Category Archives: Editorials

All you can tweet (the blog version)

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For the sake of posterity and having all of the tweets in one place that isn’t Storify, here is a recap of our April 2013 editorial about how we use Twitter.

Of polemics and progress

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As Stuart posted last week, the March issue is now live and it features a ‘web focus’, which is a small collection of articles related by a topical theme and brought together on their own special page on the Nature Chemistry website. The theme of this web focus is protein dynamics and we have two Perspectives (Good vibrations in enzyme-catalysed reactions and Taking Ockham’s razor to enzyme dynamics and catalysis) and an editorial covering the topic.

Taken from Glowacki et al.

It’s a somewhat contentious topic, in that many disagree on the effects that structural protein dynamics can have on the reactivity of enzymes. One of our Perspectives highlights evidence in support of such promoting effects and the other backs the stance that they are not required to explain enzyme reactivity.
 
Such disagreements between researchers are a common occurrence in science, and they can have both positive and negative effects on the topic under scrutiny. An abridged version of our editorial, which discusses this in more detail is below. The full text can be accessed here and is available FREE to all registered users. Please do join the discussion using the comments section below.

Gavin

Gavin Armstrong (Senior Editor, Nature Chemistry)

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Disagreements are common in science and can lead to better understanding, but must be handled carefully.

Science is, in essence, the pursuit of ‘truths’, but not all seemingly valid hypotheses are accepted as such. From the laws of planetary motion, to the wave–particle nature of light, and through to the recent suggestion of lifeforms that incorporate arsenic into their DNA1, disagreements born of critical thinking have played a central role in answering important scientific questions.

In this spirit we have two Perspective articles2, 3 in this issue that take differing views on the significance that structural dynamics have on the reactivity of enzymes. It is a debate that has been building over the past decade4, 5 and centres on the possibility that the motions of enzymes could amplify the contribution that quantum mechanical tunnelling makes to their activity.

The fact that the conformational movements of proteins can be integral to their function is broadly accepted. They can be important to ligand binding and release, and in allowing access to a given active site through large-scale loop–lid movements. The debate arises when discussing the reaction step that the enzyme catalyses, the all-important transition from reactant to product. At this point, how important are the fast structural fluctuations of the protein, motions such as vibrations? Can they significantly promote a reaction or can enzyme reactivity be accounted for with a model based on transition-state theory, which does not consider such individual atomic motions?

A Perspective article from Sam Hay and Nigel Scrutton highlights2 the evidence in favour of such promoting motions and an alternative view comes from David Glowacki, Jeremy Harvey and Adrian Mulholland, who take ‘Ockham’s razor‘ to the problem3.

These Perspectives2, 3 and recent contrary results6, 7 suggest that this debate is not likely to subside in the near future. The one thing that is agreed on, however, is that more direct experimental evidence is required if a significant role for enzyme dynamics is to be wholly accepted.

Protein dynamics is far from the only topic in science in which there are fundamentally different views taken by those actively studying it. And although such differences in opinion can be stimulating and drive advances in the field, they can also have the opposite effect, creating issues that impede progress.

The publication of articles in divided research fields can be very problematic for all involved: authors, referees and certainly editors. The benefits, and indeed the purpose, of peer review can be undermined by authors who create long lists of excluded reviewers and by referees who are either hypercritical or overly positive. Editors can find themselves in a situation where their initial choice of referees could dictate the fate of an article because of the chosen referees’ ‘allegiances’.

Although editors normally honour requests to exclude potential referees, in some cases, to ensure that a paper is competently refereed, this is not possible. To help editors in making such decisions, authors should provide details explaining why they have asked for a potential referee to be excluded; simply stating that there is a ‘conflict of interest’ is not enough in controversial fields.

Even when fundamentally disagreeing, referees should try to judge the technical aspects of research articles on controversial topics, and should thoroughly explain their subjective opinions on a paper’s possible significance. Such topics inevitably generate alternative interpretations of the same data, and without enough evidence to conclusively prove one over another, referees should not recommend the rejection of technically sound, well-analysed data simply because the author’s interpretation is incongruous with their own.

