Behind the results: Nature Portfolio authors speak about the unseen efforts underlying their research

Author: Christabell Ndive

Robust, impactful scientific research takes time and effort. In our previous blog post in this series, Nature Portfolio authors revealed the published papers that they felt had most impacted the world. One study had significantly influenced global government policy on climate change. Another had the potential to save hundreds of infant lives. And a third closed an important knowledge gap regarding life-changing body-stimulation therapy.

In this blog post, four Nature Portfolio authors discuss the unseen effort that goes into producing such world-changing research, the challenges they face and overcome, and the constant need to juggle their work alongside everyday demands. The effort and hard work are significant; however, as we saw in the previous blog post, they are worth it when the research is published on a platform accessed by readers who can use it to find solutions to global problems. At Nature Portfolio, we put significant resources into ensuring each paper is robust, communicated clearly, and reaches as wide an audience as possible.

Communication and collaboration

We first spoke with Wenying Shou, Professor of Quantitative and Evolutionary Biology, at University College London, who told us that a lot of unseen teamwork goes into making sure that her research is communicated effectively. This is the ultimate unseen work, she said, because when research is well presented and clearly communicated, readers are not hindered by “jargon and hard concepts”. Collaboration is an important part of this unseen work — it takes a team to hone concepts and findings into easily understood and clear manuscripts, not to mention carrying out all the administration behind such research including securing grants and funding.

Ensuring that research is fully explained without any confusion or risk of misinterpretation is no easy process. The chosen platform can help immensely, and the Nature Portfolio editorial team ensure that the research they publish is clear and concise. This is exemplified by Shou’s study, “Steering ecological-evolutionary dynamics to improve artificial selection of microbial communities”, which was co-authored by Li Xie in the US and published in Nature Communications in 2021.

For William Colgan, Senior Researcher, at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, it is the physical aspect of his research that most often goes unseen. In the last blog post, he named “Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018”, which appeared in Nature in 2019, as his most impactful study. This work involved gathering a huge body of data from approximately 50 co-authors over a significant time period. Colgan said that the efforts required to collect data are often overlooked; in this case, they included the meticulous planning needed to get to the ice sheet, involving “permits, insurances, logistics, aircraft supplies, equipment, and personnel”.

Time management and work-life balance

Ginestra Bianconi, Professor of Applied Mathematics, at Queen Mary University of London, revealed that her biggest challenges are time management and juggling university commitments with the demands of research. Bianconi explained that much of her workload at the university goes unseen — particularly daily administrative tasks and connecting with the wider scientific community. These activities take time away from research, and finding the drive and motivation to continue painstakingly precise work can be difficult.

Bianconi’s paper on “The dynamic nature of percolation on networks with triadic interactions”, published in Nature Communications in 2023, is a case in point. Like many other high-impact research articles—including those led by Shou and Colgan—this was very much a collaborative effort and was co-authored by PhD student Hanlin Sun in the UK, and colleagues Filippo Radicchi and Jürgen Kurths in the US and Germany, respectively. Much of Bianconi’s drive to work on her research is fuelled by her passion to ensure it is recognized by the scientific community and the world at large; the wide and influential audience that Nature Portfolio attracts is ideal for her papers.

Our fourth researcher, Abdel Abdellaoui, Geneticist, at Amsterdam UMC (University Medical Center) in the Department of Psychiatry, also emphasized the collaborative nature of his paper, “Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain”, which appeared in Nature Human Behaviour in 2019 and was co-authored by colleagues from the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands. Scientific research, he said, is not just about the ‘eureka’ moments; it also involves the arduous task of data collection, testing and analysis, quality control, communicating results, gathering feedback, and going through many, many rounds of revisions. This can be challenging and repetitive work. Having a healthy life-work balance can help researchers keep their motivation levels high when carrying out the more mundane and time-consuming steps that are vital for producing robust research articles. In fact, Abdellaoui said that his best work usually comes when he has a long and sustained period where he is “physically and emotionally well balanced” — this gives him the headspace and clarity to work on potentially ground-breaking research.

Abdellaoui identified the Nature Portfolio editors, reviewers, designers, and layout professionals as vital allies in ensuring that work is well-presented, clearly argued, and thoroughly evaluated, amplifying and enhancing the research team’s efforts.

Watch our authors describe the unseen efforts that have gone into the research they published in Nature Portfolio:

It’s clear that a lot more work goes into scientific research than is seen by the reader. The ground-breaking work published in Nature Portfolio is underpinned not only by meticulous academic work but also by the myriad tasks that researchers undertake to produce rigorous, reproducible, and transformative articles. 

In the next blog, we look at the importance of diversity in a research team, and how having as many different perspectives as possible can benefit both the process and the results. The researchers interviewed discuss the positive impact that diversity in age, gender, background, life experience, nationality, and academic skillsets has had in their past research efforts.

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.