GSA’s Executive Director explains why and how we’re taking TAGC 2020 virtual.

For several years, we at GSA have been planning The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), originally set for DC in late April 2020. After a successful inaugural meeting in 2016, organizers and GSA staff sought to bring communities together by focusing on scientific themes that spanned research organisms and disciplines. 

And then came COVID-19.

Because of the pandemic, we made the decision in mid-March to cancel the in-person meeting. While this was clearly the right call, it inevitably meant tremendous loss for our communities. 

Conference organizers, committee members, and staff had invested countless hours designing schedules, reviewing abstracts, planning professional development programs, negotiating contracts, and a thousand other tasks to ensure that attendees would have an inspiring, inspired experience at TAGC. Presenters—most of them early career scientists—had worked hard and were excited to share their discoveries. Workshop organizers were eager to engage with attentive audiences. Exhibitors and sponsors had offered travel awards, support for caregiver grants, and resources to help underrepresented groups attend the meeting. Journal editors were ready to field questions from those trying to learn the ins-and-outs of publishing. And above all, more than 3,000 attendees were excited to meet colleagues, make connections, listen, learn, and share. 

Even as the decision to cancel the in-person meeting was being discussed, we started wondering: Could we move TAGC online? Was there any way to rescue some of the scientific and career value of the meeting?

In the course of just a few weeks, so much has changed. Many in our communities are juggling working from home, teaching online, childcare and homeschooling, figuring out lab operations, and new ways of communicating and collaborating—all amid the usual stressors like writing grants or submitting manuscripts. Some are dealing with the isolation of both living and working at home alone. Some of us—and our families and friends—may work in healthcare settings or interact with the public on the front lines of the pandemic. Others are dealing with illness or sick family members. Most are concerned with ways to help. It can be hard to find focus and time. It is impossible to find a sense of normalcy.

Despite the uncertainty in the world and the upheaval in our lives, the GSA Board and TAGC community leaders recognized that communicating science and making scientific connections is even more important right now than ever. 

Discovery must continue, and so must we.

It is in that spirit that we’re taking TAGC 2020 to a virtual format. Just like the original in-person conference, cross-community thematic sessions will alternate with community-specific sessions dedicated to particular model organisms and disciplines. We’ll have keynotes as well as The Gruber Prize in Genetics lecture. Talks and posters will be presented in a virtual and interactive format. In the weeks immediately following TAGC 2020, we’ll help organizers to host their Workshop Series online.

We’re happy to let you know that we’re making this virtual meeting free for registrants. Even people who weren’t originally signed up for TAGC 2020 can register to attend virtually. Why free? Given the circumstances, the uncertainty, and the short timeline we have for completely redesigning the meeting, we consider TAGC Online to be a big and exciting experiment. Despite the financial losses GSA will incur, we can’t ask our community to pay fees for such an experiment. We also recognize that many attendees will no longer be able to attend every session in the way they would have at the in-person meeting and that it is much harder for people to make firm plans and commitments in advance. We are grateful to have some support from sponsors and exhibitors that will help offset the cost; if your organization wishes to support our efforts, I encourage you to contact development@genetics-gsa.org. 

How will this virtual conference work?

The original schedule has been compressed and adjusted to allow for participation across US time zones and some international ones. We’ll still have a live welcome to the conference, talks will be live, and session chairs will moderate their sessions, all via Zoom. We’ll have live technical support to help things run smoothly. Most live sessions will be recorded and available for viewing by registrants for 30 days after the event. 

Poster presenters will upload their poster PDF and optional video/audio walkthrough for the meeting, and in the week following the meeting they will join live poster discussion sessions. GSA will also provide community and theme-specific Slack channels to encourage additional discussion of all sessions and to allow those with related interests to connect. Most of the attendee-organized workshops will be held via Zoom in the weeks following the poster sessions. 

Even though the conference is free to attend, all participants and presenters must register for TAGC 2020 Online, and each person will need to log in to the TAGC program planner/meeting app to view live sessions or recordings.

Join our experiment!

Will there be technical challenges? Probably. That’s to be expected with the worldwide volume of online interactions these days and the short timeframe for planning.

But when we encounter hiccups, support staff and presenters will adapt quickly to keep things moving. We’ll test in advance, make contingency plans, and provide each presenter with instructions. We’ll let attendees know device and internet requirements for optimal viewing and engagement. The biggest way attendees and speakers can help the meeting run smoothly is by carefully reading and following the technical instructions that we’ll send soon. And of course, please be patient if things don’t go according to plan!

