Replies

• Maxine Clarke

  23 November 2007 | 10:21

  These are all very interesting points. I have alerted some of the editors who have been through the process of launching a Nature journal to your question: although I can answer you in broad terms I have not launched a journal myself so do not know precise details.

  Broadly speaking, Nature receives so many manuscripts that it can’t offer to publish, and we have to turn away many perfectly good papers. We keep a track of these, and sometimes it appears that a discipline is in a stage of rapid development or otherwise exciting, and there is consistenly a high number of good papers that we have to, regretfully, turn away. Then an editor will do quite a bit of research, by analysing publications in the area but more importantly by seeking advice from key researchers in the field from all over the world, going to conferences, and other similar activities. I think it is fair to say that every Nature journal we have launched, starting about 15 years ago with Nature Genetics, has achieved excellent editorial success very quickly: they all have very high, often the highest, impact factors in the discipline and in their turn they often receive more excellent submissions than they can publish. They also feature News and Views and other “secondary” material which is very popular.
  A bit more explanation and a complete list of all the Nature journals is here, together with links to their home pages and editorial offices.

  I think your point about the Network community taking part in the development process for a new Nature journal is excellent. One way would be for the editor concerned to create a “hub” for that discipline to discuss ideas, but I am sure there must be others, as it would be great to interact with the scientists who use the Network while working to launch a new Nature journal.

  As to your specific questions—we do already publish the journal Nature Nanotechnology (which has at least two active groups on the Network if you are interested, one is here) and Nature Reports Stem Cells, which does not publish original research but which is a focus for everything in the discipline—and is free! “Nature science and society” might be a bit general, given that Nature has long had a thriving daily online news website and, more recently, The Great Beyond blog, which between them cover everything and have tools for readers to filter for the subjects they want to read—but we do look at particularly hot areas of public interest (as with our Stem Cells publication) and in this light currently publish Nature Reports Climate Change and Nature Reports Avian Flu as (free) web resources on the science-society interface. It will be interesting to see if any other ideas for Nature Reports titles emerge in this forum.

• Ed Gerstner

  23 November 2007 | 13:51

  Having been around near the start of the launch of Nature Materials and intimately involved in the proposal and launch of Nature Physics I can say that no two launches are quite the same. Different communities have different demands, different challenges and even different reading habits. The launch of Nature Physics was predominantly editorially driven, and its conception involved equal parts of ‘pull’ from the community and ‘push’ by a cabal of Nature editors.

  The editors of Nature spend a lot of time interacting directly with the communities they serve, through conferences and lab visits and such. And for several years prior to the launch of Nature Physics we’d regularly be asked by physicists if we had any plans for a sister title dedicated to physics. At the time, the premier journal in the field was Physical Review Letters (which, coincidentally, was originally published by Macmillan), and although this served (and continues to serve) the physics community very well, many in the community wished for an alternative.

  At around the same time, submissions in physics to Nature were increasing as a result of a successful long term campaign to improve Nature’s profile in the physics community (which, despite having published many of the most significant developments in physics, such as the discovery of electron and the neutron, and the invention of the laser, had gotten a reputation as a biology journal). Although this meant Nature was able to publish more and better physics papers, it also meant we had to turn away an ever increasing amount of good work, as Maxine points out. Indeed, in my time as an editor at Nature, I often had to decline papers that I felt demonstrated some really beautiful physics but which nonetheless didn’t quite have the broader significance to command the attention of a wider audience. Turning down papers such as these is perhaps one of the hardest and least pleasurable aspects of the job of an editor. And it I regularly made me wish that we had a home like Nature Physics to recommend them to.

  Moreover, although all of Nature’s editors are deeply passionate about the fields they handle, in the case of physics I fear that passion sometimes spills over into obsession. And with the success of Nature Materials, NPG’s first sister title in the physical sciences, many of us felt strongly that it was high time to launch a journal dedicated to the beauty and splendour that is Physics. So when Phil Campbell suggested that the publishers might finally be open to the idea, we were already chomping at the bit to make it happen.

  There was of course the necessary due diligence of market analysis and author surveys and the like to go through before the eventual green light was given. But having demonstrated such a strong editorial case, I think we (‘we’ being the conspiracy of NPG physics editors) regarded this as little more than red-tape. I’m certainly not sure that we would have taken no for an answer. To us, the launch of Nature Physics was as inevitable as its eventual success.

• Bart Penders

  23 November 2007 | 16:58

  Thanks Maxine – for a more general reply, and thanks Edmund for a more personal account: both messages display the diligence which NPG and its team employs when making such decisions.

  Three comments, to further complicate things…
  First, I have to confess that I did not scan the A-Z list of NPG publications in full, resulting in me missing the “Nature Nanotechnology” – mea culpa.

  Second, Maxine refers to the various Nature Reports Platforms are if they were intermediairies between fully institutionalised fields (with fully fledged journals and the like) and specialisations which are emerging but have not yet reached a “critical mass” in terms of community size and manuscript supply (correct me if I am wrong). Which leads me to hypothesise whether an online preselection of news, data and mauscripts is an “obligatory passage point” or “desired passage point” on the way from “nothing” towards a high-impact journal (to be used as market research tool, education-site for possible editorial employees, name-building, etc.)? (Or could it be used this way – in addition to the contribution the Nature Network Community may have?).

  Third, one of the suggestions I made was “Nature Science & Society”. Maxine, I think you misunderstood me here. For this, I am to be blamed in full, since I did not add a single explanation to it. I am a regular vistor of the “Nature News” website, and occasionally visit the “Great Beyond Blog”, both of which are great reads. However, both exist on the level of a Nature Reports Platform – perhaps even further away from an institutionalised realm. This – I know – requires some explanation. The news website and the blog list brief comments, mention trends and refer to editorials, letters and so forth, addressing issues which could be classified as “Science&Society”. However, it does not (or perhaps very rarely does) links to original research in (1) Policy sciences (2) History of science (only book reports here) (3) Philosophy of science (4) Sociology of science (5) Bioethics and many more themes of which dive deeper into the trends, issues and concerns which NPG editorials mention (with great care, expertise and diligence, I must add) for those who have a more detailed interest in such issues.
  Nature Network lists a number of groups (which are – I am sad to say – mainly dormant) on “Humanities and Social Sciences in Science”, “Science and skepticism”, “Science and Society”, “Bioethics”, and many more, which nevertheless suggest an interest in such matters.

  Publication politics and strategies – they never get tiresome ;-)

• Maxine Clarke

  26 November 2007 | 09:46

  Thanks, Ed, for your fascinating account!
  And thanks for your further points, Bart.
  I think you and I have a similar understanding of the Nature Reports series, but I am not directly involved in these projects, so I’ll alert one of the editors to see if they have more details.

  On the “science and society”—you make good points. Nature does not publish humanities or social science (unless there is a direct overlap with some aspect of basic science). I believe the Palgrave journals, also owned by Macmillan, publish in these areas so maybe we should try to get their editors to join these network groups you mention, Bart.

  Nature itself in its weekly news section does regularly feature the other topics you suggest, eg bioethics, scepticism, but it is true that we don’t (yet?) have an online hub for these topics. So far as I know, we have no plans to do so on these particular subjects, but NPG is full of ideas and I am sure that new websites or other initiatives devoted to aspects in the science/society sphere will happen. And the Network is a great place for specific ideas to be suggested and discussed.