OK, gloves off. No amusing anecdotes. No pastiches of Round The Horne. No machines that make ping. No ill-judged musings on irreligion. No paeans to the puissant majesty that is Boris Johnson. No pictures of furry pets. It’s No More Mister Nice Guy.
Sure: we’ve been called ignorant.
We’ve been called incompetent.
We’ve been threatened with the might of the law.
We’ve been labelled as bigots, misogynists, racists, fascists (moi?) and accused of harboring an agenda that discriminates against people of various nationalities.
On occasion, we’ve been threatened with death.
Who are we? We’re Spiderman St Trinians Nature editors, that’s who.
Some journal editors are hardboiled, but we – we’re twenty minutes. In any given year, I receive around seven hundred new manuscripts to review across a broad range of disciplines. I can accept around forty. Do the math, and you’ll see that the sensation of being a Nature editor is rather like standing in front of a fire hose and selecting a few choice droplets. Inevitably, we’ll miss a few good ones. Some we know are good, but we have to shake them off, or we’ll be drenched. And sometimes we’ll choose the wrong droplets. After all, we’re only human.
To be sure, most scientists know the way things are, and a rejection from Nature is soon followed by acceptance elsewhere. But there will always be a few who will treat a rejection as a personal insult, and seek some kind of retribution. For machismo. For honor. For la gloire. For the sake of Sticking It to The Man.
It takes dedication and a great deal of guts to be a scientist. I left research because I felt I deserved a more stable career structure than mid-1980s palaeontology could offer.
And, oh yes, the money.
My first job as a cub reporter on Nature accrued a relative pittance – but it was almost exactly thrice my graduate-student stipend. But, deep down, I felt that I was not cut out for the messianically intense focus on a very narrow slice of reality that scientific dedication demands. And when you have devoted months – years – to the ultrastructure of a crocodile’s eyelashes, it can be hard to take that step back, to see that most people, let alone most scientists, will not share your passion – even those who study crocodiles’ eyelashes for a living.
Sometimes monomania grades into madness, and there are those in the research community with idees fixe who simply will not take ‘no’ for an answer. For a LabLit perspective on this, do read Philip Ball’s forthcoming novel The Sun and Moon Corrupted, a fictional biography of just such a person. Those of us in the editorial game know just how close such fictions come to reality, so it is no surprise that the reaction to a rejection letter is, now and then, an outpouring of vituperative hatred. Strictly within the office, we work out the frustrations of being on the receiving end of such tirades by composing the rejection letters we’d like to send, but can’t, such as the generic
Dear Professor Trellis,
Which part of the word ‘no’ don’t you understand?
And one, which I saw pinned up on a noticeboard (don’t look for it, it’s not there any more):
Dear Colonel Gaddafi
Please would you add a Professor Trellis of the University of Northern Neasden to your death list? I overhead him say some distinctly uncomplimentary things about you, Sir.
To the outside world, though, we strive to be grace under pressure, and hope that the scientific world out there will follow this example. Although Nature’s Guide to Authors notes, in several places, the value we attach to courteous and inoffensive language during the process of peer review, nowhere do we say that we editors, too, are much happier (and much more likely to plead an author’s cause) were we treated with due decorum.
In a way, working for Nature is a 24/7 job, and few of my colleagues are willing to expose any other side of themselves to the community. Very few have blogs or personal websites. The reason is clear – the less the world knows about you, the fewer ways they can have to Get At You by virtue of some political view taken out of context, or even some casually and perhaps humorously meant aside, deep down in a stream of comments. I am one of the few who has put his head above the parapet, so I guess that I can only expect to be shot at. Sometimes the shots hit home, and when they do, they hurt.
So why do I do it? Offer a large slice of my personality online? What benefit might it have for my job as a Nature editor that people know that I live in a quaint seaside town ; that I am trying to write the raciest SF bonkbuster the world has ever seen; am no slouch at blues organ; and adore golden retrievers? After all, the one thing I almost never blog about is the work I’m paid to do – for fear of betraying, inadvertently, some privileged information, or saying something that doesn’t accord with Nature’s editorial policy.