Although some parts of the original program weren’t able to be ported to an online version at this time, we hope to be able to host a greater variety of online programs in the future, when we have more time to plan. 

We’ll be opening registration next week. Please join us at TAGC 2020 Online, whether it’s for one talk or the entire conference, and help spread the word. It wouldn’t be the same without you.

Learn more about TAGC Online ≫ 

Questions? Email GSAConferences@genetics-gsa.org.

Last Friday, I was made aware of an executive order being finalized by the White House that reportedly mandates immediate public access to journal articles describing federally funded research. If this policy were enacted as is, many scientific societies would have to severely cut their services to the scientific community, such as peer-reviewed journals, travel awards, career development, education, outreach, policy, scientific conferences, and advocacy for increased research funding.

On December 18, with the understanding that the Administration planned to issue the executive order within a week or two without public input, we joined many other societies in signing two letters to President Trump responding to this news. One was organized by more than 50 scientific societies and the other by the Association of American Publishers.

Rightly so, several GSA members have asked for more context, particularly since the text of the executive order has not yet been made public.

Individual societies differ in their own positions on open access — but all involved shared concerns about the speed with which the directive was to be enacted, with no input from scholarly societies. Executive orders are proclamations that need not follow the typical and inclusive process of legislation and gathering feedback. So these groups came together to petition the Administration. GSA’s goal in signing these letters was to persuade the Administration to consult with scientific societies, publishers, and scientists before issuing such an order, to better understand the potential unintended consequences. 

I want to make clear that GSA supports open access, open science, and open data—we have for a number of years. In 2010, we implemented a robust open data policy that requires public access to the data described in articles we publish. In 2011, we launched an open access journal, G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. For sixteen years, nearly every GENETICS research paper has been published Early Online in a free-to-read format within a week of acceptance. For GENETICS articles, we offer an author’s choice open access option with a CC-BY license. All other articles are made freely available after 12 months. We have long supported preprints and were the first journals to partner with bioRxiv. Our digitized online archive (dating to 1916) has been freely available since 2004. In fact, 99% of GENETICS articles are free to read. 

I hope our actions speak to the Society’s commitment to open science. We are also actively working on finding a way to transition all of our journals to fully open access publishing.

However, for now, the majority of GSA’s income is derived from subscriptions to GENETICS. Besides sustaining the journal, that revenue supports our travel awards, childcare grants, the wonderful Early Career Leadership Program and GENETICS Peer Review Program, and a variety of community-oriented offerings—not to mention subsidizing GSA conferences when they run at a loss. Subscription revenue also allowed us to launch G3 as an open-access journal and run it at a loss for a number of years while we established it. 

As we plan for an open access future, we have been developing new initiatives to find replacement funds to maintain the journals and the Society’s programs: we are working hard to make our meetings self-sustaining; we are aggressively pursuing greater sponsorship and grant opportunities; and we have initiated a member fundraising campaign. But these efforts will take years to bear fruit. Running a Society without support from well-established foundations, funders, or large for-profit arms requires a sustainable business model.

Imagine, if you would, losing 60% of your lab budget overnight. 

If GSA lost all subscription revenue next year, we would have no choice but to drastically cut our programs to avoid bankruptcy, making it impossible to effectively serve our community. Such a sudden change would have many other unintended consequences. It would make it challenging to enforce our data policy, which requires a staff member with a PhD to check every submitted article. It would put an end to GSA’s ability to innovate and experiment with new publishing models, or to invest in developing partnerships with model organism databases, preprint servers, data repositories, and other community organizations. Reduced staffing would increase the administrative and logistical burden on authors, reviewers, and editors, making it even more difficult for time-strapped scientists to do their essential work. It would put in jeopardy our ability to continue to publish our journals and advance the field. 

We support the goals of open access. We also recognize the practical consequences of mandating it overnight.

That is why we acted so quickly and joined our fellow scientific societies in signing these letters to encourage policymakers to allow us to read and comment on any such executive order before it is enacted.

We would welcome the opportunity to provide feedback on proposed public access mandates and to suggest ways to make it easier for small non-profit publishers to comply. Robust policy decisions must be collaborative, transparent, and allow a reasonable timeframe for feedback. Thoughtful policy can only result from hearing from a diverse array of stakeholders, including in this case societies, scientists, publishers, and lawmakers, and considering the different ways a new policy might impact science and discovery.

