Making an impact: Nature Portfolio authors on their most influential articles

Author: Christabell Ndive

Amid the stresses of daily life and hectic working schedules, scientists work tirelessly to produce research with the potential to save lives and change the world. In our last blog in this series, we discussed the ways in which Nature Portfolio authors balance family life, self-care, administration tasks, and other working commitments, while conducting cutting-edge research.

In this blog, four Nature Portfolio authors discuss the papers that have made their hard work worth the effort, and describe the impact these articles have had on some of the world’s most pressing problems.

Research that informs global governmental policy

The first researcher we spoke with is William Colgan, Senior Researcher, at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, who says that his most impactful article was “Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018,” which appeared in Nature in 2019. Colgan explains that this was a wide-ranging study, bringing together approximately 50 co-authors, all of whom shared their best estimates for how much ice the Greenland Ice Sheet had lost since 1992. 

“This was a huge community effort,” says Colgan, “and it was the sort of dataset that the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Sixth Assessment Report needed.” The IPCC is the United Nations body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change, then feeding this information to governments all over the world to inform their climate change strategies. Colgan’s paper fed directly into the IPCC’s reporting, and its findings were well positioned to influence global governmental policy.

Colgan’s article has since become essential reading for anyone researching global climate change. The paper has been accessed 39k times, received 428 citations, and featured in 292 news outlets across the world.

Filling knowledge gaps in life-changing therapies

Grégoire Courtine, Neuroscientist and Professor, and Jocelyne Bloch, Professor Neurosurgeon, are colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). When asked individually about their most impactful articles, they cite a paper they worked on together, “Targeted neurotechnology restores walking in humans with spinal cord injury,” published in Nature in 2018.

The study introduced targeted spinal cord stimulation neurotechnologies to individuals who had sustained a spinal cord injury more than four years earlier and presented with permanent motor deficits or complete paralysis despite extensive rehabilitation. After a few months, participants regained voluntary control over previously paralysed muscles without stimulation and could walk or cycle in ecological settings during spatiotemporal stimulation. These results established a technological framework for improving neurological recovery after spinal cord injury, transforming lives in the process.

Bloch explains that many therapies are developed but not completely understood, which limits their uses in other areas. This particular study filled this knowledge gap by revealing exactly what was happening when the cells were stimulated. Such deep understanding of the mechanics of a therapy opens up the possibilities of it being used in many other areas and ways. Courtine adds that the depth of research in the paper was a factor in its success.

Potentially saving infant lives 

Another paper with a huge influence in the field of health was “A human fetal liver-derived infant MLL-AF4 acute lymphoblastic leukemia model reveals a distinct fetal gene expression program.” The article was co-authored by Anindita Roy, Professor of Paediatric Haematology, at the University of Oxford, and published in Nature Communications in 2021.

Despite being a widely published author in many journals, Roy named this as the paper of which she and the lab team are most proud, because of its potential to save hundreds of infant lives. The paper looked at a very specific type of leukemia that affects babies under the age of 12 months to find out why the same disease has a 90% cure rate for children, but a dismal prognosis for infants under 12 months. The team found that the infant form of the disease was connected with specific properties of prenatal blood cells. The model can now be used to understand how infant leukemia originates, as well as to test new treatments.

This study is available as open access, meaning it is accessible to anyone, anywhere, to read in full. A study like Roy’s can help find life-saving solutions to serious health issues affecting babies and infants. Every breakthrough or advance increases the chance of further success, so making this study widely available has huge potential benefits.

Watch our authors as they tell us about their most impactful Nature Portfolio articles:

The three studies discussed may be very different from each other, but all three are making a positive impact on the world. They also demonstrate that articles published in Nature Portfolio have a strong track record of making waves beyond the scientific community – influencing government policy, contributing to public knowledge, and transforming individual lives.

In the next blog, we go behind the scenes with the researchers to talk about the challenges they face. We look at the workload involved in their research, the efforts that often go unnoticed by their readers, and the many obstacles that researchers have to overcome in their work. We also discuss balancing the needs of other commitments with the work required to produce robust, impactful papers.

Nature Portfolio offers a wide range of global publishing channels, with space for in-depth and complex thinking. We make publishing research on a proven platform as easy as possible, offering best-in-class editorial teams who ensure important ideas are communicated with clarity, accuracy, and impact. Learn more about how we support researchers at every stage and how you can publish in one of our journals.