Author highlights

Read exclusive interviews with our Scientific Reports authors. We love to learn about our authors, why they research in their field, and why they choose to submit with open access journals like Scientific Reports. As a journal of multidisciplinary research, Scientific Reports works with a hugely varied group of scientists each with their own approach to their field of scientific research. From highly cited manuscripts, to papers with high Altmetric scores placing them in the Altmetric Top 100 2018, our authors and their open access research articles help contribute to the global research community.

We invite you to explore these interviews, to find out how these authors got started in their field and research, to take their advice on how to publish a research paper online and how to maximise its visibility, and learn why they decided to publish their paper with one of the world’s largest open access research journals, Scientific Reports.

 

Laurent Lebreton - Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic

1. How did this paper come about? 

The paper was the results of three years of exploration on plastics floating in the North Pacific subtropical waters, including a multi-vessel expedition and an aerial reconnaissance mission. The main objective of the study was to provide a comprehensive quantification and characterisation of marine litter accumulating in the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

2. What was the decision process in choosing where to publish?

We were aiming at a high impact journal that offered the possibility to publish open science. Our main research funding comes from private donations and publishing in open access journals is a requirement.

3. How do you think publishing in an open access journal like Scientific Reports has impacted the visibility of scientific research?

It naturally increases the visibility of scientific research. Journalists for instance may freely access the manuscript, the figures, the supplementary data etc., which later allows for the production of new figures and media supporting your publication.

4. How has the reaction to your work by the public benefited you? 

I'm not sure it benefited me directly apart from getting me busy, answering emails. I now have school classes experimenting with ocean plastics and asking me questions about marine litter. I guess the reaction surely benefited the cause and helped build awareness around the issue of plastic pollution.

5. What advice do you have for other researchers on maximising the dissemination of their work? 

The publication was complemented by the launch of a webpage showing the basic findings and animated results that could be shared on social media. We prepared an embargoed press release that we provided to journalists a week prior to the publication. In general, spending time on making figures is very important in my opinion, choosing the right color tones, aligning elements and maximizing readability is key for your audience to rapidly understand your study and be encouraged to dive into your text.

 

Heather Lynch - Multi-modal survey of Adélie penguin mega-colonies reveals the Danger Islands as a seabird hotspot

1. How did this paper come about?

A couple of years before, my colleague Mathew Schwaller and I discovered what looked to be some very large penguin colonies on islands that were not known to host breeding penguins. At first we thought our algorithm for detecting penguin colonies had made a mistake and we investigated further with higher resolution imagery to figure out what had gone wrong. But when we looked more closely, it was clear that there were several colonies of penguins that were, by our estimation, some of the largest in Antarctica. Fast forward a couple years, some collaborators and I were able to secure funding from the Dalio Foundation for an expedition to the region. We called the expedition the Danger Islands Expedition, in part because the acronym (DIE) was an homage to the difficulty of actually landing successfully in a region famous for its impenetrable sea ice. While we were fully prepared for the expedition to fail, it was a stunning success and we managed to not only survey all the islands in the Danger Islands archipelago but several other important colonies along the Antarctic Peninsula as well. As is pretty typical, analyzing all the data from the expedition and writing up our paper took over a year, so the final report of our discovery was not official until several years after we became interested in these mystery colonies.

2. What was the decision process in choosing where to publish?

Antarctic research, particularly field research, can be remarkably difficult to publish despite the interest it often generates in the media. Many journals see Antarctica as being so remote that it couldn’t possibly be of broad interest in the scientific community, which is a shame because all ecology is in some sense local to where the data are collected. We chose Scientific Reports because we thought it was more likely to be considered on its merits rather than some pre-defined notion of what would appeal. In that sense, the incredible interest this paper received within the popular press is a bit ironic, and I hope it challenges the notion that Antarctic work is only of interest to those of us lucky enough to work there.

3. How do you think publishing in an open access journal like Scientific Reports has impacted the visibility of scientific research?

One of the challenges of working in a place like Antarctica is that our community is truly global, and we have to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone who would want to read about our work has a subscription to the journals we might use to publish our data. Our first concern is always to ask ourselves, where can we publish where our results will get to those who need to see them? When we have findings that have significant implications for management, as did this paper, going with an open-access outlet makes a lot of sense.

