals, there are positions that become available for a few months, maybe up to 12 months, especially if they're based in Europe for parental leave cover. And that's a great way to get a sense of whether this is something you like. You want to leave the bench or leave the research that you're doing. One final piece of advice, if you're trying to decide whether you want to continue with original research or you want to perhaps move to something like editing is consider what it is that really gets you out of bed in the morning. If you are the kind of person who has to be the first person in the history of the universe to discover something, to find something, then don't leave original research because I am not that person I haven't been since I left the bench in my case. The way I describe my position, my role is I sort of look over the shoulder of the person who is the person who's seen something for the first time ever. And for me, that's incredibly satisfying and I love being able to support them, but that's, I think, an important distinction to make to help you make a decision. Yeah, thank you. And I think we had a lot of wonderful advice to I think it from different perspectives in other sessions in the same series about mentorship and getting into science communications in different ways. So your perspective, I think we have time for one more question and one that came in that I think was particularly interesting is sort of given the credibility of nature and its impact on scientific ecosystem in the journals that it produces, how much does that factor into your decision-making when you are choosing papers, when you're putting together an issue, just sort of the downstream effects on society, especially given how much information moves so quickly now online. This is a really important question. And I think, you know, all of us working at nature, we're very aware of the responsibility that we have. So we make our decisions very carefully. We make decisions based on science, on research that's in the papers. We evaluate those papers very carefully. And of course, when there are papers which are particularly sensitive, let's say from a societal perspective, you know, we will be seeking advice of ethicists who specialize in a given discipline, just one example. So we try to think about how we work and what we might publish from many different perspectives to try and cover these different aspects that you just mentioned. That responsibility is very present in our mind. And then of course, what we can also do, and we often do, we use other formats and tools within the journal to help put research in a context. So a news and views article may, for example, provide a better context and explain nuance of research, is limitations importantly as well, the context and limitations. Similarly, we may be editorializing on certain topics to put research in context, but also to offer our own opinion as to what should and should not be done. Our, my colleagues who are science journalists may go out and interview representatives of the community, but also adjacent communities. Again, to give a better sense of it. So the idea is, you spoke about putting together issues these days, of course, we think less in terms of issues per se, because of course, we all consume information online, principally, but we try to provide a sort of mini ecosystem of information around everything that we publish. So the context is there, and it's an important limitations. Thank you, and I'm gonna seek in just one more. If there's one thing you really want, viewers to remember from your hour today or like one main takeaway message and kind of bearing in mind that a lot of people viewing are members of the NIH community, what is it that you really like them to know about sort of the science communication and the future of science communication? Well, before you said science communication just now, we're going to say actually the importance of communicating science. Sometimes when we talk about communicating science, we only think about communicating to the general public, but it of course means also communicate to your colleagues, to your own community, to the adjacent communities as well, and thinking about how that information should be presented, how it's received and what the impact of the information, the consequences of the information are, and the power of the information is really, really important. So to me, that's the message, open communication and an appreciation of the power of it in decision-making, in policy-making, in the direction of science, and also in enabling that standing on the shoulders of others. So others continuing the work that you have started. Wonderful, we went exactly six months over, Eric, so I think we can let folks lose, but thank you both so much. This was really a wonderful conversation and such a strong way to finish out our series, so thank you both. And thank you, Magdalena, and congratulations, Sarah, to you and your team for organizing this series. I think it was truly successful and I just want to really stress how much more views it will get all of these sessions after the fact, even then live and even in all the cases, we had really good participation of live audience. So congratulations to Sarah, you and your team. Thank you, thank you all. Bye, all.