All practitioners of the scientific method know that disagreements can occur, but human foibles must not be allowed to hamper the communication of competently acquired results. Although progress in the study of enzyme dynamics has not been smooth, it is a relatively new field and further research is certainly needed if a consensus of opinion is to be reached. For now, we shall leave it to the reader to make their own mind up.

In praise of posters

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Can you imagine scientific meetings without poster sessions?

The busiest — and loudest — areas of any conference are most likely to be the poster sessions. This is surely testament to the power of the humble poster: they are the places to see the newest science and talk to the people who actually do the work in the lab. The Nature Chemistry editors are frequently to be found inspecting and discussing posters (with or without a beer in hand…) that catch their eye at the conferences they attend throughout the year.

But once upon a time there must have been meetings without posters. So when was the first poster and who came up with the idea? Sadly, it looks as though history has not recorded the exact moment for us to celebrate. As far as we can tell, however, the idea originated in Europe before spreading to North America in 1974 at the Biochemistry/Biophysics Meeting in Minneapolis. The American Chemical Society then introduced poster sessions for the fall national meeting, in Chicago in 1975, a move that was seen as a ‘trail blazer’.

Since those early days of poster pioneers, the rise of personal computing alongside desktop publishing and graphical design software has further driven the evolution and development of posters. Of course, having the right tools to hand does not guarantee that the perfect poster will be produced every time.

So what makes a good poster? Fortunately for the more graphically challenged presenter, there are books, websites, blogs and even a Flickr photo group devoted to academic posters. From the combined experience of the Nature Chemistry team (which includes one first and two third prizes from our student days), we can also offer some advice. Clarity and content are key. Can all the text be read from a reasonable distance? Imagine that your poster is the highlight of the session: your ideal collaborator (or an interested editor) could be struggling to make out your conclusions at the back of the adoring crowd!

As with any presentation meant for an external audience, considering who makes up that audience and suitably tailoring your poster is critical. The amount of background material needed for a small subject-specific meeting will be very different from that needed for an ACS meeting with many thousands of attendees. When presenting your poster to other delegates, finding out what level of background knowledge they have will mean you pitch it at the right level and gives you the chance to create a dialogue.

As mentioned in the first paragraph, one of the key attractions of most poster sessions is the opportunity to talk to the people — typically graduate students or postdocs — who have actually performed the experiments. Getting the inside track on how the project really developed in the lab, rather than how it is presented in the finished research article, can often be fascinating. As networking events, poster sessions are unequalled at most scientific meetings: relaxed and full of opportunities to bump into people who might make the ideal advisor for that post-doctoral position you were looking for — and vice versa.

Posters are often a scientist’s first presentation or even publication, and can represent the first step on their journey to public scrutiny, feedback and peer review. This alone should be enough to raise them in people’s estimation, and not be treated as an afterthought by conference organisers or attendees.

[This post is an abridged version of the editorial in the February 2012 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

PS This editorial was inspired by a conversation I had with Steve Koch at ICBIC last year

The perfect peer

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[This post is an abridged version of the editorial in the November 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

What makes the ideal referee report?

There is no simple answer to this question. An author probably hopes for a quick report that is positive, or at least constructively critical. An editor will most appreciate a report that provides insightful comments and helps to inform a decision. The perfect report for a reviewer is more difficult to define; perhaps one that is not misinterpreted, and ultimately improves a manuscript.

Reports simply stating that a manuscript should be accepted or rejected, without providing any justification are rarely useful. It is, for example, unlikely that two brief reports that say a manuscript is ‘great’ and recommend publication without any compelling reasons to back up these statements will outweigh a thoughtful and well-supported report that highlights lots of technical flaws.

Based on our experience of the process — taken together with feedback from our authors and referees — we suggest the following guidelines that try to satisfy the needs of everyone involved.