The answer is twofold. First, I was born to blog. I love blogging, reading blogs, reading and writing comments, and watching for the latest responses. I am a nascent blogoholic. Most of my colleagues aren’t quite so … ‘ow you say … bloggy.
The second is more profound and connected with what, I think, is a purpose of the Nature Network, which 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.
My colleague Maxine Clarke blogs extensively on the mechanics of the publication process (this is just one of several blogs she runs about authorship, peer review and writing in general); and the Network has been adorned with many interesting discussions about editorial policies, accessibility and publication, in which editors and scientists have all taken part.
And me? I want to show that editors do have a life outside work; that they have families and pets and interests.
That we editors are humans, too.
And being human, we are fallible, and, as such, hopeful that this is taken into account on the (rare) occasions we get things wrong.
It’s all part of a strategy that I believe we editors should all follow: to go out on the stump, explaining to scientists at conferences and in labs what we do. Whenever I turn up to do my ‘Confessions of a Nature editor’ spiel, the
venue is always packed with a sea of gawping faces that look like New Guinea highlanders who’ve seen their first white man (and probably have the pot simmering, backstage). It really is the case that until you turn up, in the flesh and twice as handsome, people don’t click that Nature editors aren’t anonymous droids, but people. Just like them. Well, almost.
More, to entice scientists into our office where we can impale them on red hot skewers show them what the day-to-day life of an editorial office is like. What makes us tick. We do all these things all the time, of course. But there is always so little time, and so many people to see, and someone has to stay home and reject read the manuscripts.
The Network as a whole, but the staff blogs in particular, are doing a great deal to make the process more transparent. You lot don’t seem half as scary now!
Oh, and sign me up for the tour next time I’m back in Blighty. Probably at Christmas.
You’re on, Cath. I’ll
warm up the skewersbe happy to show you around.Thanks for the post Henry. I was never in doubt that you are a
droidhuman. And try to get that ping out of your head.Hear, hear, Henry. Forty-three cheers, from a colleague and fellow “blogger by [N]nature before bloggging was invented” (but from someone who is not a fraction as
pyrotechnictalented with words as you).Great post.
And seriously, I do agree with you about the Network and making the editor’s job, and how Nature journals work, more transparent. I’ve been trying to do this for years in all the years I’ve been at Nature, technology permitting, via brochures on “Getting published in Nature”, the guide to authors, the author and referee website and blogs, and so on. Nature Network is a great milestone on that particular path, though it has many and varied other uses for scientists as well. How Nature works and “our human face” is just a tiny part of its potential.
I don’t know, I usually get worked up at the referees. I just take it out on the editors :)
Serious question though. How much of a risk is there in being too human or too transparent? I have been peripherally involved in a conversation elsewhere where the suggestion was made that by doing the open notebook thing we are leaving ourselves open to deliberately malicious charges of unethical behaviour. And you seem to be suggesting this is a real issue for you. I worry about what this says about our community frankly. Particularly if the ‘few bad eggs’ are the ones who feel they have a right to be published in journals like Nature.
Fantastic, thanks! I’d love to visit and put real-life faces to some names.
How much of a risk is there in being too human or too transparent? ... the suggestion was made that by doing the open notebook thing we are leaving ourselves open to deliberately malicious charges of unethical behaviour.
Yes, Cameron, it’s a risk. It happened to me, once, and it was horrible. I’d rather not go into details, but here’s a summary. A researcher irked that I’d rejected a paper used non-work-related information trawled from the net to suggest that I was biased as an editor.
All one can do in that situation is show that as an editor one has behaved as professionally as possible, without prejudice and without reference to personalities. And that’s what I did.
There are a few bad eggs, but there are bad ‘uns everywhere. I’ve been doing this long enough not to be surprised that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often than it does. So I’m not particularly worried about the community. Science stands or falls through a kind of do-as-you-would-be-done-by system, especially as it concerns peer review. Referees review papers for free, because they’d expect the same service to be accorded to them when they next subit a paper. And in a relatively small community, such as science, the smell of bad eggs soon gets around. After a while we get to know who they are, and where they live.