Tracey DePellegrin
Executive Director, Genetics Society of America
Executive Editor, GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics

Sonia Hall is working with the GSA in a newly-created role as Program Director for Early Career Scientist Engagement. Executive Director Tracey DePellegrin spoke with Sonia about why focusing on helping this group of scientists is so important, including plans to start a GSA steering committee led by graduate students & postdocs.

Sonia received her PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology in 2015 from the University of Kansas. As a graduate student, she became a Trainee Advisory Member of the GSA Education Committee, and later became a Trainee Advisory Representative for the GSA Board of Directors (2014-2016). As a graduate student and postdoc, Sonia has been engaged in the national conversation about workforce issues surrounding PhD trained scientists. She led or assisted in the development and implementation of numerous professional development events and programs for early career researchers, including events at The Allied Genetics Conference. Sonia is completing a one-year fellowship in the Center for Biomedical Career Development at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is also building career and professional development curricula and assisting in data analysis for the NIH BEST-funded programs at UMass Med. 

Tracey DePellegrin: I’m delighted to work with you again! You’ve contributed so much to GSA and to our members. But let’s turn the tables: what are some of the ways GSA has influenced your scientific career?

Sonia Hall: Oh my goodness – where do I even begin? My participation in GSA activities has been my source of professional skills development. From written and oral communication, leadership, project management, program development and more, I’ve learned it from GSA under the mentorship of GSA staff and membership.

One important experience was Beth Ruedi asking me to assist in organizing the very first trainee bootcamp for GSA. She gave me complete creative control over half of the event and empowered me to see my vision through. I reached out to individuals whose work I had admired from afar, like Ethan Perlstein, Lynn Cooley, and Jason Tennessen! The opportunity also taught me quite a bit about the logistics involved in planning scientific conferences.

TD: The majority of our members are early career scientists, many of whom are facing uncertain funding, competitive environments, and long hours, among other things. How can the GSA best serve this group?

SH: It’s important to integrate professional development opportunities with society activities. This allows members to have access to quality and career-enhancing experiences but with minimal impact to research productivity. I want early career scientists to leave any experience with GSA feeling that their time away from the research setting was worth the investment.

I also want early career scientist members to have an active voice within the society and in the larger scientific community. They are the future of our community and their voices should be represented within the society.

Here at the GSA, I’m building an early career scientist steering committee that will be led by graduate student and postdoc members. The committee will focus on three main areas of interest: building relationships with professionals and companies in the larger scientific community, engaging in early career advocacy efforts, and communicating the impact of fundamental discoveries that originated in the model organism community.  

TD: You’ve said that your first experience at a GSA meeting was transformative. Can you speak to that?

SH: Being an undergraduate student, I didn’t understand what the scientific community really was. I had an exceptional undergraduate research mentor, GSA member Robert Ward at the University of Kansas, who provided the opportunity for me to attend the 2011 Annual Drosophila Research Conference. I had never presented my work to other fly people, and I just remember thinking that I was way out of my league.

But there I was with Rob, who later became my graduate advisor, hanging our poster in this giant exhibit hall. People asked me about my work and were genuinely interested in my contribution to our project. Rob was wonderful about introducing me to his former colleagues, friends, and other scientists working in our field.

Science became more than a field of study during that meeting; it became a collection of passionate, creative, and talented people working together. I felt, and still feel, so fortunate to get to contribute to this amazing community.

TD: What is your sense of the biggest challenges faced by today’s graduate students and postdocs in genetics (and related fields)?

SH: I’d say the state of the workforce. Having PhDs working outside of academia isn’t new, but the growing number of PhDs entering other sectors brings challenges. This increasing diversity in career outcomes is concerning because graduate and postdoctoral training programs focus on academic careers; this leaves the majority underprepared for their transition into a non-academic career. We need to modernize graduate education nationally. Many approaches are being tested and evaluated across the country, including here at UMass Med. I’m fortunate to work closely with innovative thinkers like Morgan Thompson, Cynthia Fuhrmann, and Mary Ellen Lane on addressing this critical need.

This modernization of graduate education is viewed as a challenge for a variety of reasons. Our academic system has successfully demonstrated their ability to produce highly specialized scientists. We train graduate students and postdocs, who make tremendous contributions to the scientific enterprise in the form of data collection and analysis. The work conducted through the training partnerships of faculty mentors and their students and postdocs is a major driver of scientific progress in our country.

That said, ideally, solutions to help the younger workforce shouldn’t have a negative impact on scientific output. Additionally, many of us are trained using funds from federal grants. The question does arise as to whether these funds are achieving the desired return on their investment when a trainee decides not to continue a research career.