4. How has the reaction to your work by the public benefited you?

I can’t speak for my co-authors, but for me personally, I’ve been most excited about some of the educational materials to have been developed around our discovery in the Danger Islands. There have been some really terrific science-in-the-news style products that we have helped develop with educational publishers, and I’ve heard from many teachers that teach about this paper as a means for introducing kids to satellites and drones and penguins. I’ve received countless e-mails from kids who want to know more and even a fantastic hand drawn card from a child thanking me for my work on penguins. As a scientist, and as a parent, it’s probably the best recognition you could ask for.

5. What advice do you have for other researchers on maximising the dissemination of their work?

Actually, I learned a lot from this experience, and I have to credit my co-authors for really showing me how to work with the media and stay ahead of the media interest when a story really takes off. The best thing we did was create a Dropbox folder of resources for the media ahead of time, with photos and captions and videos cleared for use by media organizations. We also created a spreadsheet with contact information, areas of specialty, and availability of all the paper’s co-authors for the days following the paper’s release. With literally hundreds of outlets reaching out every day over that first couple of weeks, we couldn’t have managed without having prepared all those materials in advance. I was also struck by how critical the visuals were to getting the story out. Having the drone video, as opposed to just the still images, made all the difference for the media’s interest in the story. It certainly makes me think more about how to frame a story in advance, since the peer review process is unpredictable and your paper might be online with little notice. If you don’t have your press materials and press release in hand long in advance, you risk missing that narrow window of opportunity to really share your work with the broader public.

 

Tove Fall - Dog ownership and the risk of cardiovascular disease and death – a nationwide cohort study

1. How did this paper come about? 

When I was practising as a veterinary clinician it struck me how much dogs mean to their owners. When I became a researcher working in registry-based epidemiology, I and my colleagues realized how cool it would be to try to assess the potential health effects of dog ownership moving away from self-reported outcomes.  

2. What was the decision process in choosing where to publish?

We really wanted to reach out to the scientific and non-scientific community with our findings. We first tried some very selective journals, but the manuscript was rejected. We then chose to go with Scientific Reports, which publishes high quality research and is open access. 

3. How do you think publishing in an open access journal like Scientific Reports has impacted the visibility of scientific research?

It has been extremely good in the way that people outside academia could read the article.

4. How has the reaction to your work by the public benefited you? 

I have been invited to talk about our dog research in many different settings, both in academia but also to the general public. I think that the attention has also increased the acceptance for these research questions among my peers. These study questions are often regarded as more “soft” than my other research, which is often based on novel technologies such as sequencing. 

5. What advice do you have for other researchers on maximising the dissemination of their work? 

Put effort into making a good press release that all the co-authors are happy with. Do not oversell your findings – the journalists will exaggerate them anyway. If there are any caveats, spell them out already in the release. Set aside time to talk to media – you do not want to be busy when BBC and New York Times call. 

 

Kyungah Choi - Awakening effects of blue-enriched morning light exposure on university students’ physiological and subjective responses

1. How did this paper come about? 

In recent years, smart lighting, which refers to wireless lighting empowered by Internet of Things (IoT) technology and tuned to emit any color, has emerged as a rising trend. Expansion of smart lighting products, in concert with the recent interest in light’s physiological effects, has furnished new opportunities. Despite the paradigm shift this has engendered, surprisingly little effort has been made to apply the research findings to learning environments. To address this problem, we investigated the physiological influences light may exert in learning environments and observed blue-enriched white light as a simple yet effective potential countermeasure for morning drowsiness. When acknowledging all of the physiological and subjective effects that are unique to light, we should go one step further and elaborate upon the potential that lighting can have to function as a platform to support students’ circadian systems.

2. What was the decision process in choosing where to publish?

This study was a result of interdisciplinary efforts between design and natural science. Throughout the research process, it was made clear to us that bringing disciplines together is vital for better responses to new issues and problems. Scientific Reports, as a multidisciplinary research journal, works with a diverse group of scientists. My colleagues and I wanted to reach out to researchers in areas outside of our expertise, and Scientific Reports offered a great venue to reach a large audience.

3. How do you think publishing in an open access journal like Scientific Reports has impacted the visibility of scientific research?

The benefit of an open access journal was obvious: rapid and widespread access to research findings. Greater visibility of an open access journal was particularly advantageous in reaching non-scholarly audiences. Moreover, free access to scientific knowledge encouraged the research findings to be translated into real-world applications.