Tis true that one is inclined to demonize editors, Even though one may simultaneously consider jobs in editing. Because one doesn’t have the stellar CV needed for an academic job, because one keeps getting rejected by Nature!
Thanks for the inisght, its good to know there exists a noticeboard. And how do we get to visit?
And how do we get to visit? Just swing by and say hello. I see you’re at Cal… and we have an office in SF …
After a while we get to know who they are, and where they live.
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so chilling.
Happy birthday, Henry!
Editors have birthdays? You mean, like normal people?
Happy birthday Henry!
I can’t imagine, Cath, that Henry does anything like a normal people.
Hi Henry,
Interesting post, thanks. And happy birthday :-)
-B.
I’ve never had a scientific article rejected because, well, I’m not a scientist, but I’ve got hundreds of fiction rejections filed away with names and addresses… that is to say, sometimes one is befuddled by the reasoning behind a rejection. This has to be one of the most befuddling of all:
This initially showed potential, but I felt the author should have concentrated more on moving the story along than dwelling needlessly on other aspects such as the story.
This was not one of Henry’s rejections, I’m proud to report.
Thanks for your kind wishes, folks. Eleventy-one. I really should have had a party. But the kittens had a well-deserved day off, anyway.
@Richard: I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so chilling.
Being an editor has its … ah … compensations.
Great post Henry,
You talk about the tendency of editors to keep their heads down to avoid being sniped at. I think there is also another reason. I think that editors often strive for an aloofness towards scientists as emotional protection. Rejecting work that you personally find interesting, which an editor (especially on a journal like Nature) has to do almost daily, is hard. Rejecting work from people you think of as friends is even worse.
What authors often fail to realise is that their manuscript will be handled by the journal’s editor who is most interested in the subject of their work. The very person who, within the journal, would most like to see it published. The editor who handles and your work can get personally invested in it. Acceptance or rejection is felt by editors too, even if not to the same extent as the author, and they are rejecting and (occasionally) accepting ”their” manuscripts multiple times a day. Editors need that emotional distance just to keep sane.
In the talk I sometimes have given on “How to get published in …..” I try to drive the point about not abusing editors home with the following comment:
The Editor is your only friend …...
... and even she doesn’t like you very much.
‘Mole’ has some good comments on this.
Too tired (and too much Southern Comfort to care) to look up the links. Look through back issues of J Cell Sci.
Rejecting work that you personally find interesting, which an editor (especially on a journal like Nature) has to do almost daily, is hard. Rejecting work from people you think of as friends is even worse.
You’re quite right, but I don’t think aloofness – keeping a distance between editors and authors – is the only strategy, nor even necessarily the right one.
If I could encapsulate the whole editor/author dynamic in one simple concept, it would be something like this: authors desperately want to know why their papers are rejected, and what goes on inside the Black Box. In which case, editors should give them as much information as possible, including personal information.
In my experience, authors will accept a decision, even a bad one, if they know who’s making the decision. This is proven in the breach by the fact that authors like to deal with a named editor, and really hate it when their manuscript is handled by several different editors during its stay at a journal.
Having been an editor at Nature for a very long time, I know a lot of authors and referees personally, and they know me. This means – among other things – that there is a perception in the world out there of the kinds of submissions in my general area that are likely to succeed, and which will not. This means that those who know me best will probably have a higher success rate (even though I am a lot tougher on mss from friends to avoid any possible bias), because they are familiar with me, and by extension, Nature, and how it works.
And there is the personal touch, much-derided but extremely valuable. Here is an analogy. When you call your bank, say, you want to speak to a real person, not a machine. If it’s a real person, you want to speak to a person in this country rather than in a call center overseas. This isn’t racism – it’s a matter of shared familiarity with cultural values. The actual service you’ll get from either will be the same, but you’ll feel happier as a customer if you’re dealing with someone you ‘know’.
