Scientific community articles within Nature Communications

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  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Questions of causality are ubiquitous in Earth system sciences and beyond, yet correlation techniques still prevail. This Perspective provides an overview of causal inference methods, identifies promising applications and methodological challenges, and initiates a causality benchmark platform.

    • Jakob Runge
    • , Sebastian Bathiany
    •  & Jakob Zscheischler

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    In research studies, the need for additional samples to obtain sufficient statistical power has often to be balanced with the experimental costs. One approach to this end is to sequentially collect data until you have sufficient measurements, e.g., when the p-value drops below 0.05. I outline that this approach is common, yet that unadjusted sequential sampling leads to severe statistical issues, such as an inflated rate of false positive findings. As a consequence, the results of such studies are untrustworthy. I identify the statistical methods that can be implemented in order to account for sequential sampling.

    • Casper Albers

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Sharing activities are under wide debate regarding the environmental impacts. Here the authors reviewed their benefits and problems and suggested that a simultaneous improvement of both ecological and economic efficiency is necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

    • Zhifu Mi
    •  & D’Maris Coffman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ensuring the integrity of clinical trial data is crucial to securing trust in the process. Here, the authors present a prototype of a blockchain-based clinical trial management system that ensures immutability and traceability of trial data, and demonstrate a proof of concept web portal service.

    • Daniel R. Wong
    • , Sanchita Bhattacharya
    •  & Atul J. Butte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Credibility of long-term projection in quantitative models is continuously under debate and they rely on validation to prove projection accuracy. Here the authors investigated the views on the validation approaches and they show that empirical data plays an important role in the validation practice in all main areas of sustainability science.

    • Sibel Eker
    • , Elena Rovenskaya
    •  & Simon Langan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomedical image analysis challenges have increased in the last ten years, but common practices have not been established yet. Here the authors analyze 150 recent challenges and demonstrate that outcome varies based on the metrics used and that limited information reporting hampers reproducibility.

    • Lena Maier-Hein
    • , Matthias Eisenmann
    •  & Annette Kopp-Schneider

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diversity is believed to raise effectiveness and performance but it contains many aspects. Here the authors studied the relationship between research impact and five classes of diversity and found that ethnic diversity had the strongest correlation with scientific impact.

    • Bedoor K. AlShebli
    • , Talal Rahwan
    •  & Wei Lee Woon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While successful mentors tend to train successful students in academic career, it’s unclear how mentorship determines chances of a success in a trainee. Here, Liénard and colleagues analyze approximately 20 K mentor/trainee relationships in life sciences, and find that success of trainees is associated with an intellectual synthesis between their mentors’ research.

    • Jean F. Liénard
    • , Titipat Achakulvisut
    •  & Stephen V. David

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There have been growing concerns about the exploitation of workers in the fisheries sectors. Here, Tickler et al. use a country-level metric of slavery to determine the risk of fisheries-level slavery across 20 countries, and find it rises as unreported catch increases and mean value of catch decreases.

    • David Tickler
    • , Jessica J. Meeuwig
    •  & Dirk Zeller

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Indigenous peoples are still underrepresented in genetic research. Here, the authors propose an ethical framework consisting of six major principles that encourages researchers and Indigenous communities to build strong and equal partnerships to increase trust, engagement and diversity in genomic studies.

    • Katrina G. Claw
    • , Matthew Z. Anderson
    •  & Joseph M. Yracheta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Data sharing is recognized as a way to promote scientific collaboration and reproducibility, but some are concerned over whether research based on shared data can achieve high impact. Here, the authors show that neuroimaging papers using shared data are no less likely to appear in top-ranked journals.

    • Michael P. Milham
    • , R. Cameron Craddock
    •  & Arno Klein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Speaking at a scientific conference helps spread scientific results and is also fundamental for career advancement. Here the authors show that at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, the largest Earth and space science conference, women are offered speaking opportunities less often than men overall.

    • Heather L. Ford
    • , Cameron Brick
    •  & Petra S. Dekens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Systemic dissection of sexually dimorphic phenotypes in mice is lacking. Here, Karp and the International Mouse Phenotype Consortium show that approximately 10% of qualitative traits and 56% of quantitative traits in mice as measured in laboratory setting are sexually dimorphic.

    • Natasha A. Karp
    • , Jeremy Mason
    •  & Jacqueline K. White

  • Editorial
    | Open Access

    Nature Communications celebrates its 10,000th published article and introduces changes to improve our service to authors and readers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This report by the Consortium for Refractive Error and Myopia uses gene-environment-wide interaction study (GEWIS) to identify genetic loci that affect environmental influence in myopia development, and identifies ethnic specific genetic loci that attribute to eye refractive errors.

    • Qiao Fan
    • , Virginie J. M. Verhoeven
    •  & Kari Matti Mäkelä

  • Editorial
    | Open Access

    The transition to fully open access publishing establishes Nature Communications as the flagship Nature-branded open access journal.

  • Editorial |

    With a year of publications under its belt, Nature Communications has established itself as an accommodating venue for the natural sciences.

  • Article |

    Invasive species are usually thought to originate from outside a country's borders. Here, using a self-organizing map, Paini and co-workers show that the species most likely to 'invade' the USA are already firmly established within the country, suggesting the need for biosecurity measures within national borders.

    • Dean R. Paini
    • , Susan P. Worner
    •  & Matthew B. Thomas

  • Editorial |

    Nature Publishing Group launches its second multidisciplinary journal, 140 years after the first issue of Nature.

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