4. How has the reaction to your work by the public benefited you? 

I have received emails from students, ranging from elementary to university students, asking to learn more about the study. As an educator, I was truly excited to talk to various groups of students. The research findings were of importance for practitioners as well. Industry professionals expressed interest in implementing the research findings. Such an exchange has opened up new questions and resources for future investigations.

5. What advice do you have for other researchers on maximising the dissemination of their work? 

Participation in public communication, such as press releases and website posts, may increase the societal impact of research. When writing material, we paid particular attention to enhancing the readability of content to communicate our work to a wider audience. It was critical to write in a way for people who are not familiar with research methodologies and statistical analyses to easily understand the material. Another interesting way we’ve found to disseminate our work is with cards. The idea was to incorporate a vast amount of theoretical knowledge into a set of cards through a process of abstraction and simplification. An example of the cards can be found here

 

 

Adam Sharples - Human Skeletal Muscle Possesses an Epigenetic Memory of Hypertrophy

1. Can you provide a summary of your professional research background? 

My fundamental interest in muscle mass and muscle wasting comes from my time playing professional Rugby League in the UK. Where I was trying desperately to maintain my muscle and performance throughout an arduous season. During my master’s degree, I had just a couple of lectures by Professor Claire E Stewart on the molecular regulation of muscle mass, before which my studies were mainly focused on in-vivo muscle/human physiology. The ‘bug’ for understanding how muscle grows and wastes at the deepest molecular level was then like a small seed, but firmly, planted in my mind. With curiosity, I sought a PhD with Professor Stewart in cell biology and molecular biology, where we devised two novel cellular models of skeletal muscle ageing and investigated the role of growth factors and cytokines (Sharples et al., 2010 J Cell Physiol, 2011 J Cell Biochem, Sharples et al., 2013 GHIR, Girven et al., 2016 J Cell Physiol). I then went onto undertake a post-doc developing three dimensional models of skeletal muscle in-vitro to investigate the role of ageing and exercise (Sharples et al., 2012 Aging Cell). In 2012 I gained my first academic post at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). The research institute became ranked 1st in the UK (REF2014) for research quality in Sport and Exercise Science, and where the study highlighted in Scientific Reports was conducted). In 2017-2019 I moved to Keele University Medical School to work in the Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine to focus on the epigenetics of aging muscle in hospital patients. In 2019, I returned to LJMU as a Reader in Molecular Physiology and Epigenetics. Then, more recently in 2020 I gained the position of Associate Professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, ranked 2nd internationally (out of over 300 universities) for sport and exercise science (Shanghai Ranking link). 

2. How did your research for this paper come about? 

Early in my research career, we devised two novel cellular models of skeletal muscle ageing (see above), which resulted in an early career award for best oral communication at the prestigious Max Planck Institute, Berlin (2010). A novel aspect from these works suggested aged muscle cells could ‘remember’ inflammatory environmental stimuli to which they were exposed in early life, a concept that we then defined as muscle epi-‘memory’ in a review in Aging Cell (Sharples et al., 2016). Our paper then demonstrated epigenetics of muscle ‘memory’ at the DNA level, showing proliferatively aged muscle cells retained molecular ‘tags’ to their DNA (via methylation) in later proliferative life following early-life inflammatory stress (Sharples et al., Biogerontology). Importantly, the cells that had received the earlier high dose of inflammation became more susceptible to muscle wasting when it was encountered in later life, suggesting a memory of the earlier life encounter with an inflammatory exposure.  During my time at LJMU we gained some funding from GlaxoSmithKline and the Doctoral Training Alliance (DTA) to recruit a PhD candidate in epigenetics and muscle mass regulation. At that time, we were able to recruit an extremely talented young and driven researcher called Robert Seaborne. Together, and in collaboration with Professor Jonathan Jarvis, we then went on to determine epigenetic changes during muscle atrophy and recovery from atrophy in animals (Fisher, Seaborne et al., FASEB J 2017). However, at that time no one had determined if human skeletal muscle retained epigenetic information after period of muscle growth or loss. So, we designed an experiment where the same human participants would undertake an acute resistance exercise bout, followed by a period of training, detraining and retraining, with muscle biopsies after each timepoint. This meant we could try to assess if muscle retained chemical modifications to DNA after a period of exercise induced muscle growth, and if these modifications were retained even during detraining when muscle was lost again. Finally, we could find out if this affected the ability of the muscle to respond, for example with even greater gene expression, to a period of retraining-induced muscle growth. Indeed, this is what we were able to demonstrate in the highlighted paper in Scientific Reports (Seaborne et al., 2018). Since these papers, together with another outstanding PhD student, Daniel Turner, we have gone on to overlap the transcriptome and epigenome after acute and chronic resistance exercise in human skeletal muscle, also published in Scientific Reports (Turner et al., 2019). Also, from the original Scientific Reports paper we discovered a completely uncharacterized muscle memory gene in muscle, called UBR5 (an E3 Ubiquitin Ligase). In further collaboration with David Hughes, Leslie Baehr, Sue Bodine (University of Iowa), Daniel Owens and Illdus Ahmetov (LJMU) have now gone on to further confirm an important epigenetic role for this gene in muscle hypertrophy, recovery from atrophy/injury and that variants of this gene are associated with larger stronger muscles in athletes (Seaborne et al., 2019 J Physiol). 

