Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, and South Africa in his first post-doc, he now works at the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Jefferson has a love of all things water-related and blends hydrology, geomorphology, geology, and climate change in her work. She has a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and is now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.This month saw the launch of the first issue of Nature's latest specialist offshoot, Nature Geoscience. This is a monthly publication presumably designed to act as a clearing house for those contributions which don't quite have the pizzazz to make it into the flagship.
Many scientists regard 'Getting a Nature (or Science) publication' as somewhat akin to finding the Holy Grail - or at least, their impact-factor obsessed departmental administrators do. As such, they are willing to put up with the quirks of the whole process - the whims of the Nature editors as to whether your opus is "sexy" enough to send out for review in the first place, the eye-wateringly tight word limit, which results in jargon-heavy prose with the clarity of Limpopo River water even for someone quite well versed in the discipline (with an additional trend nowadays for 'Supplementary Information' which would be more accurately described as 'Quite Essential Information, Actually, Which Our Paper Does Not Stack Up Without').
It's certainly nice to see that Geology is considered to be important enough to have it's own little Nature subjournal, and perhaps this expansion will give geologists not working on palaeoclimate studies (yes, we do actually still exist) with a bit more of a look in. The question is, will getting published in this offshoot have a similar cachet as mother Nature itself? More importantly, will administrators and research assessments see it that way? Additionally, although two stories in the first issue have got some coverage (see here and here, as well as two currently only available online (see here and here), it remains to be seen whether the media will pay much attention to stuff published in this particular journal.
What do people reckon? I'd also be interested to hear what people from fields with more established Nature offshoots (there's a Physics one, a Genetics one and a Neuroscience one, amongst others) think of their impact and effectiveness.
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Isn't the launch of these offshoots just a natural (necessary?) response from Nature to be able to publish the papers that meet their criteria? The number of papers submitted and published per annum is growing at break-neck speed, so the rejection rate has to increase for any journal that has only a certain number of pages available. The response would then be to increase page numbers or branch out and create offshoot journals in sub-disciplines. The Americal Geophysical Union essentially began this in the 60's or 70's - before that Journal of Geophysical Research was only one journal, now there's 6 or something like that (Oceans, Atmosphere, Earth Surface etc.). As a physical geographer I am excited that geoscientists now get their own Nature journal - journalists generally pay attention to results from Nature (including their offshoots) so I'm hoping that it might help journalists and the media in general to become more aware of geoscientific research and its importance.
Posted by: Ole | January 22, 2008 9:54 AM
I wouldn't claim to be part of a groundswell of new thinking, but my own initial response to almost any article in Nature or Science is to treat it the same as I would an infomercial: claims presumed false until I see supporting communications or have a chance at my own interpretation of the data presented. I still read it and check it, of course, knowing that people who have high-impact discoveries are going to try and publish there first. At the same time, I am more skeptical of those articles than ones in, say Biochemistry. This is not just the result of data-falsification woes; in structural biology at least there is excellent evidence in favor of skepticism.
As far as media and scholarly attention, I think the other Nature specialty journals have established themselves as having fairly high quality, but publication in these sources certainly has none of the cachet or impact of a publication in the flagship. I'd be surprised if Nature Geoscience ended up being any different. In my view of the biomolecular NMR field at least, a publication in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology is definitely a tier or two below the flagships, and likewise a step or two above specialty journals like J. Biomol. NMR or J. Mag. Res., in terms of impact and acclaim. It's not significantly better than getting into Biochemistry or J. Mol. Biol..
Posted by: Michael Clarkson | January 22, 2008 10:01 AM
A friend who has been involved with editing Geology had a different question: will geoscientists with short, cutting-edge papers submit them first to Nature Geoscience as opposed to Geology, because they think that administrators will respect anything with Nature in the title more? That's a concern for me, because my library can afford electronic access to Geology, but not to Nature... and I don't know if we'll end up getting Nature Geoscience.
I would rather have the important publications in cheaper journals (like those published by GSA and AGU), or in open-access journals.
