I’ve handled the review of > 1000 papers at @nature. Over time, you notice aspects of presentation on which reviewers tend to comment. In the interests of minimizing hassles during review, I offer the following suggestions (a bit targeted to climate papers).
Double space: make it easy on the reader (and editor) by double spacing the entire text, including references and figure legends.
Use big fonts: again, make the paper easy to read. Tracking 30 words across one line in a tiny font is hard, especially if you are reading for hours at a time. Instead, use a font that provides about 12-15 words per line of text.
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I just finished reading @nature’s special issue content on racism in science. I found it powerful, depressing, uplifting, fascinating, and inspirational. In the hopes that I can tempt you to check out the wide content, here’s a quick🧵on all the content.nature.com/immersive/d428…
Editorial by Melissa Nobles, @lizwathuti, Chad Womack, and Ambroise Wonkam: racism in science was (and is) dehumanizing, exploitative, exclusionary, and often hidden. Institutions need decolonization, inclusion, restorative justice, and reconciliation. nature.com/articles/d4158…
New Feature by @Melba_Newsome on Black and Hispanic computer scientists. Representation has been and remains low. One result: algorithmic biases. Pipeline problems start young; community-building and mentoring needed; successful case studies exist. nature.com/articles/d4158…
Ever wonder about the scope of climate research published in @nature? Here are the papers published in 2021 I handled as climate science editor. Two threads. Here's part 2 on modern+future.
Much less than in past years on ice and sea level. Here's 1/3, an exhaustive quantification of global glacier mass loss, with sharply reduced uncertainties. nature.com/articles/s4158…
Community effort to estimate global mass loss from land ice by 2100, using statistical emulators: looks like no more than 50 cm under worst-case scenarios. nature.com/articles/s4158…
Ever wonder about the scope of climate research published in @nature? Here are the papers published in 2021 I handled as climate science editor. Two threads. Here's part 1 on paleoclimate.
Starting with the last glacial maximum: reanalysis of noble gas records (a pretty direct and unbiased indicator of temperature) show *land* climate was ~ 6 C colder than present. nature.com/articles/s4158…
Then, a data assimilation, full-field reconstruction of global temperatures for the past 24,000 yrs every 250 yrs. 🤯🤯 nature.com/articles/s4158…
We receive quite a few submissions applying some flavor of ML/AI to weather forecasting. Most we decline, because the general point has been made that the technique works, and at least for @nature there usually isn't a case for another demonstration.
This one was different. First because it addressed a long-standing challenge in NWP. Second - and really intriguing for me - is that a key evaluation came from human weather forecasters, who judged the deep learning forecasts to be more useful/realistic than other approaches.
Thread. @nature encourages authors to recommend and exclude reviewers. My personal views on the strategies that are likely to increase/decrease the chances of your recommendations being taken up ... #peerreview#scicomm#climatetwitter
What to do …
Recommend scientists with minimal connections to the author group. One could argue that your previous co-authors, advisors, etc. will be familiar with your work and are therefore well placed to comment. But I will worry about a personal COI.
Thread. @nature has a huge amount of content. Confused about what our various categories mean? You’re not alone! Sure we have a guide to authors, but it is, ahem, a bit formal. Here’s a blast through our various categories.
First, content that is not normally submitted by scientists (i.e. we write ourselves, or commission) …
Editorials. Wide ranging but often we discuss a timely issue and tell someone or something what we think they should do. nature.com/articles/d4158…