To me the challenge is not so much about retaining each individual in a research position — because not everyone desires a position in intensive scientific research — but rather demonstrating that there is a very real economic benefit to having trained scientists working in a variety of sectors.

TD:  What’s your advice for young scientists facing those problems?

SH: They should reach out for career development. There are many opportunities to develop professional skills that are beneficial both within and outside of the research setting. Take action to develop a diverse set of skills early in your training, and don’t wait until it is time to make a transition. If opportunities don’t exist around you, create them yourself!

I often reflect back on the example that my mother set for me when I was growing up. If she saw a problem or need or was dissatisfied with something, she did something to change it. She sacrificed so much of herself to improve the lives of others – I guess that has left a fundamental mark on me as an individual and professional.

TAD: I’ve always been impressed by your thoughtfulness, energy, and commitment to the projects in which you engage. What’s your inspiration?

SH: I’m just one person with an interest and passion. But, if I create an opportunity for others to join us, we can have a greater impact on our community. That really inspires me to create collaborative projects.

I believe deeply in giving back to the communities that have shaped who I am. The scientific community has played a big part in that for me. I was really inspired by my graduate mentor to advocate for the advancement of the genetics community. He demonstrated for me the commitment to deepen our understanding of the biological world, our responsibility to mentor others, and the importance of the each person’s work, regardless of the prestige of their grant funding, elite institution, training pedigree, etc.

We were a small lab without a large research grant. But, that never stopped Rob from having a major impact on those that he taught or mentored. He also never hesitated to provide precious antibodies, other reagents, or scientific insight to the Drosophila community. I trained under this incredible individual and in some way; I see the programs I develop as furthering his investment.

Given the outcome of the US presidential election, some of our members have asked us if they should fear an erosion of federal support for research funding. Others have asked more pointed questions, such as: What is the GSA doing to defend the interests of geneticists? Young scientists, they’ve told us, are now even more worried about their future in science. What will happen when the upcoming administration appoints a new NIH Director, White House science adviser, and leaders of other scientific agencies? How secure are international postdocs who want to stay in the United States?

As GSA’s Executive Director, I have heard your concerns and, indeed, share many of them. But in this time of uncertainty, know that you’re not alone.

GSA is about more than our 5700 members. We work to promote the value of science, in the US and throughout the world. We bring together scientists and ideas, and we advocate for discoveries fueled by curiosity. We advance model organism research and its powerful contributions to knowledge. And we embrace our responsibility to help ensure the fiscal and intellectual sustainability of research in genetics and genomics. We’re in science for the long-term – our view spans not just months or years, but decades and beyond.

It is more urgent than ever for GSA to advocate for you and to provide a forum that brings together our communities to articulate the interests and priorities of geneticists. We find strength working with other groups, and actively participate in advocacy coalitions that include the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), the Coalition of Life Sciences (CLS), and Research!America. These coalitions represent hundreds of thousands of scientists.

We empower our members to engage in direct advocacy by coordinating events such as Capitol Hill Days, when they can share with Congress the importance of their work. Sonia Hall, GSA’s newly-appointed Program Director for Early-Career Scientist engagement, recently met with Congressional representatives and staffers in Washington, D.C. She talked about the trainee experience and the future scientific workforce. She also touched on the significant investment taxpayers made into her career and reminded lawmakers that failing to fund biological research makes it difficult for highly-trained talent to stay in research intensive positions.

Having a strong voice is especially important to our student and postdoc members. We’re working to bring together these vital contributors to our community, recruiting them to important roles on GSA committees that help shape our vision. This past summer, trainee advisory representatives made insightful, energetic contributions to our society’s big experiment, The Allied Genetics Conference, which brought seven separate research community meetings under one roof and attracted over 3000 attendees from 46 countries.

In 2017, GSA plans to form a new committee composed of graduate students and postdocs focused on issues like scientific policy, communications, and outreach. This committee will be another way for GSA to engage with its younger members and for these members to effect real change.

How can you help? Send us your ideas and ask questions. Contribute to our trainee advisory board, write a post for our Genes to Genomes blog, complete our surveys so we can better understand and represent you. Propose a workshop at a GSA-sponsored meeting. Become a GSA member and help us amplify all our voices by encouraging others in your lab to check us out. Contact me directly if you want to talk or if you’re struggling with a situation I might be able to ameliorate.

Take the time to call your elected officials or visit their staff, whether locally or in Washington, D.C. Better yet, contact GSA beforehand, so one of us or another scientist can accompany you on your visit. Engage with friends and family — and show them why science matters.