Reports should begin with a short summary of the work in question. This serves to focus the review, clearly stating how the work is viewed by the referee and highlighting differences between how the authors and readers will interpret the work.

Reviewers should state upfront if there are parts of a paper that they are uncomfortable evaluating. They are, however, welcome to provide opinion on areas outside their own expertise as such information can be valuable in judging general appeal of the work. Authors should keep in mind that an individual reviewer may have been chosen to represent a particular point of view.

The summary should be followed with a discussion of what has gone before, in an attempt to define the advance that has been reported. These comments are most valuable when backed by references. Following this, a summary of both the merits and problems of the research is useful. This can be far more instructive than writing a report with a particular outcome (accept/reject/revise) in mind.

A good report should clearly distinguish between the claims made and their importance versus the evidence presented in support of those claims. This brings us to another issue frequently raised in criticisms of peer review: the need for additional work. Although requests for additional experiments are regarded by some as a ‘tyranny’, such requests are often quite reasonable.

With this in mind, it may be useful to divide suggestions into different groups. First, and most important, is work that is considered necessary to support the specific claims of the paper: omitted control experiments or requests for complete characterization. Second are those that may allow broader conclusions and improve the appeal to a general audience. Third are those experiments that are not essential, but might provide interesting avenues for future studies.

Proofreading is not the role of referees. However, the writing should be as clear as possible, and reviewers are encouraged to point out areas where language is too specialized and could be improved without detriment to the scientific content of an article.

We realize that reviewing places a heavy burden on a researcher’s time, so we are extremely grateful to the reviewers without whom Nature Chemistry could not function.

You can read full the editorial here (registration is free).

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Keeping up with the journals

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[This post is an abridged version of the editorial in the September 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

With more and more scientific articles and journals being published, how can you effectively keep abreast of new research relevant to your own projects?

The ever-increasing number of chemistry-related journals and articles has been discussed and debated for years. Usually the focus falls on three issues: the increase in the overall number of articles, the increase in the number of (usually more specialized) journals, and the fragmentation of results by researchers to maximize their number of publications. The first issue is easy to explain: there are simply more scientists now and they all depend critically upon the publication of their work. Few scientists would argue against more science and this issue seems here to stay.

The increase in the number of specialized journals is a more contentious matter. In 1973, a group of eleven concerned chemists lamented the “recent proliferation of journals”. They argued that “the literature should be so constructed as to deter trends towards overspecialization, and should foster communication among chemists working in different areas”.

The sentiment about improving interdisciplinary communication is admirable, but the general growth in the number of publications makes it unrealistic to expect researchers to keep up with current studies by reading only a few select journals. Compartmentalization was an inevitability that has some sound logic behind it — researchers can read specialist journals knowing that they will find papers of interest and can publish in them assured that their peers will be more likely to see their work.

With the literature now so vast, keeping abreast of what is going on in a given scientific field has become a real challenge, but remains an important aspect of practising cutting-edge science. Not knowing about a published paper relevant to your research can have detrimental consequences when trying to get published or funded.

To keep track of the literature, the Nature Chemistry editors all use RSS feeds with a feed reader that allows papers to be shared among the team. You subscribe to the feeds of journals and when they publish an article the feed is updated. This might sound just like an e-mail alert or like browsing the journal website, but RSS feeds are far more straightforward to organize, track and search.

There are other online tools that can be used in a similar way. Twitter, as a rapid online information exchange, is a great way of keeping up to date with news of more general scientific interest, but unless your research community is actively using it to swap interesting papers, it is much less useful for keeping track of more specialized areas. Online reference-management programmes such as Connotea and Mendeley also have the facility to share articles. The website ‘Faculty of 1000’ provides the biomedical community with a place to find papers that other researchers find interesting and an equivalent in the chemistry community would be most useful. It relies on academics identifying and evaluating articles from the literature and can, quite quickly, give an idea of which papers are piquing the interest of their peers.

With a little organization and some useful online tools, the apparently daunting task of keeping up to date can be achieved: like eating an elephant, it has to be done one bite at a time.

