Interview


Passion and dedication


Magdalena Skipper reflects on her career and her work as editor-in-chief of Nature


Tell us a little about your background and qualifications... I certainly cannot say that being editor-in- chief of Nature was something I aimed to be as I was growing up. In fact, at some point I wanted to be a


firefighter and then a ballet dancer. But the truth is that from a very early age I knew that biology was my passion. In high school I was especially drawn


to genetics. So I went to University of Nottingham to study genetics for my BSc and then University of Cambridge to do a PhD on a classic genetic model animal, to study sex determination. Like so many PhD students, I knew very well that one day I will have my own lab…. In the end though, I was not completely satisfied, as I could never find the time to read outside my area of study, and there were so many interesting topics in science one could learn more about. It was during my postdoc, at Imperial


Cancer Reasearch Fund (today Cancer Research UK) that I began to think about other ways in which I may fruitfully contribute to the advancement of science. My passion for science meant that I never really contemplated leaving the research community altogether. Having considered a number of possibilities, I thought that the editorial career could be ‘the’ thing for me. So when one day I came across a job advert for an associate editor at Nature Reviews Genetics, very much in the area in which I specialised, I applied. What happened next was this: the journal sent me a set of tests to be done at home; this is something that all Nature Reviews journals do when screening job applicants. The test consisted of a series of tasks you would do as part of


12 Research Information December 2019/January 2020


the role. One of them was, for example, ‘developmentally’ editing a submitted review article to improve the story flow. Another one was to come up with a number of commissions, to effectively create a table of contents for a future issue of the journal; another still was to select some recently published research articles to write a short ‘research highlight’ about, and explain the choice. I had no previous experience in writing nor editing. But I discovered that I enjoyed the test that I had at home so much that by the time I was called for the interview I obviously was imbued with so much enthusiasm that, as I now joke, I left my interviewer no choice but to give me the job. I have never looked back! Although today I do not think of myself as a scientist as such, I feel very strongly that I am part of the research community; I find this very fulfilling and feel very proud that I can make a contribution there.


What have been your career highlights to date? I take pleasure in so many aspects of my job that highlights come on many levels. Perhaps not surprisingly, becoming editor- in-chief of Nature was a true highlight. It is


“Although today I do not think of myself as a scientist as such, I feel very strongly that I am part of the research community”


an incredible honour to be leading Nature. I consider it an honour and a privilege to be the custodian of the journal today. But there have been many highlights, back in the days of Nature Reviews Genetics, being able to bring researchers from different disciplines around an idea of a review article and being told later that they started an entirely new line of collaboration while working on that review. Back in the days when I worked as a


manuscript editor at Nature, I worked with an international consortium on the publication of their project, Encode. To enhance the take-home messages from this vast project, we devised a new publication solution called threads. To highlight new story lines which were not the focus on the main consortium papers, each thread wove together paragraphs, figures or tables from across the standard Encode papers. The approach was tailor- made and despite being adopted by other, similar consortium led-publication efforts, eventually it did not take off but it was a true highlight to have been able to experiment with publishing formats in this way. And the Encode threads became a very popular teaching tool! Being able to train and mentor more


junior colleagues and watch them develop professionally is always a highlight. And although it is hard for me to think of myself as a role model, it is always a highlight if I can inspire young people in science.


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