Finally, the personal approach makes my job as an editor much more enjoyable. I’d much rather be dealing with ‘friends’ rather than ‘customers’. And if you happen to know that this or that distinguished and otherwise ferocious professor is a fan of This is Spinal Tap or The Lord of the Rings or the works of H. P. Lovecraft – it’s so much more fun, and you have lots more things to talk about than the same old release of calcium from intracellular stores which, you’ll admit, gets rather boring pretty quickly (so shoot me).
Henry,
I’m not saying that the aloofness is right, but it is common. I’m completely with you on the personal involvement approach. I always tried to be a ‘friendly’ editor. I’m just saying that such an approach can be a rough ride.
Henry, are you saying that I worry too much? :)
And just to add to chorus, happy birthday! Or was it yesterday now?
@Cameron: yes; thank-you; and yesterday!
Oh, in that case Henry – a belated happy birthday, and sorry for missing it!
I don’t really have anything to add about the actual post, other than to ask if a special guided tour of the Nature offices will be organised to coincide with the Science Blogging
meetpiss-up.Henry’s skin is wearing thin in places? Seems like this is the second post where he hints that he’s under fire.
Here’s a water bucket.
I remember the delight I felt when a colleague in my Ph.D. lab met a Nature editor at a conference in the poster session. Going around and being human is a great public relations investment for y’all. When I met folks from Cell Press at a thing sponsored by HHMI in 2002 it was also enlightening. It’s not so much a “they’re human” as a “they’d talk to me?”
I agree: I far prefer having a dialogue with an identifiable editor. Even if the paper gets rejected in the end. There is always something to take home if you can get an answer in the second round after the form letter, and usually I can at least have that with polite inquiry.
Happy birthday, 364 days early!
Excuse me for having misplaced my prepositions (under/on). Been around the French too much.
@Chris: I agree, and that any strategy has its disadvantages as well as its advantages. However, my view remains that scientists like an approachable editor and that this ultimately reaps dividends for the journal.
@Bob: a Nature visit to concide with the blogging conference? Sounds like a splendid plan to me. Any views on this Nature colleagues? Matt? Maxine?
@Heather – wearing this in places? Sure, like a threadbare old sofa! And anyway, when we editors mix with you sciency types, some of the paranoia does tend to rub off… :)
I meant ‘thin’. Doh. Proofread, Proofread, Proofread.
I thought this was a very interesting and revealing post – and applaud your candour and courage. As the saying goes, the tragedy of the human condition is that no-one can feel anyone else’s pain. I guess we all think we suffer the most and it is good have a dialogue so that we at least get an inkling of the view from the other side. As a working scientist I have plenty of experience of the pain of rejection (and the joy of acceptance, I hasten to add!) but rarely have I had any real sense of the editor’s side of the transaction when a manuscript is turned down, beyond the blandly courteous letter wishing you better success at another journal. So, thanks.
For another day, I think there is plenty of blog mileage in the phenomenon of failure being an intrinsic part of a life in science, something that distinguishes it from many other professional careers…
For another day, I think there is plenty of blog mileage in the phenomenon of failure being an intrinsic part of a life in science, something that distinguishes it from many other professional careers…
That’s an interesting point, and something that’s eminently bloggy. It occurred to me that young scientists aren’t nearly prepared enough for the frustrations of failure. All that schoolchildren hear about when they come across science are the big discoveries, and it’s easy to get the impression that scientists are always successful. If your idea of science is gleaned mainly from the popular press, you’d think that Professor Trellis has an idea for a cure for cancer on Monday, tests it on Tuesday, finds that it works on Wednesday, publoishes it on Thursday, and receives a Nobel on Friday. So when young scientists find the road both hard and stony, it’s not surprising that they become disillusioned and depressed, and, feeling that it’s all their own fault, leave the profession to become Nature editors.
And when they don’t get that rare position as a Nature editor, they go become sales reps for one of the companies they used to shower with their advisor’s grant funds.
But I agree that a key part of surviving as a scientist is to be able to find the silver lining.