Over the coming months and years, we must be relentless in our support for science and its values of curiosity, respect for evidence, collaboration, an open mind, integrity, and dogged persistence, among others.

As good scientific citizens, let’s find our commonalities and discuss our differences. Let’s never stop exploring, asking questions, having fun, and collaborating with one another. Let’s continue to speak — especially with those who may not agree — about why science and evidence are so important. Let’s continue to be inclusive.

Let’s face the uncertainty. Together.

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This month, the GSA journal GENETICS published an editorial that illuminates the struggles experienced by scientists when trying to both do good science and advance in their career, especially as it relates to the unintended effects of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF).

The editorial by Executive Editor Tracey DePellegrin and Editor-in-Chief Mark Johnston is largely intended to bring to life the human impact of the JIF by discussing its warped effects on the behavior and focus of early career scientists they met this year.

The authors wish to emphasize that those students said they had wanted to send their work to GENETICS, but couldn’t do it until summer 2015, when the journal’s JIF happened to cross over some seemingly magical threshold. Their story illustrates how the JIF perversely affects science and the ways the scientists we met are forced to contort themselves and their choices for communicating their research simply because of a metric they agreed was irrelevant to assessing the quality of a journal.

We want to hear about your experiences and observations. Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below – we’d like each of you to get involved in a discussion here at G2G.

CITATION

DePellegrin, T.A., and M. Johnston. 2015. An Arbitrary Line in the Sand: Rising Scientists Confront the Impact Factor. GENETICS, 201(3): 811-813. doi:10.1534/genetics.115.182261

C. elegans zygote fixed and stained for tubulin (green), DNA (blue), and the central spindle-associated kinesin ZEN-4 (red). Image courtesy of Julie Canman (Columbia University)

GENETICS’ publication of WormBook in the 21^st century is a perfect partnership, because C. elegans research began in GENETICS with the May 1974 publication of Sydney Brenner’s The Genetics of Caenorhabditis elegans – the foundational article that launched an entire field. Since then, some of the most important papers about C. elegans have appeared in GENETICS. So it is fitting that, starting Spring 2016, the journal will publish the definitive review articles on the biology of the organism.

Iva Greenwald, Columbia University

WormBook Editor-in-Chief Iva Greenwald studies C. elegans at Columbia University. She investigates cell-cell interactions, signal transduction, and cell fate specification. Her earlier work provided deep insight into the role of Notch in development and the mechanism of Notch signal transduction. She discusses this work in a GENETICS Perspectives ‘Notch and the Awesome Power of Genetics’ (Greenwald 2012).

“WormBook will contain comprehensive reviews to serve all members of the C. elegans community, from trainees in worm labs to established researchers wanting to learn about a new area,” says Greenwald. “It will also serve other researchers who need to learn more about the worm, such as scientists working on related topics or orthologous genes in other organisms.”

Greenwald is collaborating with a team of Section Editors, all practicing scientists who themselves have made important contributions to C. elegans research. The Section Editors are helping to formulate WormBook’s topical areas, invite authors, manage reviews, and work with authors to refine the articles.

“WormBook in GENETICS will continue a great community tradition and will strengthen our longstanding association with GENETICS, which began with the publication in 1974 of Sydney Brenner’s landmark paper.   That association has grown, which is apparent in the many papers that appear every year in GENETICS and G3, as well as in the GSA’s sponsorship of the C. elegans meetings.”

Canals and cell body of the C. elegans excretory cell, marked with LifeAct::TagRFP (magenta) and cytoplasmic CFP (Cyan). Image Courtesy of Daniel D. Shaye 

Each month, starting in late spring 2016, GENETICS will publish one or two WormBook articles spanning the breadth of the biology, genetics, genomics, and evolutionary biology of C. elegans. About 60 articles will be published over the next several years.

Inspired by the original WormBook, GSA has been working with leaders in the yeast and the Drosophila communities on similar projects in GENETICS, starting in 2011 with YeastBook, a compendium of reviews presenting the state of knowledge of the molecular biology, cellular biology, and genetics of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

In October 2015, the first chapters of FlyBook were published in GENETICS. Lynn Cooley is Editor-in-Chief of FlyBook, along with co-Editors-in-Chief R. Scott Hawley and Therese A. Markow.

“We are gratified that the yeast, worm and fly communities chose to publish in GENETICS these modern ‘books’ that define their fields,” says Mark Johnston, GENETICS Editor-in-Chief.