3. What was the decision process in choosing where to publish?

Scientific Reports was our choice because it was gold route open access, yet without the huge costs of some of the other journals for full open access. We thought it might get good publicity and we wanted to be the first to determine this phenomenon. Once we had the data, we had an inkling that it may have good impact in the scientific community, and wider implications that the general public would be interested in. We had had a good experience with a quick and fair review process with another paper in Scientific Reports and decided this was a good, cost efficient route for good exposure. 

4. How was your experience publishing this paper with Scientific Reports?  

Excellent. The review process was timely. Most review processes are not quick these days. While reviewers held up the paper slightly, the editors were responsive with their updates and decisions. So, I would say overall it was a quicker process than the majority of other journals I have experienced.

5. Has the creation of a video abstract for your paper help to increase awareness of your research and this paper? If so, how? 

Certainly, the video has enabled a wider reach to both scientists as well as the public. The video has been viewed on the Scientific Reports tweet over 44K times. The paper also received international attention where the press release gathered 40,000 reads on the university webpage and was picked up by over 28 news outlets including; Science Daily, Yahoo News and Newsweek. IFLScience also published the story (25 million followers on Facebook) and it was the top story in Reddit on the day of the article (over 24,000 upvotes). The paper has now received over 1,491 tweets on social media from over 1135 different users, with an upper bound of 2,529,127 followers (Altmetric score of 1037) and was featured on ABC radio in Australia. The paper was the Editor's choice in epigenetics, also ranked 1st in all Cell/Molecular Biology articles (out of 664) and the 6th of ALL articles (out of 18,000) in 2018 in the Nature Research journal, Scientific Reports. 

6. How did you and your research team respond when watching this video abstract of your research for the first time? 

Excited. The quality of the video was extremely high and it was incredible to see our study in such an professional looking video with the audio described in such an accessible way. 

7. What has been the most exciting part about publishing this paper?

The feedback from colleagues and members of the public has been overwhelming and very exciting!

8. What advice do you have for other researchers on maximising the dissemination of their work?

Definitely try to go for full open access! Speak to the university press office if you think the paper will have good public engagement, and Scientific Reports press office can work together with the university!

 

 

Dr. Kazuo Yamagata and Mammoth Research Group of Kindai University - Signs of biological activities of 28,000-year-old mammoth nuclei in mouse oocytes visualized by live-cell imaging

1. Can you provide a summary of your professional research background? 

My subject areas are mammalian reproductive biology and developmental biotechnology. My work involves developing new biological methodologies to analyze dynamic changes in chromatin structures and functions, before and after fertilization. I aim to use my research to contribute to issues of societal and global importance, such as human infertility, animal breeding and endangered species conservation. In particular, I have developed a live-cell imaging system, specialized for mammalian preimplantation embryos, for investigating nuclear construction, chromosome segregation, and epigenetic changes. Importantly, this technology is minimally invasive; as no detectable damage is caused to the embryos during imaging, they can develop into healthy progeny after implantation. In the study reported in this paper, I have applied this technology to observe mammoth spindle and nuclear formation in mouse oocytes. 

