Live Chat #3: Publishing in Nature: Our Experience from Latin America- January 29, 11 a.m. EST

[ccheatham]

Join tomorrow as Dr. Gregory Quirk from the University of Puerto Rico, School of Medicine leads a discussion on the following paper:

Do-Monte, Quinones-Laracuente, Quirk (2015) A temporal shift in the circuits mediating retrieval of fear memory. Nature, 519:460-463.

[gregoryjquirk]

Quirk chat about publishing.pdf (1.2 MB)

Hello everyone! Welcome to our webinar chat on publishing. My name is Greg Quirk and I run a fear research lab in Puerto Rico. In 2015, we published a paper in Nature (Do Monte et al.). This was the work of a post-doc from Brazil and a grad student form Puerto Rico. Attached are some slides talking about the process of publishing this paper. We can chat about the science or the process. I am sure that many of you have thought about (or achieved) high profile publications. Its not as hard as you may think! Lets have a good discussion over the next hour.

[gregoryjquirk]

Quirk chat about publishing.pdf (1.2 MB)

[Raquel Maria Campos]

How long until Nature responde to yoir paper, after submission?

[gregoryjquirk]

The timeline is in slide #7 of my uploaded presentation. after submitting, it was 2 weeks fro it to go out to review, and then another 4 weeks to get the reviews back.

[Manuel Solino]

Hi Greg!
I was wondering about the necessary elements for publishing in a magazine with such high standards.
What would you say is the key? Woud you say that every topic has the same chances?

[luluara]

Hello Professor Quirk.I am seeing the slides and it seems that the editor saw the study in a poster presentation before you submitted the paper. Is this correct?

[joselisa]

Dear. Dr. Quirk,
Thank you for the opportunity,
I would like to ask what is the main factor one should keep in mind when writing a paper to be published in Nature in comparison to other high quality/impact journals. If there was only factor, which one would it be?
Thank you,
Joselisa
Universidade Federal do ABC
São Paulo, Brazil

[gregoryjquirk]

Hi Solino. Good question. What these journals are interested in is novelty or an unexpected finding. It is should be somewhat surprising or “arresting” as they say on their website. Its hard tro say what fields they are targeting, but it needs to be a potentially groundbreaking finding.

[gregoryjquirk]

Yes, the editors attend many scientific meetings, and they “shop around” for interesting science. The editor in our case saw our findings at 2 meetings: the SFN, and a small conference on neural plasticity, prior to our submitting. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT to present your findings at many meetings and get it out there. Dont hide it…

[Raquel Maria Campos]

how was this approach from Nature editor?

[joselisa]

How was the approach to the other lab that had a related research? Which advice would you give us to convince other group to join forces when the data is on the same subject?

[erzimmer]

Dr. Quirk, congratulations for this remarkable achievement. If I understood well, you spoke with the Nature’s editor by skype. Is this right? How was it?

[gregoryjquirk]

In one case, we emailed the editor to inform them of our upcoming poster at SfN meeting, which they could visit if they wanted. As you can see on slide #7, we presented the work at 5 meetings, prior to it appearing in Nature.

[luluara]

This is very interesting. Didn’t know that. People here in Brazil often talk about prejudice against the research made here. Do you think this is real? I mean, in a conference, an important editor would prefer to visit an european or a north-american poster ?

[gregoryjquirk]

No, we spoke at our poster at the SfN meeting.

[gregoryjquirk]

Joselisa - This was very interesting because we discovered at the Gordon conference that another lab was doing something similar. The PI and I talked and decided to submit at the same time, rather than compete. It worked out well, as we kept in contact during the year prior to submission. This depends on the personalities of the PI’s…

[cebacio]

This is not just with brazilians. In the last version of LATP a north-American professor told us he submitted a paper which the reviso said it would be preferable that they hired a native English speaker to make the English ‘sound’. And this just because hr is a professo at a university in Mexico.
I’d say there’s a general skepticism (not to say prejudice ) about papers coming from below equador line.

[gregoryjquirk]

I dont think there is as much of this prejudice and many people think. Editors are interested in novelty and they like it when excellent work comes from unexpected places. But it must be excellent work…

[angiesa0135]

Good morning Dr. Quirk, congratulations for the paper. I was wondering if the editor of Nature are easy to contact in a sfn?

[gregoryjquirk]

About English, yes, the English and the writing have to be superb. Even for me this is a challenge. That is why it is VERY IMPORTANT to have several people read and critique your ms before submitting. You should have some native english speakers take the time to go through the writing and the logic flow. Like a “pre-review”… we do this.

[Raul Rodriguez Cruces]

But not only excellent work, nowadays it looks like high impact publications prefer to publish multidisciplinary papers that studies a same problem from different perspectives. How do you think latin american laboratories should start collaborating in order to get more quality inter-disciplinary work?

by the way hello to everyone!

[luluara]

Prof. Quirk, you have several other publications in important journals in addition to nature. What do you think is the importance of collaborations to achieve this success?