Posted by: Kim | January 22, 2008 11:31 AM
I'm not sure what I think yet. I'm going to see what kind of stuff comes out in Nature Geoscience over the next half-year or so.
Posted by: BrianR | January 22, 2008 11:31 AM
Michael - are you talking about the intrinsic uncertainty involved when you're intentionally publishing stuff at the very cutting edge, or are you implying some sort of systematic over-hyping of conclusions?
Kim - I've been struck by the overlap with Geology too... presumably the carrot is that you would submit initially to Nature itself, and hence have some chance of getting your work in there, with Nature Geoscience as the fallback. If enough people think like that, then Geology would suffer, which would be a real shame.
Posted by: Chris Rowan | January 22, 2008 12:16 PM
Chris - My answer to your question would have to be "both". Cutting-edge results always carry some degree of uncertainty, which can often be asssessed by viewing the raw data (at least if you are an expert in the field). Unfortunately, the space constraints in the flagship journals often make it difficult to include that data except, as you mention, in the essential "supplementary" material.
At the same time, I feel that, due to the editorial desires of these journals, "wow factor" has been allowed to compensate for weaknesses in data or conceptualization at times. The space constraints (particularly in terms of moving methods sections to online supplements) contribute to this problem by making it more difficult for impartial reviewers or readers to identify weaknesses the editorial staff overlooked. This is a critical problem because these journals are very influential, and incorrect results published in them can cause substantial harm, as the Geoffrey Chang affair showed.
The question about harming Geology is an interesting one. My understanding with Nature's field-specific journals is that they don't share editorial process with the flagship. So there's no "carrot" in that you don't save any time with Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. by getting rejected from Nature, except in terms of perhaps already having your article in an appropriate format.
Posted by: Michael Clarkson | January 22, 2008 1:11 PM
I think the idea of having a journal dedicated to geology under the Nature umbrella is exciting. I think there is a lack of discipline-wide, highly regarded journals in geology/ geoscience and it is my hope that Nature Geoscience will contribute to this. As most of us I usually skim Nature and Science when they come out. Partly to find out whether something wildly important happened in my own field, but just as much to get a general impression of what is going on in other subfields. Obviously there is only so much space in the mother journal to be taken up by geology papers, and the ones that appear there are skewed towards climate research, so getting a full journal of only geoscience seems like a great idea to me. Geology is a fine journal, but I don't see the problem with a bit of competition.
Posted by: saxifraga | January 22, 2008 1:38 PM
Say what you want about the actual scientific content in journals like Science or Nature, but I think most scientists feel they have an important role in scientific publishing. And usually the science is important. With that said, I have heard a lot of talk from other geologists around my department (and no, they do not work on climate-related science) who plan on submitting to Nature Geoscience, or already have. I think a lot of people are excited about it whether or not their "impact-factor obsessed departmental administrators" take note or not.
Also, I would venture to say that a journal can still be making a significant impact without appearing in the press. Media coverage is only part of the story--the scientists themselves have a bit to say as well.
Posted by: Nick | January 22, 2008 3:48 PM
Chris,
I reread my post and it sounded a bit confrontational and I did not mean for it to. I think most of the points you make are valid and worthy of consideration. I often think the science in those big-impact journals are just advertisements and not very useful technical papers. However, they usually raise good questions and are provocative, and I also enjoy the pre-scientific content the journals provide. Hopefully Nature Geoscience will have a similar home in our field(s) of research too.
Enjoy the blog!
Posted by: Nick | January 22, 2008 4:23 PM
Nick - don't worry, I didn't read your comment that way. I'd also like to emphasise that my comments above shouldn't be taken as overt hostility towards the Nature stable - they do, as you say, fill an important role in publishing, although I often think that that role is slightly misunderstood by the people running departments nowadays. And a new, potentially high-profile geology journal is always welcome. I'm just currently unsure where this new journal will fit in the grand scheme of things academically.
Michael - I'm not sure how the system works, but I've heard of at least one instance where a paper was submitted to Nature and turned down with the suggestion that it be resubmitted to Nature Geoscience.
Posted by: Chris Rowan | January 23, 2008 3:19 AM