You can read full the editorial here (registration is free).

Gavin

Gavin Armstrong (Senior Editor, Nature Chemistry)

The art of abstracts

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[This post is based on the editorial in the August 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

An abridged version of the editorial is usually featured in these posts, but I thought I’d tell a little of the story behind the story in this case (and after you’ve read this, you can go and read the editorial!). The team here at Nature Chemistry follow the literature predominantly through RSS feeds and so we’re quick to see (and comment on) graphical abstracts that catch the eye – particularly those that confuse and/or amuse rather than instruct.

I’ve also seen a few blog posts here and there in the last year or so lauding the introduction of this wonderful new publishing innovation (I’m paraphrasing here, but that was the general gist). Now, graphical abstracts might be new in some fields, but they’ve been in chemistry journals for quite some time. And this got me thinking — just how long have they been around and who started the trend? Now, the internet is a marvellous thing, but I thought I might find out more if I went to a real chemistry library at a university; one with real journals and real books.

I’m now going to sound like I am very old to some of you, but e-mail only really became a popular and widespread tool during my undergraduate years. Looking something up in the scientific literature meant leaving the chemistry department, walking to the library in the middle of the campus (remembering to take my photocopying card with me) and flipping through bound volumes of journals. During my PhD, more and more scientific literature found its way on to the web, but trips to the library were still necessary. So, fondly reminiscing about my student days, I set off to the chemistry library at the University of Cambridge (with thanks to Oren for arranging access).

I spent a happy morning browsing row upon row of nicely bound journals and occasionally lifting one from its home on a shelf. There were quite a few other people in the library, but in the two or three hours I was there, I don’t recall seeing anyone else venture over to the journals. Students appeared to be studying or surfing the web to find the objects of their desire — scientific journals or otherwise. I had a fairly complete set of the chemistry literature all to myself, and I could browse — sure, I was doing some targeted searching, but I was also browsing… looking for nothing in particular other than things that happened to catch my eye. (Such as this article by Ian Rae from New J. Chem. in 1990 (vol. 14, pp. 3–4): ‘Why can’t we have element Q?’ — which, incidentally, I can’t find online anywhere…).

Anyway, it was nice to be back in a library — the smell and feel of the books is something you obviously don’t get from searching through the literature online, and that’s a shame (well, it is for me — for all you youngsters out there who don’t even know where your university library is, you probably wouldn’t miss what you’ve never experienced). The chronology of the appearance of graphical abstracts in a broader range of journals is something that didn’t quite make it into the editorial, so here it is for those of you who are interested:

As far as I can tell, Angewandte Chemie was first (in 1976!) and then Tetrahedron Letters joined the party in 1986 (some of you reading this still might not have been born by this point…). Tetrahedron itself followed suit in 1990. The first RSC journal to include graphical abstracts was not Chem. Commun., but J. Chem. Soc., Perkin Trans. 2 in 1993. Chem. Commun. did start soon after in mid 1994. The ACS was a little late to the game and graphical abstracts did not make their debut in JACS until 2002. The trail had, nonetheless, already been blazed by JOC in 1996 and Org. Lett. from its inception in 1999. After a bit more sleuthing, however, I did discover that from 1992 onwards, Inorg. Chem. included graphical abstracts for some of its Communications. It took a while for the physical chemists to join in (at ACS journals at least) with J. Phys. Chem. A and B getting graphical in 2006. If I’m wrong about any of this, or you have anything else interesting you wish to share about graphical abstracts, then please do comment.

So, the point of the editorial… I do believe that graphical abstracts do bring back some of the browsability that we’ve lost by moving away from paper journals. Not all of it, but a little flavour at least. We’ve also taken the opportunity to point out in the editorial what we think makes a good graphical abstract — something every publishing chemist should take a little time to think about.

You can read the editorial here (registration is free).