2. How did your research for this paper come about? 

Following the report of the birth of the cloned sheep, Dolly, in 1997, Dr. Iritani, the corresponding author of this paper, launched a project of similar ambitions on mammoths. As one of the most iconic animals in the prehistoric period, mammoths have long captivated many people including cell biologists and paleontologists. For a while, not much progress could be made due to the lack of sufficiently preserved mammoth remains. The discovery of the "Yuka" remains in 2010 from permafrost in the Yukagir region of Sakha Republic, by our Russian collaborators, re-galvanised the field and set the stage to get new insights on the distant past. Dr. Kato collected a part of the “Yuka” tissue in 2012, and Dr. H. Miyamoto and Dr. Nagai performed genomic and proteomic analyses, respectively, using the tissue fragments. As the preservation state of "Yuka" was better than expected, we expected that we would be able to recover an intact cell nucleus. Dr. Anzai and I were thus able to transfer a mammoth nuclei into mouse oocytes and perform live-cell imaging experiments. We then summed up all the data, from 2017 to 2018, and started writing this paper. 

3. What was the decision process in choosing where to publish?

To be honest, we first submitted this paper to another journal. After several revisions and rebuttals, the amount and quality of the data became higher and the paper improved steadily, but unfortunately it was rejected at the end. After some discussion, we arrived at the conclusion that it would be better to publish this paper in a journal that is read by as many people as possible, including the general public, rather than submitting it to a specialist journal. Scientific Reports, as an open access journal and one of the world's largest academic journals, seemed the best choice for us. This judgement was very nice, wasn't it? 

4. How was your experience publishing this paper with Scientific Reports?  

I was confident in the content and scientific validity of this paper, so I was pleased that we were able to publish in this journal. It was very exciting to see the rise of Altmetrics immediately after being published and especially the reaction on Twitter! Getting an insight into how people from around the world perceive this work is a precious experience for a researcher. Scientific Reports being an open access journal I feel contributed to the paper being featured in many media outlets – including news and video sites – immediately after publication, and therefore towards its recognition overall.

5. Has the creation of a video abstract for your paper help to increase awareness of your research and this paper? If so, how? 

When Springer Nature offered us the opportunity to make a video abstract, I was very excited because I felt that the importance of our paper was being recognized. In the process of creating the video, the production company incorporated a lot of our input and it went very smoothly. Altmetrics increased slightly when the English version of the video was uploaded, but as soon as the Japanese version was released, the score further increased by nearly 300, and we knew it was due to Japanese Twitter. I think that the creation of the Japanese version of the video has greatly contributed to the recognition of our work in Japan, where language might otherwise pose a barrier. 

6. How did you and your research team respond when watching this video abstract of your research for the first time? 

We think that the video nicely explains our project in an easy-to-understand manner. The results in the last part contains a little specialized content, but even that has been thoughtfully organized to make the key message accessible to the general public. It will be very effective not only for lectures, but also for public engagement events at universities. As mentioned above, the creation of the Japanese version is much appreciated. 

7. What has been the most exciting part about publishing this paper?

As mentioned above, we were thrilled to see the burst of Altmetrics. I believe that Altmetrics could be a useful index for evaluating scientific articles in the future, as opposed to simply the impact factor of the journal.

8. What advice do you have for other researchers on maximising the dissemination of their work?

I think this would depend on the type of article in question. If the article is likely to have social ramifications and would be of interest to the general public, I would advise them to consider publishing in an open access journal. Meanwhile, if the content of the article is focused towards advancing academic discussion of a more specialist interest, I would advise them to submit that article to an academic journal with a long history.

 

 

Pedro F. C. Vasconcelos, Medical Virologist, Department of Arbovirology and Hemorrhagic Fevers, Evandro Chagas Institute, Ananindeua, Pará, Brazil; Professor of Pathology, Pará State University, Belém, Pará, Brazil. In situ immune response and mechanisms of cell damage in central nervous system of fatal cases microcephaly by Zika virus

1. Can you provide a summary of your professional research background? 

I became a physician at the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil in 1982; specialized in Infectious Diseases at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in 1987, acquired my PhD in Medicine and Health in 1999 at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil, and completed a post-doc in molecular virology at the University of Texas Medical Branch from 2002-2003. I have worked at the Evandro Chagas Institute (IEC) as a scientist since 7th February 1983 until 9 May 2019 when I retired. I have been a professor of Pathology at the Pará State University since 2008.

