Dr. Helen Pickersgill shares her exciting scientific journey, from being a successful academic to an editor for leading journals including Science, and finally an independent editor and co-founder of Life Science Editors (LSE) with Dr. Angela Andersen (former editor at Cell).
In a candid interview with Roopsha Sengupta of Club SciWri, Helen discusses the rewards and challenges of being a journal editor and how LSE helps scientists effectively communicate their research findings.
RS: Please tell us about your scientific background.
HP: I view my scientific background as hugely privileged in terms of the broad and exciting scientific topics I worked on and the inspiring and talented scientists I interacted with.
During my Ph.D. at the Paterson Institute in the U.K., I learned to use scanning electron microscopy from one of the leaders in the field, Prof. Terry Allen. We analyzed the structure of the nuclear pore complex, which is a large multi-protein assembly that straddles the nuclear envelope and controls access to two major compartments of the cell.
During my graduate training, I was fortunate to collaborate with Iain Mattaj’s lab at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany. This was a transformative experience for me. Not only did they revel in the process of discovery, but they also taught me to be critical and independent. I utilized these skills during my first Post-doc in Amsterdam with Maarten Fornerod, whom I first met at EMBL. He was also incredibly inspirational and helped me become a successful, published scientist working on the function of three-dimensional chromatin organization in the nucleus. Then, I did another Post-doc at the Whitehead Institute in the U.S., which is probably one of the richest scientific environments in the world. I worked with Thijn Brummelkamp, who is another remarkable scientist, using RNA interference to dissect molecular mechanisms relevant to cancer.
Overall, I have had the fortune to experience first-hand some outstanding scientific discoveries both in and outside the laboratory as an editor.
RS: What motivated you to become a journal editor?
HP: I struggled to find a topic I was interested enough in both theoretically and practically to launch an independent career as a PI. For me, there is a distinction between wanting to discover how the molecules in brain cells direct animal behavior and quite another to perform repetitive experiments with animals over many years in the lab.
After my experiences in high-caliber labs, I just wasn’t convinced I would be good enough. But ultimately, I was reluctant to focus on a single topic when there were so many things to study.
RS: What does a regular workday of an Editor look like?
HP: Very different from the workday of a scientist!
It involves handling the manuscripts that have been assigned to you – so a lot of reading and ultimately deciding whether a manuscript should be sent out for review. If it should, then searching for suitable reviewers and instructing an assistant to start inviting them. If reviewers’ comments have come back on a manuscript, then they need to be carefully read and a decision formulated. In the journals I worked for, all papers were discussed with one or more editor, sometimes in structured meetings, and sometimes more informally.
Very different from the workday of a scientist!
RS: What did you enjoy most about being an Editor?
HP: As a journal editor at Dev Cell, Science and Science Translational Medicine, I loved being exposed to (and learning) so many different scientific topics. I also liked helping scientists – whether getting their paper published in our journal or telling them what was wrong with it to help them publish in another journal. Now, I still get to do these things and provide more help as an independent editor.
I loved being exposed to so many different scientific topics.
RS: What challenges did you face?
HP: In my first few months as a journal editor, I was particularly disappointed that I would no longer make any new scientific discoveries. That was why I had become a scientist – to discover. While I still feel like that, I take pride and joy helping even more scientists around the world better present their discoveries, which compensates somewhat.
Being a journal editor is also an emotional job. For me, I empathized with the scientists whose work I had to reject, since I experienced it several times myself. I knew I had a big responsibility to make the right decision to publish the best science, so I felt a lot of pressure.
The job doesn’t really allow the space or time to relieve that pressure, say by better explaining a decision or working through these conflicts with colleagues and the scientists for a better resolution. It was a difficult balance.
Being a journal editor is also an emotional job.
RS: What skills did you acquire during your academic career that you found most useful as an Editor?
HP: What makes a good scientist also makes a good editor. So, understand the scientific method and how experimental results should come together to support a robust (and valuable) scientific conclusion. Exposure to a broad range of topics also helped me handle different types of manuscripts.
What makes a good scientist also makes a good editor.
RS: You moved on from being an editor at Science to become an independent editor and founder of Life Science Editors (LSE). What does LSE do?
HP: LSE’s overarching mission is to improve science communication, particularly between scientists. We do this primarily by editing manuscripts and grants for scientists around the world to help them communicate their science and discoveries more effectively and ultimately to maximize the impact of their work.
LSE’s overarching mission is to improve science communication, particularly between scientists.
RS: Tell us about LSE’s internship program.
HP: There is little training for scientists on how to write compellingly and best present their results. There is no training for scientists who want to become editors. Yet, both are of fundamental importance. We must understand and appreciate each other’s science, and we need good editors at the journals. For LSE, we recognized this need and took the opportunity to help scientists succeed.
RS: Lastly, what advice can you give to those who are looking to transition into a scientific editor’s role?
HP: The main role of an editor is to decide if a manuscript is in principle suitable for a particular journal. When scientists read papers, they read them to discover something new that is relevant to their own research.
To become an editor, you need to learn to read a paper differently. That is, to identify the main point of a paper, and determine if that has sufficient value for the field, and beyond that field (depending on the journal), and, importantly, to explain why. It sounds obvious, but it isn’t so easy. You will also need to be able to cover a broad range of topics. So get reading!
Interviewed by:
Roopsha Sengupta did her Ph.D. in the Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna and postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge UK, specializing in the field of Epigenetics. Besides science and words, she enjoys spending time with children and painting.
Editor:
The contents of Club SciWri are the copyright of PhD Career Support Group for STEM PhDs (A US Non-Profit 501(c)3, PhDCSG is an initiative of the alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The primary aim of this group is to build a NETWORK among scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs).
This work by Club SciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