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

They did a bad bad thing

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[This post is based on the editorial in the May 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

When it comes to research misconduct, burying one’s head in the sand and pretending it doesn’t exist is the worst possible plan.

With human nature as it is, the only surprising thing about scientific misconduct should be that it continues to surprise us. Scientists are human, so why should we be more surprised when they behave unethically than, say, those in business or politics? Surprised or not, we should acknowledge that scientific misconduct is happening, will always happen, and probably always has happened. With an increased awareness, however, we can all be more vigilant and perhaps better equipped to prevent it happening.

To give some examples of wrongdoing, in case anyone is unaware of its existence, look at the rise and fall of Jan Hendrik Schön. Or the less headline-grabbing, but still worrying, 60 falsified structures published in Acta Crystallographica E. Or the 70 questionable articles published by Pattium Chiranjeevi, from Sri Venkateswara University.

These are just three relatively well-known examples. For more, the interested reader is directed to Retraction Watch, which, contrary to its moderators’ initial concerns that they would struggle to find enough examples to cover, has averaged around six posts per week since its inception in mid-2010. Of course, many of these retracted papers are not the result of unethical behaviour, but a worrying proportion are.

Very often the reaction to the discovery of these cases is ‘Why on earth did journal X publish THAT?’. However, when it comes to outright fabrication or falsification, editors and peer reviewers must consider the data with which they are presented at face value. Beyond a healthy scepticism, there are analytical tools available that can help identify suspicious data, for example for assessing tampered images and crystallography data. It is, however, hard to see that these would have been useful in the case of the determined fabrication that Schön engaged in.

Journals have a much greater stake in cases of plagiarism, against which Nature Chemistry and other Nature family journals can use CrossCheck. This tool can check the text of submitted articles against a large database of published papers. As the publication ethics section of our author guidelines clearly state, “[…] when large chunks of text have been cut-and-pasted, [s]uch manuscripts would not be considered for publication in a Nature journal.”

Of course, journals also have an important role in many other cases beyond plagiarism and cannot reject all responsibility. Publishers should ensure that data is made as widely available as possible. The outcome of any action a journal does take — such as correcting or retracting a paper — should be transparent, freely available and disseminated in the same way as the original paper. Investigations into data fabrication or manipulation are beyond the remit of publishers, and should be conducted by the relevant institutions and funding agencies.

One of the fundamental tenets of science is that experiments should be reproducible. ‘Peer review’ is broader than the pre-publication assessment that most people are referring to when they use the phrase. The true test comes once every aspect of a discovery can be scrutinized by one’s peers — and then built on. In spite of automated data-checkers and text-comparison tools, physically and independently recreating an experiment remains the best way to validate data.

So what should be done to deter misconduct? A shared awareness of correct research ethics needs to be fostered and passed on to the next generation. This should be emphasized by formal training from departments and institutions, which must have their own policies and guidelines for ethical behaviour and dealing with misconduct. Most of all, it needs to be put into everyday practice and an example of high standards should be shown by mentors.

Ultimately, science and the scientific record is self-correcting but only at the expense of much unnecessary work and potential anguish by those prepared to stand up and put things straight. No-one should have to put their careers on the line — or on hold — to investigate and report deliberately incorrect results. It is surely far better to act preventatively by insisting on higher standards at every step of research.

[Since we wrote, re-drafted, edited, laid-out, typeset etc this article we’ve found a few more interesting links for you all. Firstly, Science Betrayed on BBC Radio 4 by TV’s Adam Rutherford (iPlayer link probably only works in UK). Derek Lowe blogged about a recent PLoS1 paper on misconduct. Finally, The Scholarly Kitchen blogged about ‘paying for impact’ – the Chinese funding model for directly rewarding researchers based on which journals they publish in which we touched on in the full editorial.]

A great question

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[This post is based on the editorial in the March 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

Who is the greatest chemist of all time?

These eight simple words pose a question that is far from simple to answer. The first obvious problem is with the concept of ‘greatness’ — how should this be defined and measured? Secondly, would everyone agree with exactly what is meant by the term ‘chemist’? There are some prominent historical figures that both chemists and physicists would claim as their own.

