Nature Genetics | Free Association
Marking the launch of this blog and our journal
We launched Free Association in November 2005, as one of the first two Nature Publishing Group journal blogs. Our blog was launched as a pioneering effort by our then Senior Editor Alan Packer (who has since moved to a position as Associate Director for Research at the Simons Foundation ), as a new way for the editors of Nature Genetics to engage our community. We did so with excitement about interacting and discussing papers and community issues on a more informal level than is possible in our print publication. At the same time, I recall that we (the Nature Genetics editors at the time) shared some concerns about what we would be able to discuss, given the confidential nature of the peer review process.
