ENCODS 2016: An Insight Into the Publishing Process

ENCODS 2017 will also offer a number of workshops. One of our students attended the "Publishing Process" workshop last year:

The ENCODS 2016 program contained inspiring keynote lectures from various neuroscience fields, interesting talks by PhD students, lunch poster sessions, various workshops to choose from and offered, last but not least, a great opportunity to meet fellow students from 35 different countries. 

Publishing in a Top Journal
An especially interesting part of the program was the workshop “The Publishing Process” held by Alexander Arguello, Associate Editor of Nature Neuroscience. He gave us a professional insight into the processes of publishing and editing and was ready to discuss associated problems. He opened the workshop with a brief history of scientific publication and then explained the editing process at Nature Neuroscience, which is coordinated by eight editors. They receive and evaluate altogether about 250 papers per month and decide on rejection or review – at the end of this process, approximately 10% of the submitted articles are accepted. Besides considering the interest of the article for the typical reader of the journal, the assessment is mainly based on the abstract, focusing on clarity, novelty, scientific benefit and a plausible concept of the study. 

Good data visualization is key

Considerable focus is also placed on graphs and pictures, which should clearly convey the message of the paper without needing the actual text – nice images are always a plus! In the end, each editor alone, sometimes after consultation with his or her colleagues, has the final say on whether a paper goes into review or is sent back to the author. We concluded this part of the workshop by evaluating various abstracts that had actually once been sent to Nature Neuroscience for their chance to be published. This was not always easy to do at first glance!

Do We Still Need Printed Journals?
During the course of the workshop, we also discussed the problems and advantages of printed journals versus open access options. As more and more papers are published every year, it is hard and time-consuming to decide which articles are worth reading, especially if they are outside one's own research focus. Printed journals can serve as a “filter” and provide a selection of important articles. However, as they are intended to reach a broader audience (and pursue financial interests), they tend to follow certain trends, as is currently happening with the Zika virus or CRISPR. Moreover, especially widely read journals such as Nature do not always succeed in identifying revolutionary, paradigm-shifting ideas. In fact, those are often published in smaller journals – so don’t feel bad if your paper doesn’t make it into Nature!

 Printed journals tend to follow fads

The majority of the workshop participants were in favor of open access publishing, as it seems to make scientific results more transparent and can provide a platform for constructive discussion. Nonetheless, there is a certain danger of false data interpretation that might lead to a misunderstanding of scientific results by non-experts. A solution to this problem might be a database only open to experts from a particular field of science. 

Scientific Journal Editor As a Job Option
For those who are still undecided whether or not to stay in research after finishing their PhD, it might be worthwhile to know that being an editor in a scientific journal is actually a realistic job option. The work as an editor at Nature Neuroscience consists not only of the above mentioned tasks, but also of travelling to various conferences to keep up with the latest developments in science. So, if you are looking for a job without all the worries about grants, funding and temporary contracts this might be a career option for you. Just go to the website of your favourite journal to check for open positions!

by Anna Pfeffer, PhD Student AG Steiner
This article originally appeared in September 2016 in "Happy Anniversary MedNeuro" 

A Journey to ENCODS 2016:A Conference Organized By and For PhDs

Still time to register for Encods Alicante Spain - the neuroscience conference for doctoral students until March 1st . The main goal of ENCODS meetings is to provide European PhD students with the opportunity to embrace the challenges of their research from a multidisciplinary outlook. Valérie Boujon attended the conference last year and highly recommends to participate

From June 28th to July 3rd 2016, many interesting speakers and neuroscience leaders attended the European Neuroscience Conference by Doctoral Students 2016 (ENCODS) that took place in Helsingør, Denmark and was already the third edition of this young conference. Previously it had taken place in Bordeaux, France in 2013, and in Sesimbra, Portugal in 2015. 

Enrichment on scientific, human, and personal levels

 

It is organized by and for doctoral students in all fields of neuroscience and from all over the world (out of around 100 participants, 35 nationalities and 46 universities were represented!). The meeting offers numerous benefits for young scientists, as it provides a friendly, interactive and intimate environment that enables students to exchange ideas about their research and network in an easier way than at other major scientific conferences.

Beautiful Denmark

The picturesque location was a charming, romantic hotel right by the Baltic seaside in the port town of Helsingør, about 45km away from Copenhagen. The rooms were tastefully decorated and each one was shared by two participants who initially did not know each other, strategically placed by the organizers to encourage social interactions from the very beginning. The program was well-organized to make use of the available time and consisted of a combination of keynote lectures, students’ talks, workshops and diverse social activities. There was just no time to feel bored.

Plenty of Fascinating Science

The keynote lectures were given by renowned scientists, such as Dr. Randall Platt, who shared with us how he developed the Cas9 mouse during his PhD at MIT; Dr. Tania Rinaldi Barkat, who gave us insight about her research in understanding the development and function of the auditory cortex; and Prof. Poul Nissen, who talked about his boundless knowledge of the structures and mechanisms of membrane transporters in the brain. All the same, the time for students’ talks was not overlooked and ranged from alcohol addiction to rhythmicity of medial septal neurons and neuroimaging of cognitive reserve. Typical poster sessions were substituted by “speed dating lunches”, during which participants had the opportunity to share knowledge and converse about their posters informally over lunch. A number of workshops were also offered, covering topics such as motivation and self-management, presentation skills, the publishing process (see page 17) and scientific creativity.

Board Games, Banquets, and Castles

In the evenings, after gourmet dinners, we were entertained with some nicely organized social activities. On the first evening, a scientific version of the board game Clue was on the menu, during which teams had to find out who the murderer of an unfortunate scientist was, what type of weapon had been used and in which part of the lab the crime had been committed. In order to answer these questions, the different teams had to collect a maximum of points and clues by answering some tricky questions, writing a song and solving a puzzle. 

Neuroscience meets... Shakespeare?

The second evening was a real surprise: a guided night tour of the Kronborg Castle, which is Denmark’s most famous castle, where the play Hamlet by Shakespeare was set. The Renaissance castle was built by the Danish King Eric VII in 1420 and used to be Denmark’s most powerful castle, as it controlled the entrance way to the Baltic Sea and collected toll from the many ships navigating through it. The castle’s ballrooms were some of the greatest in Europe at the time and Frederik II, together with his young wife, would hold huge banquets during which each guest would be served 24 dishes! The third and last evening was not as hedonistic as the times of the Kings of Kronborg, but still pretty enjoyable as it started with a gala dinner set around large round dining tables, softly covered with pristine white tablecloths. This was followed by a dancing “White & Black” Ball, accompanied by salsa and 90’s hits.

Not To Be Missed

Those three days were definitely a blast, as they were not only an enrichment at the scientific, but also at the human and personal levels. They helped me open my mind and widen my knowledge about neuroscience's unfamiliar domains. The workshops helped me train my communication skills and gave me insight about what it is like to work as an editor for a scientific journal (see page 19). Plus, I had the chance to meet extraordinary fellow PhD students that turned into international friendships! Hence, I highly recommend that all the MedNeuro PhD students take part in next year’s ENCODS, which will be held in Alicante, Spain ... or in 2018 right here in Berlin!

by Valérie Boujon, PhD Student AG Endres
This article originally appeared in September 2016 in "Happy Anniversary MedNeuro"