The Lonely Pipette : helping scientists do better science

TLP #9 : Telling compelling stories - Magdalena Skipper

Jonathan Weitzman & Renaud Pourpre Season 1 Episode 9

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Last summer, we were honored to host Magdalena Skipper, Editor of Nature, to share her tips with the community. When Nature announced its new Open Access policy in November 2020, we asked her to come back for another interview in January 2021, to discuss these specific issues. This episode is in two parts: the classic interview with Magdalena sharing her stories with the community and a second part with an extended discussion on the recent announcements made by Nature. As a consequence, this episode is longer than usual, but we believe that it includes  enriched content that you will appreciate.

In this episode Magdalena Skipper tell us about her role at Nature and her personal thoughts about editing, publishing and communicating science

  • Magdalena offers tips to authors, including thinking about why you want to share your story, what the message of the paper is and who the audience is
  • We discuss a metaphor for the publishing process in which the author feels like a Medieval knight throwing the manuscript over the castle wall
  • Magdalena sees herself more as a facilitator and reminds us that every stakeholder in the process is human
  • She stresses that editors and publishers need to work to make the publishing process more transparent
  • She makes the point that the objective of peer review is to make the paper better and we talk about new models for publishing and sharing data
  • We discuss how impact factors can be mis-used and what alternative metrics exist
  • Magdalena tells us how she feels as the first woman editor at Nature and about prizes for women scientists. 


She mentions these journals and institutions :

    Mentoring in Science Award

To find out more about Magdalena and her journal



To find out more about Renaud :


To find out more about Jonathan :


To learn more about the soundtrack :
Music by Amaria - Lo

To find out more about Renaud and Jonathan :

More about the soundtrack :
Music by Amaria - Lovely Swindler https://soundcloud.com/amariamusique/