My main research subject is viral diseases, and especially the arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses). Among these viruses, I have worked with yellow fever virus and several other flaviviruses including dengue, Saint Louis encephalitis, Rocio, West Nile and Zika viruses. I have also worked with Mayaro, Chikungunya, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, Western and Venezuelan Equine encephalitis all members of the genus Alphavirus, family Togaviridae. I have done many studies with Oropouche virus and other viruses belonging to the Peribunyaviridae, including orthobunyaviruses and phleboviruses, as well as several studies on hanviruses and arenaviruses, rabies virus and other zoonotic viruses. In addition, many studies to isolate and characterize new zoonotic arbvoiruses have been done in the Amazon River basin. I am a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science, Fellow of the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technologic Development Agency (CNPq) and International Fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Between 1st September 1998 to 30th September 2014 I was chief of the Department of Arbovirology and Hemorrhagic Fevers of the IEC, and from 1st Ocotber 2014 through 17th April 2019 I was the General Director of the IEC. I have published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and more than 60 book chapters, and co-edited five books. . 

2. How did your research for this paper come about? 

The paper “In situ immune response and mechanisms of cell damage in central nervous system of fatal cases microcephaly by Zika virus” was thought to try to clarify the knowledge of the in situ pathogenesis in the brain and other CNS structures of neonates with microcephaly and other congenital malformations following maternal ZIKV infection during gestation. It is important to remember that, in 2015, a large epidemic of ZIKV associated with congenital disease struck Brazil, and no one had yet described the etiology of the microcephaly, arthrogryposis and other congenital disorders associated. We have described, on 28th November 2015, the association of ZIKV with these cases.

The index case was a child from Ceará State that was born, and died five minutes later. The child had microcephaly, arthrogryposis and other disorders. The autopsy showed the child had an incipient esophagus and trachea, and it was clear that life was incompatible with such disorders. Immediately, other cases were reported and on the 1st December 2015, the WHO and PAHO together with the Brazilian Ministry of Health considered our results enough to confirm the etiology of such cases as caused by ZIKV.

The paper was prepared to answer several open questions on the mechanisms used by ZIKV to cause serious damage in the neuron and auxiliary CNS cells including astrocytes and glial cells. We demonstrate infection of ZIKV in neurons, and that neuronal infection results in apoptosis; dead neurons are substituted by glial cells and this results in both depopulation of neurons, and gliosis. Together with the cell response, the humoral response also has an important role in the maintenance of infection throughout pregnancy together with a potent immune response based on cytokine storm (we have used now the expression “tsunami storm” to characterize the impressive cytokine response in the brain and other CNS structures) which are associated with the intense injury of the CNS organs.  

3. What was the decision process in choosing where to publish?

Considering the innovation of the our findings we decide to submit it in the Nature group and the Scientific Reports was a natural choice, since I had two other previous articles published on it. I am happy with the repercussion of the paper in the scientific community. Indeed, the paper has around 400 paper citations in just two years. I believe that this paper is used as a reference on the pathogenetic mechanism used by ZIKV to penetrate in the brain and once there to cause intense damage and fatal outcome to these children.  

4. How was your experience publishing this paper with Scientific Reports?  

It was quite tranquil and communication was fast and clear. I think this good and necessary considering the intense scientific competition and looking for innovation.

5. How did you and your research team respond when watching this video abstract of your research for the first time?

It was an enjoyable experience. The video effects were fantastic and the connection was perfect. The only negative comment is that the video is too short. I think if the video has three to five minutes more, the result would be more interesting and clarifying readers on the paper. Anyway I am satisfied with the video abstract. Thanks so much! 

6. What has been the most exciting part about publishing this paper? 

The most exciting part of the paper “In situ immune response and mechanisms of cell damage in central nervous system of fatal cases microcephaly by Zika virus” was to describe for the first time for science the mechanisms used by ZIKV to destroy the neurons in the CNS, and how the virus uses the auxiliary cells for its persistence in the CNS. 

7. What advice do you have for other researchers on maximising the dissemination of their work?

Well, I am not the most qualified guy to advise my peers on what to do to maximize the dissemination of their work. But, I suppose that the selection of the most appropriate scientific journal is the first step to be adopted if one wants to see the work to be disseminated, but it is clear also to me that the results of the study should be innovative to increase the impact of it. 

 

Atsuko Saito - Domestic cats (Felis catus) discriminate their names from other words