[gregoryjquirk]

You ask good questions. Yes, this kind of shifting may apply to other types of memory. This field is really just starting. We have spent so much time on the establishing of memory, but little on the evolution of memories with the passage of time. Reconsolidation field has looked at this - what effect retrieval has on the trace itself.

[CelesteR]

Hi Dr. Quirk
I think this is a good advice. What other important advices could you give us for publishing in high impact journals?

[gregoryjquirk]

Raul - yes, most papers in these high-impact journals have multiple labs involved with multiple techniques. In our case, it was from only my lab using 3 techniques. That is still possible to do, but is less common. Collaborations should occur between schools, between labs in a school, and between members of a lab, to answer more questions in a single paper.

[Raquel Maria Campos]

which was the highlight in his work that led him to be published in Nature ? technical or scientific issue?

[cebacio]

Dr. Quirk

My question, I believe, goes a bit below what would be necessary to publish in Nature, but what would be necessary for Latin America to increase the rate of doing so.
As you said, a lot of interactivity is necessary before even submitting the paper to the journal (and I don’t limit myself to nature ). But behind this interaction with the community there is the culture valuing the interaction as a positive and necessary thing (making your case with the editor and getting the sense of how other labs are on your finding, as you mentioned ).
I don’t know how much I speak for Latin America, but at least in Brasil and in our community (our society and our daily lives in the lab) our actions are a lot more based on the caution of showing our results “too soon”, under the fear of being scooped or similar, which is counterproductive to the case you made above.
EDITED- MY QUESTION: how to change this ‘fear culture’ in the labs and community so as to improve interaction and, therefore, the quality of the work? Which you said, in many cases HAS to involve many labs.
In my humble opinion, this is the greatest barrier we have as a scientific community.

[gregoryjquirk]

celeste - everyone wants to publish high, but it depends on the data. sometimes you will get data that you did not expect (or even want) but it may open new doors and be very novel. I think you should be open to things that you did not expect, that you did not predict. Let the data “speak” to you…

[luluara]

Just a curiosity. Have you ever had a paper rejected from nature/nature neuroscience/science or Cell?
As I am reading your posts, your saying about letting the data speak to you gives me lots of hope, since not confirming the hypothesis previous made is a very common thing… and we tend to think, in grad school, that this is the end of the world. =)

[gregoryjquirk]

Fore this paper, it was more scientific issue that got attention. Yes, we used optogenetics, but it was the fact that we could silence circuits at different times in the same rat, that demonstrated without a doubt that retrieval circuits shift with time.

[gregoryjquirk]

Cebacio - very important points. We need to reduce the “fear culture”. Ironically, those who are afraid of “being scooped” will have more difficulty generating excitement and high impact papers than those sharing their findings at talks and conferences. Science really is about sharing ideas and thoughts and, yes, data. Its not about hiding or stealing…

[gregoryjquirk]

The philosopher Karl Popper said that if your data confirms your hypothesis, then in a way, you have learned nothing new. Its when we find that our hypothesis was wrong that we start to discover really new things… This is why it is important to do the “critical experiment” that could potentially falsify your hypothesis…

[gregoryjquirk]

Interesting thoughts. Yes, the regenerated new synapses will make connections, but those synapses do not have the plasticity and memory of the older connections. But if memory shift with time across circuits, these new connections could get potentiated during retrieval, and be “brought into” the circuit.

[cebacio]

I guess this fear culture is (was) nurtured and passed on in the generations from PI to students.
Still, as you talk to students possibly facing this scenario, what is your advice to us to counter it? As phd students and postdocs, how can we act before the community so as to stimulate interaction in a community in avoidance behavior?
EDIT- I generalized above, sorry for that. I just meant that the frequency of this is humongous.

[gregoryjquirk]

OK everyone. We are at hour now, and I have to eat lunch! You are welcome to continue this discussion about publishing together on the site, or with me via email (gregoryjquirk@gmail.com). Mucho suerte con sus publicacions, y sigue enforzando neurociencia en America Latina!

[luluara]

Adios! Thank you for your time.

[Raul Rodriguez Cruces]

I think we can start with free talk between us. Creating forum to talk and share ideas, experiments, ways of analysis. I know it is a difficult task but we should start taking place in these multidisciplinary talks.

[Raul Rodriguez Cruces]

Thank you for your advice!

[luluara]

I have to do stereotaxic surgery Must leave, unfortunately.

[gregoryjquirk]

Cebacio - start your own groups of students/post-docs to meet regularly for j clubs and to discuss data. Your culture of sharing will grow with you and eventually replace the old afraid culture…
Mucho suerte…

[Manuel Solino]

Thanks a lot Dr. Quirk!

[erzimmer]

Many thanks Professor. It was a very interesting chat.

[Maria A. González-González]

Dear Dr., thank you for the very interesting discussion, very usefull advices,

[thaysbr]

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Know from someone’s personal experience helps to encourage and demystify the process.

[cebacio]

Thanks for the advice and the chat.