Fixed one cell stage embryo during mitosis, depleted of the dynein heavy chain DHC-1 using RNAi, and stained with antibodies against alpha-tubulin (green), PGL-1 (red, marking P granules) and counterstained with a DNA dye (blue). Image courtesy of Pierre Gönczy.

An earlier partnership between the Genetics Society of America (GSA) journals and the worm community continues to be innovative and important. In 2009, GENETICS and WormBase collaborated on a pilot project to integrate scholarly journal articles directly to biological databases – specifically, GENETICS and WormBase. The project provided readers with additional rich information and an interactive experience by directly connecting published literature with entries in model organism databases. Since then, the project pipeline has expanded to include article links in GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics to Saccharomyces Genome Database (SGD), FlyBase, and soon, FungiDB.

WormBook Advisory Board     

Monica Driscoll, Rutgers University
Pierre Gönczy, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne
Oliver Hobert. Columbia University
Tim Schedl, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
Paul Sternberg, California Institute of Technology

WormBook Section Editors

Cell & Organelle Biology

Michel Labouesse, Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et cellulaire
Barth D. Grant, Rutgers University

Cell Fate, Signaling, & Development

Meera V. Sundaram, University of Pennsylvania
Geraldine C. Seydoux, Johns Hopkins University/HHMI

Evolution & Ecology

Marie-Anne Félix, Institut de Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure
Asher D. Cutter, University of Toronto

Gene & Genome Regulatory Mechanisms

John K. Kim, Johns Hopkins University
Susan Strome, University of California, Santa Cruz

Metabolism, Physiology, & Aging

Monica Driscoll, Rutgers University
Adam Antebi, Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing

Neurobiology & Behavior

Piali Sengupta, Brandeis University
Yuichi Iino, University of Toyko

WormMethods

Oliver Hobert, Columbia University/HHMI
Hannes Bülow, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Publication expenses for WormBook articles are provided by GSA as a service to the community. Existing chapters of WormBook at Caltech will remain available at http://www.wormbook.org/; several new and updated chapters will appear there over the next months. WormBook founding Editor-in-Chief Marty Chalfie and Greenwald have described these developments in letters to the community.

About Iva Greenwald: Her recent work is focused on identifying genes that modulate Notch activity in development and disease, the discovery and elucidation of different modes of regulation and crosstalk of Notch with other signaling pathways during cell fate specification, and investigating how Notch activity is modulated when environmental input is coordinated with temporal progression. She received her PhD degree from MIT, performed postdoctoral research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and was on the faculty of Princeton University before moving to Columbia University. Her honors include election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She has served as an Associate Editor of GENETICS, an Editor of Development, a Section Editor of WormBook at Caltech, and is currently on the Editorial Board and Publications Committee of PNAS.

Citations:

Brenner, S. 1974 The genetics of Caenorhabditis elegans. Genetics 77, 71–94.

Greenwald, I. 2012 Notch and the Awesome Power of Genetics. Genetics 191, 655-69.

Rangarajan, A., Schedl, T., Yook, K., Chan, J., et al., 2011 Toward an interactive article: Integrating journals and biological databases. BMC BioInfomatics 12:175.

GSA dedicates these inaugural chapters to Bill Gelbart, who is dearly missed, and who will live on in our memories and in our work. Bill was an early enthusiast of the FlyBook project, and without his and Thom Kaufman’s vision to partner with GENETICS, these articles would not have the valuable richness of links to FlyBase as well as its support.

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most effective and widely-used tools of biological research. This humble insect has helped scientists understand the mechanics of life through more than a century of research in genetics, genomics, animal development, neuroscience, systems biology, evolutionary biology, and more. But even the best tool needs a user’s guide to the most up-to-date information. And that guide is now a reality.

The inaugural chapters of FlyBook were recently published in the October issue of the GSA journal GENETICS. A commentary by Gerry Rubin sets the stage for FlyBook followed by review articles which include Transmission, Development, and Plasticity of Synapses (Harris and Littleton), and Drosophila as an In Vivo Model for Human Neurodegenerative Disease (McGurk, Berson, and Bonini).

At the helm are Editor-in-Chief Lynn Cooley, along with co-Editors-in-Chief Scott Hawley and Teri Markow. These three powerhouses collaborate with Section Editors, who invite experts and innovators in their respective fields to write peer-reviewed chapters.

FlyBook exemplifies true community and innovation. As part of its mission to serve the scientific community and its members, GSA collaborated with community leaders to conceptualize, create, support, and disseminate FlyBook. The project is led by practicing scientists who themselves are pushing the field forward – and who also want to enable learning and advancement to a broad range of scientists. With rich, online content, the model of a ‘book’ morphs into the 21st century, and supports the way researchers today share and use information.

