A pretty interesting range of topics discussed Thursday at the NN NY happy hour. Juan Carlos Lopez (Nature Medicine) and Richard Sever (editor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory press) covered their pasts, the present and the future of publishing, answering questions on a publishing career (and what got them into publishing), how to publish your paper and finally the fate of scientific publishing.

In the first case the main advice was to, as in any career, indicate practically that you’re interested through gaining experience, and blogging would be one avenue.

How to publish? One attendee suggested a workshop highlighting how to write papers and there are a couple around the city, but more would be helpful and there is clearly a hunger for demystifying the publication process. Lopez and Sever both agreed that when you come to submit a paper, you should be aware of the types of Articles a particular journal publishes. In other words target submissions appropriately.

Finally the future of publishing. It’s no news that print news has already had to deal with the reality of rapid dissemination of information through online sources. The panelists seemed to feel that “online” papers have yet to prove what they can bring to the table in terms of evolving scientific publishing and bringing their advantages to the fore.

And finally was superstar blogger GrrlScientist there? Parrots were not obviously present and I’m not sure what she really looks like (I confess I was too shy to ask random women) but the Beast was said to be sending an emissary….