The cold air in the morning of December 14th did not cool the heat in the meeting room of the WHU Office of International Affairs. In this room, the meeting between the visiting editorial team of Nature and the attending representatives of science-related disciplines in WHU was successfully held.
Nature magazine
First published on November 4th 1869 in the UK, Nature has now become one of the most renowned multidisciplinary scientific journals in the world. There are few academic journals remaining like Nature which publishes original research across a wide range of scientific fields. Its visiting editorial team has two representatives--Dr. Ed Gerstner, the executive editor of Nature in Greater China and Ms. Yan Zijun, the manager of cooperative relations with public organizations.
The meeting had two parts—an informal discussion, then, a round-table conference. Right after the warm welcoming speech by Mr. Cheng Xuemeng, head of the Office of International Affairs, the informal discussion began.
Dr. Gerstner giving a speech
Dr. Gerstner gave a clear statement of their purpose here—to look for the best research and bring it to the world. To do that, he introduced the general standard of Nature--“the papers should be apparent to anyone in any field”--as well as the goal of Nature-- to publish groundbreaking works in all disciplines of science, and thought-provoking ideas to its readers.
Being the executive editor in Greater China for four years, Dr. Gerstner sent his congratulations on the impressive progress China had achieved in scientific research. He also provided many detailed instructions and advices to researchers who are aiming at having their research outcomes published, such as to be persuasive with more charts in your papers, to apply for an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) and to make your papers better understood by the editors. By giving these suggestions, he hoped that he could “help China’s researchers get published in the best journals and help Chinese editors from other offices discover China’s science”.
When giving her speech, Ms. Yan Zijun, put more emphasis on how Nature values WHU and what kinds of service they can provide. She explained how Nature Index showed China’s booming in the amount of high-quality research papers. The Nature Index, according to Ms. Yan, ranked WHU 87th out of all the universities in the world, much higher than the rankings on THE (Times Higher Education) or QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), due to the contribution WHU made to leading science disciplines such as chemistry, life science, earth and environmental science and so on.
The round-table conference
Dr. Gerstner and Ms. Yan then gave a detailed explanation of the services provided by Nature, such as conference service, training service and publicity service. Among these, the training service was of great interest to the representatives and provoked an intense discussion among them, through which they shared their opinions and observations with the editors.
After a short break, the second part—the round table conference began. Researchers who want to be published by Nature or other equally good journals gave a short presentation about their researches. While researchers trying to make use of every minute, the editor also listened intensively and gave their feedbacks and suggestions. Professor Xu Hongxing from the School of Physics and Technology, Professor Wu Huayi from the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineer in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing and other many distinguished researchers attended the conference.
Interviewing Professor Li Hongliang
“It was a very fruitful meeting,” said Professor Li Hongliang, representative of the A3 laboratory. He is an outstanding young scientist whose research has already been published by Nature. “This is a great chance for WHU to improve itself, to build a steady relationship with Nature and to be recognized by the world,” he added, “To the future generation of scientists who are currently studying in WHU, I would advise them to focus on the research itself, for it should be their career goal as scientists. If your research is truly valuable, getting published by great scientific journals will only be a matter of time.”
(Photo by Wu Jiamin, Edited by Liu Jiachen, Wu Siying, Edmund Wai Man Lai & Hu Sijia)