FlyBook will cover D. melanogaster and more! Pictured: D. affinis male (Unckless et al. 2015) Image Credit: David Duneau

Each month, GENETICS will publish one or two FlyBook articles spanning the breadth of biology, genetics, genomics, and evolution of Drosophila, ending up with around 50-60 articles after several years. Because of GENETICS’ ongoing partnership with FlyBase, these articles, like other Drosophila articles in the journal, will feature links from genes and other objects directly to the related FlyBase page, which provides additional rich information.

“FlyBook will serve as the go-to reference for people entering the field, those shifting from one area of fly research to another, and for those, such as grant reviewers and graduate class teachers, who need to find information about another discipline, ” says Cooley.

“The core of the Drosophila community has always been the extensive sharing of information,” notes Hawley. “Beginning with Bridges and Brehme (1944) and continuing through the truly priceless Ashburner (1989) books, we have depended on books to train our students and update the community.”

“The tattered copy of the ‘red book’ by Lindsley and Grell (1968) still sits on my desk both at work and at home,” Hawley continues. “The community organizes ourselves around these resources, which live for decades – but we need a new cornerstone to capture the ever-increasing reach of the biology of Drosophila. FlyBook is written not just by two or three altruistic scholars, but by our community. It will offer both perspective and insight, update the history books, and map out our future. It is, in some ways, an homage to the contributions of people like Bridges, Lindsley, and Ashburner, in the hopes of extending these contributions and fulfilling their intended promises.”

Sections and editors include:

Cell Signaling

Marek Mlodzik, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Jessica Treisman, New York University School of Medicine

Development & Growth

Trudi Schüpbach, Princeton University
Carl Thummel, University of Utah School of Medicine

Ecology & Evolution

Teri Markow, University of California, San Diego
Trudy Mackay, North Carolina State University

Gene Expression

Brian Oliver, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health
Eileen Furlong, European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Genome Organization

Sue Celniker, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Gary Karpen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/University of California, Berkeley

Methods

Norbert Perrimon, Harvard Medical School/Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
Hugo Bellen, Baylor College of Medicine/HHMI

Nervous System & Behavior

John Carlson, Yale University
Jim Truman, Janelia Farm Research Campus/HHMI*

Repair, Recombination, & Cell Division

Scott Hawley, Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Terry Orr-Weaver, Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stem Cells & Germline

Ruth Lehmann, New York University School of Medicine/HHMI
Allan Spradling, Carnegie Institution for Science/HHMI

“More than a century of work has established Drosophila as perhaps the most important model for the function of genes and pathways conserved throughout the tree of life. FlyBook will make that knowledge accessible to the expert who has long studied the organism, to the geneticist who is studying a homologous gene in another organism, and to someone just starting out in a Drosophila lab,” says GENETICS Editor-in-Chief Mark Johnston.

Publication expenses for FlyBook articles are being provided by GSA as a service to the community.

Citations:

Ashburner M., 1989 Drosophila: A Laboratory Handbook. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.

Ashburner, M., K. G. Golic and R. S. Hawley, 2005 Drosophila: A Laboratory Handbook. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.

Bridges C. B., and K.S. Brehme, 1944 The Mutants of Drosophila melanogaster, Publ. no. 552. Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Lindsley, D. L., and E. H. Grell, 1968 Genetic Variations of Drosophila melanogaster, Publ. no. 627. Carnegie Institution of Washington.

This week, GENETICS and protocols.io are launching a partnership to improve the materials & methods sections of published papers. The journal GENETICS, published by the Genetics Society of America, is encouraging authors to publish detailed methods on protocols.io, in parallel with their article’s publication in GENETICS. Also, as part of the partnership, several accepted manuscripts or articles will be selected each month by the editors of GENETICS, and protocols.io will then digitize these protocols. See the initial set of GENETICS protocols here.)

Tracey A. DePellegrin, Executive Editor of GSA Journals, talks with Lenny Teytelman, founder protocols.io, about this technology innovation.

TAD: Our integration with protocols.io means that protocols – detailed methods – will no longer be simply static PDFs or a series of printed steps. It seems to me that they become multi-dimensional!

Lenny Teytelman

LT: Exactly. Scientists will be able to execute the protocols on the web or on our mobile apps, step-by-step. Most importantly, the authors and readers can keep the methods up-to-date and share tweaks and optimizations on our open access platform.

