Career option: Editor!

Thursday, 14 January 2010 14:23

Last Wednesday I joined the seminar of Helen Pickersgill. Helen did her PhD at the NKI-AvL followed by a postdoc position in the United States. Instead of continuing her scientific career she chose for a job as an editor. After one year as Scientific Editor for Developmental Cell at Cell Press, she became consultant scientific editor at Science magazine. Her seminar with the title “An insider’s guide to getting your paper published: Insights from a Science editor”, was joined by a huge crowd of scientists, all eager to learn the secrets that lead to publication in Science. Besides a lot of tricks and tips that might increase your chances of publication in Science she gave a clear picture about her daily activities. As expected one of her major activities is sending standard rejection letters, as only a couple percent out of 11000 manuscripts that are sent in every year are accepted for publication. Before rejection or acceptance, the editor is responsible for an important, and in my opinion, difficult selection process. First the manuscript is judged by the editor, with two possible outcomes: 1) the editor is positive so the paper is sent out for review, 2) the paper is rejected. Before sending a paper out for review the editor has to find three suitable reviewers. As Helen explained it is important to build a network of reliable reviewers from which she can choose. To maintain her network and to stay in touch with research she travels the world to join scientific congresses. Picking a reviewer is not a straight forward process as she has to consider aspects like competition; you don’t want your manuscript reviewed by a competitor, but also the quality and speed of a reviewer are important factors to consider. After reviewing, the majority of manuscripts are rejected and only 27% of the manuscripts that are re-reviewed are finally accepted. A lot of people don’t accept a rejection so Helen has to spend a lot of time on frustrated researchers that give it another try by sending in a letter or even make a phone call to explain why the editor and reviewers are wrong in their decision. Her advice was to stop this as it will not lead to publication. To me it seems that being an editor is interesting, because you’ll be on top of the hottest research, travel a lot, and play an important role in deciding which topics are hot or not. On the other hand it would frustrate me that it’s not me, but the reviewers that give suggestions to authors on how to improve their manuscripts. So, if you’re thinking of quitting research maybe a job as editor might be a good option to look for!