Nautilus

The week on Nature Network: Friday 25 April

This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.

The Nature Network week column is archived here.

With his experience of writing about NIH policy for Nature, Paul Smaglik writes at the Nature Jobs careers forum, " I believe a fair peer-review grant system is the best way to distribute funds to the most-deserving science. Having said that, one must wonder how some senior investigators are six, or ten or 22 times more deserving of merit than promising young investigators, or the extent of the problem, as seen by the young investigators…… Please let me know if you are the victim of what appears to be an imbalance in the system—or if you have suggestions on how to either fix it (beyond an unprecedented NIH budgetary boost) or deal with it."

Discussion about clear writing style continues at the Good Paper Journal Club. Linda Cooper’s view: “I know scientists are capable of writing clearly about highly complex research. Students in my classes do this all the time once they have the tools to transform their original confused drafts into articles that both the specialist and non- specialist can understand.” Hawley Rigsby describes how rewriting a “long, obscure, and jargon-filled” account allows the reader to find the point even though some detail is missed; yet how courses in science writing can provide too much focus on simplifying concepts, and so over-simplify complex ideas. He asks whether it is possible for an article to be at the same time well-written and incomprehensible outside of a small sphere of specialists. In another discussion thread, Heather Etchevers contrasts readers of review articles, who may follow up threads and delve into new areas, with readers of research articles, who need precise technical information, quickly.

Further views on the publication process, as practised by Nature, are provided by senior editor Henry Gee at his blog End of the Pier Show, where he opines that “a purpose of the Nature Network…. is to make the whole publication process less mysterious and less frustrating for authors whose years of painstaking research are met with a form letter that says ‘no’, albeit with great politeness and much circumlocution. We know from experience that many authors see Nature as a Black Box and crave some human interaction, hence the frustration and anger when the Black Box is all they get……the Network has been adorned with ”https://network.nature.com/group/askthenatureeditor">many interesting discussions about editorial policies, accessibility and publication, in which editors and scientists have all taken part."

And finally, a bittersweet post from Anna Kushnir of Lab Life, about finishing her dissertation and why she won’t be returning to the lab (for now).

Previous Nature Network columns.

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