TAD: Though GENETICS is turning 100 in a few months, a lot of people are surprised that we’ve been early adopters (in many cases, the first – like model organism database linking to articles or publishing early online) of some great technological innovations in communicating science – many of them created by geneticists.

LT: As a geneticist, having gone to countless GSA meetings as a graduate student and postdoc, it’s hard for me to imagine a better journal than GENETICS as the first partnership between protocols.io and a publisher. Through our partnership, many of your methods will be available on mobile phones, and I think this is one of several great examples of efforts on your part to improve the publishing experience and the published results. Together with the recent announcement that references do not have to be formatted on submission and partnership with bioRxiv as examples – I really do think that the GENETICS editors are actively pushing to improve science communication.

TAD: Tell us more about the impetus behind protocols.io. What’s your scientific muse?

LT: In a nutshell, I literally spent the first year and a half of my postdoc at MIT, correcting a single step of the RNA-FISH microscopy method that I was using. Instead of a microliter of an enzyme, we needed 5, and instead of 15 minutes incubation with this chemical, we needed an hour. I discussed this in a lab meeting, and researchers in our lab had to redo their experiments. I called Arjun Raj, the inventor of the method, and he put this info on his website’s FAQ. But the crazy part is that I had no effective way of letting anyone else using this technique know about my discovery. It’s not a new method, but a correction of a previously-published one, and neither I nor Arjun can go to the original Nature Methods publication and put a post-it note on that step, warning people to follow the new instructions. So I get zero credit for this year and a half, but more importantly, everyone else is either getting misleading data or has to spend a year or two rediscovering what I know. My example may be extreme, but it’s an experience familiar to most researchers when something simple that should take a week takes months due to some important tweak of a protocol.

TAD: A big part of making a difference in scientific communication I think does involve connecting scientists with what they need, when they need it. So putting up-to-date information ‘out there’ is important, but you mentioned before that’s only half the battle. Tell me about your approach here.

LT: What we didn’t realize is that more often than not, this knowledge is never even published in the first place. Materials and methods sections are full of “as reported elsewhere”, “we used a slightly modified version”, “detailed protocol available upon e-mail request.” So, I hope that our partnership will shift invisible supplementary protocols into a beautiful web/mobile user interface and will move many valuable protocols out of personal notebooks and into the public domain.

TAD: Two important areas in science right now – transparency and reproducibility – you’ve discussed as being improved with protocols.io. Can you elaborate?

LT: Over the last few years, there has been a lot of attention paid to this issue in academic and industry circles, as well as in the mainstream media. And we have all realized that reproducing work that others have published is very hard. I am glad the issue is in the spotlight, but frankly, some of the proposed solutions scare me. So instead of extra burdens on the scientists who are already overwhelmed, I am a big fan of leveraging technology to both help the researchers and to improve reproducibility smartly. (More thoughts from me on this topic here.) In the case of protocols.io, sharing the methods in fine detail will help others to reproduce the experiments in their lab. And while we all make mistakes, having a central place where we can correct them and share improvements and modifications should also ensure greater efficiency and reproducibility (more on the importance of protocols here and here).

TAD: What’s a typical use case?

LT: Today, we have about a thousand protocols that are private or shared within groups, and 200 publicly-shared methods. So at this point, most of the utility comes from the ability to “run” the public and private protocols, following them step-by-step as one performs the experiment. Many researchers run their protocols on a phone or tablet device directly at the bench, noting any tweaks and deviations in the app. We record a snapshot of exactly how they executed the protocol on that day in a cloud-synchronized journal, so it’s easy to instantly look up the details later, when you are writing the paper or answering the reviewer’s questions. However, the most important use case will happen when we reach critical mass in a year or so.

TAD:  Tell me about that future use case. What have you got up your sleeve for protocols.io in say a year?

LT: We are growing very quickly in terms of content and users, but we are still in the content-seeding stage. It’s critical for us to seed protocols.io with the commonly-used protocols. About 1,000 core techniques in molecular biology cover 70-80% of all the work at the bench. Once we get this initial set of widely-used methods into the platform, the barrier to adoption will be infinitely lower. Scientists will be able to immediately start using and commenting on the protocols, without having to first spend time on entering them in the first place. Getting content has been one of the challenges at the heart of getting our repository off the ground, which is why we are so excited about this partnership with GENETICS. I genuinely believe this partnership is a key step on our path to the ultimate use case – saving somebody a week, month or a year of unnecessary effort because they discovered the correction or optimization on protocols.io.