Another complication is a fundamental (and unavoidable) one associated with all questions and polls of this type — the influence of time. Consider the world of sport for example — when a team or an individual becomes very successful, comparisons are often made with so-called ‘greats’ of a bygone era. But in the same way as it would be impossible for the Manchester United teams of 1968 and 1999 to play one another to inform a fair comparison, how do we judge the relative merits of the contributions that Wöhler and Woodward made to chemistry?

In spite of these problems, there is undoubtedly some value in asking (and responding to) questions of this kind. Yes, the answers will be subjective, but it’s the debate surrounding the answers — and indeed the question itself — that often prove more interesting than the final results or ranking. We asked the greatest-chemist question on our journal’s Twitter feed back in early January and gave a comprehensive round-up of the responses we received on this blog.

To our surprise, there were some truly great chemists missing from the list. No Gibbs, no Dalton and no Priestley. One omission in particular, that of the only person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, sparked some debate in the blogosphere at the Curious Wavefunction and Second Messenger. Was Sanger’s name missing because chemists tend to focus on fundamental topics such as structure and bonding rather than more applied aspects? And, as discussed at There (& Hopefully) Back Again, should our evaluations of the ‘greatness’ of a scientist change when we consider not just their momentous achievements, but also their more nefarious (Haber) and/or eccentric (Pauling) pursuits? The greatest-chemist debate continued on a number of other blogs including ChemBark, and ScienceGeist and we encourage you to read them and their comment threads to get a feeling for what others think.

The main point of asking the question was not to uncover a definitive answer as to who the greatest chemist of all time is, but to see if any consensus did emerge and how many different suggestions were put forward. Whereas in physics it is hard to see past Einstein leading the way in this sort of exercise, we were curious as to whether a similar figure would emerge for chemistry.

Would any of us have picked Pauling (the eventual ‘number 1’) to lead the chemistry one with the same certainty? Of course, Einstein and the photos of him with stereotypical ‘mad-genius’ hair have crossed into popular culture — and this is certainly not the case with Pauling. Is the lack of a recognisable figurehead in chemistry a problem? Perhaps a greater awareness of some of the inspirational chemists of the past would help spark the imagination of budding chemists out there today.

Our Twitter poll, as we suggested at the time, was somewhat arbitrary and unscientific — as is the question itself. Nonetheless, it is clear that, even from such a small data set, many different individuals are considered to be greatest chemist of all time. They can’t all be the greatest, but that matters not — they are all great, and this reflects the strength and diversity of chemistry.

Chemistry’s year

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[This post is based on the editorial in the January 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

The United Nations has proclaimed 2011 to be the International Year of Chemistry. Under this banner, chemists should seize the opportunity to highlight the rich history and successes of our subject to a much broader audience — and explain how it can help to solve the global challenges we face today and in the future.

Many subjects have been the basis of ‘International Year’ designations by the United Nations and 2011 is chemistry’s year. This provides chemists the opportunity to not only celebrate specific past glories, but also to champion its role in addressing critical challenges in modern society. These global issues include sustainable energy, climate change, and the provision of clean food and water — as prominently featured in the United Nations’ Resolution and also on the International Year of Chemistry (IYC) website.

One historical aspect being brought to the fore is that 2011 is the one-hundredth anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Marie Curie for the discovery and study of polonium and radium. Her scientific achievements are all the more extraordinary because they are set in the context of a very male-dominated era.

Undoubtedly there are now fewer barriers and less bias faced by women in science compared with Curie’s day, but nevertheless, since the inception of the Nobel Prizes in 1901, only one other woman has been awarded the physics prize and only three other women have received the chemistry prize (one of whom is Marie Curie’s daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie). So although Marie Curie’s contributions to chemistry should be celebrated in their own right, it is also a chance to reflect on how far gender equality has come in science — and how much further it needs to go to ensure a level playing field for women and men.

In addition to marking this significant anniversary, two other stated goals of the IYC are to get young people more interested in chemistry and generate more enthusiasm for its creative aspects. Both of these aims are obviously tied up with the future of our subject — chemistry is far from finished as an intellectual discipline (despite what may be written about it elsewhere). There are undoubtedly many discoveries yet to be made and new generations of enquiring young minds will be required to make them.

Two important areas of chemical research highlighted by the IYC prospectus are molecular medicine and advanced materials. Developments in these areas are crucial to modern life and yet they are not always recognized as being fundamentally chemical at their core. Here is an opportunity for chemists to clearly articulate to a wider audience just how much of contemporary science, medicine and technology is underpinned by chemistry.

Take materials as just one example; we need to get the message across that many of the materials intrinsic to our everyday lives would not exist without advances in chemistry — consider how many synthetic organic polymers or designer inorganic ceramics you rely on in a typical day, and imagine what life would be like without them.

The IYC provides a focal point for the past successes of our subject to be celebrated and its future potential to be emphasized — but we should be wary of simply preaching to the choir. As chemists, we have a pretty good grasp of how important our subject is and where it sits in the grand scheme of science itself. The biggest impact of the IYC should not be on chemists, but those who are not (or not yet) chemists.

The IYC provides a framework through which chemistry should be clearly and enthusiastically communicated with the wider public, highlighting how crucial it is in everyday life and why it is vital for our future.

Revision notes

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[This post is based on the editorial in the December issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

Revising a manuscript in response to the comments of referees should not be about doing the bare minimum to get a paper published. Addressing criticisms that are genuine and constructive can lead to much more compelling research articles.

An e-mail arrives in your inbox from the journal to which you sent your last research paper and it has a subject title that begins ‘Decision on manuscript xxx’. Your heart leaps as you quickly find the phrase ‘we are pleased to inform you’ in the first paragraph, but then it sinks as you scroll down through the referee reports…and keep scrolling…and keep scrolling…and keep scrolling. You finally reach the end of the e-mail and it seems as though, to answer all of the referees’ queries, you’ll need another three years, two more post-docs and a fresh pot of grant money.

This situation is not uncommon and the process of revising a manuscript has the potential to be a frustrating one — but if authors and referees are prepared to engage in a constructive dialogue (mediated by the editor), then it can be a rewarding experience that results in a much improved paper.

Peer review can — and should — play a significant role in improving not only the presentation, but also the rigour and quality of research reported in articles. A fresh pair of eyes looking over a research paper is likely to spot holes in logic or data that, if filled on revision, could significantly strengthen the conclusions drawn from a study. Aside from flaws, referees can also ask questions or make suggestions that help guide the future direction of a research project.

Armed with a list of suggestions from referees, an author must revise their manuscript and then convince the referees and editor that it is now ready for publication. To help those involved judge the changes made during revision, Nature Chemistry ask that authors go through them point-by-point in a letter written specifically for the referees. Trying to discuss all of the changes in a long-winded essay style can make it more difficult for the editor and referees to follow.

The editors understand that some referees may have unrealistic expectations as to what extra work is required before publication and also that sometimes there are genuinely no right or wrong answers — merely progressive scientific debate. The editors also appreciate that busy authors would prefer to make as few changes as possible, and even though carrying out all of the referees’ suggestions may not be required for publication, all authors are expected to take each technical and scientific concern seriously.

Those authors who choose not to carry out extra experimental work or data analysis as suggested by a referee must provide a compelling argument for why that is the case, convincing the reviewers that their conclusions are fully supported without the additional work. In cases where authors and referees disagree on the revisions required, it is the editor who is responsible for making the final decision.

As a closing comment it is worthwhile remarking that the ‘honesty’ involved in peer-review can sometimes be abrasive and hard to ignore as an author, but we very much advise both authors and referees not to personalise the process. Remaining polite and professional throughout, even if others involved are not, is unquestionably the best option and enables the review process to remain focused on the science.