Season 2 - Episode 19: The Editors' Role: Behind the Scenes at Cancer Cell

In this episode, we hear from Dr. Montserrat Rojo de la Vega, Deputy Editor at Cancer Cell, and Dr. Cansu Cirzi, Scientific Editor at the same journal. They delve into the multifaceted role of editors in scientific publishing, particularly at Cancer Cell. The discussion covers key aspects like manuscript selection, peer review coordination, and author guidance during revisions. Beyond their editorial roles, they also share their personal journeys in science, from studying molecular biology and genetics to earning PhDs, and how they ultimately discovered their passion for scientific publishing.

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Episode Guests

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega, Ph.D.

Montse Rojo de la Vega obtained her B.Sc. in Biology from Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM), where her passion for cancer research started. She then obtained an M.S. in Molecular Oncology from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from the University of Arizona, where she studied the anti- and pro-tumorigenic roles of NRF2 in cancer. Montse joined Cancer Cell in 2018.

Cansu Cirzi, Ph.D.

Cansu Cirzi earned her B.S. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Istanbul University. She then moved across Europe to study a wide breadth of topics, including cancer biology, neurophysiology, RNA biology, epigenetics, and cell biology. After receiving M.S. from the University of Heidelberg and Ph.D. (Dr.rer.nat.) from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), she moved to the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research for her postdoctoral work. In 2024, Cansu joined Cell Press in both Cancer Cell and Trends in Cancer.

Show Notes

Ad: Worta McCaskill-Stevens Career Development Award for Community Oncology and Prevention Research (K12)

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Transcript

Oliver Bogler:

Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and we hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI's Center for Cancer Training.

An important part of any cancer research career is publishing your findings in an appropriate journal where people in your field can read them. The people who work at these journals where your papers appear are themselves scientists whose expertise helps them guide the review and publication process. Today, we're exploring that career path.

Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn. And of course, we're always glad to get your feedback on what you hear and suggestions on what you might like us to cover. The show's email is NCIICC@nih.gov.

It's a pleasure to welcome our guests for today, both of whom work at Cancer Cell. Welcome to you, Dr. Montserrat Rojo de la Vega, the deputy editor at Cancer Cell.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Hi Oliver, thank you so much for inviting me today.

Oliver Bogler:

And also welcome to Dr. Cansu Cirzi, who is the scientific editor at Cancer Cell.

Cansu Cirzi:

Yeah, hi Oliver, thanks a lot for inviting me as well.

Oliver Bogler:

So let's start with the question of what an editor does and how does that fit into the publication process at a journal?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yes, so the roles that an editor has are many and very diverse. I will start by telling you a little bit of what we do at Cancer Cell. So we like to think that editors are the liaison between the authors and the reviewers. What we do is to select the manuscripts that will be sent out for review.

We also do an overview of the peer review process, which we think helps improve the paper. And then we accompany the authors through the preparation of the papers and their final materials before the publication of the paper to make sure that the research achieves the wide visibility and the right audience.

So throughout the day, we first receive what we call the editorial pack. This is a list of the new papers that are submitted to the journal every day. We get to see the title, the abstract of a paper, the list of the authors that submit this paper. And then we share our first impressions on those based on the title and the abstract of the paper.

What we do with that is we can share some intel that we have about that. It's like, maybe I saw this presented at a meeting, or maybe I talked to the authors about this, or this was a pre -submission that I received from the authors. This may be related to a paper that I am handling, so maybe I want to take a look at it so I can make a consistent decision. Or this is in an area that I'm handling a lot of papers, so I also want to take a look at this. And then, does this seem like a strong review candidate for the journal? Yes or no. How do we feel about this?

So those new papers are then assigned to the handling editor. The handling editor is then the editor who's going to read the full submission, from the cover letter to then the whole paper, the intro, the results, the discussion. And then we typically write notes on those papers. We also consult the published literature. We do a PubMed search and we try to understand what's the state of the field. So we compare that paper to what has been published to try to understand what's conceptual advance, what's provided here, what's new, what's missing. And then we share those notes with our team and have a discussion. And that's how we decide which papers are going to be sent out for review.

Once we decide if a paper is going to be sent out for review or not, then the handling editor is in charge of selecting the reviewers. That's typically done by thinking of a paper in abstract terms to try to see what areas of expertise need to be covered and then selecting reviewers. We take a lot of care in trying to identify reviewers that are not direct competitors that were excluded by the authors, people who have the right expertise to evaluate that paper.

And once the review process is complete, we evaluate the reviewer comments. Typically, I can make notes about that and try to make a summary of what will be needed to address, in order for us to move forward. Or if we think, you know, that the comments are not very positive or that they are too major to be addressed, we might try to offer a transfer somewhere else for that paper.

So something that is very unique to Cancer Cell is that we discuss with the authors those things that we think are crucial to address at the revision stage. So from that summary that we made of the reviewer comments, we discuss with the authors what things we think are key to address that will strengthen the main storyline of their paper, to try to prioritize the revision efforts to make a good use of the resources, both human and economic, and to really help them through the revision process of the paper.

And then once we agree with them on the revision plan, we set a timeline for the revision process. Wish them luck. And then once the paper comes back, we send it back to the reviewers again. And, you know, there's typically only one major round of revisions at Cancer Cell. And then once again, after we receive comments from the review process, then we make a second decision whether those concerns were sufficiently addressed, and whether we can make either a minor revisions decision and move forward or whether the revision was not satisfactory. And again, we need to find another home for the paper.

And if we're moving forward with a paper, then we work with the authors to address typically minor changes that need to be done in order to conform to our guidelines. Typically, in terms of like formatting and those things to improve the clarity of the paper and all of that, make sure it's scientifically accurate, that it passes image detective scans, and then grant formal acceptance of the paper. So, you know, that's typically the life cycle of a paper at Cancer Cell.

Oliver Bogler:

And can you give us a feeling for what a typical timeline for that process that you just described might be?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yes, so usually from initial submission to us knowing the first editorial decision on whether a paper either gets sent out for review or rejected, we try to make that within five days. So let's say like a work week. And then to get a decision from submission to let's say, sending it out for review and knowing whether a paper is going to go to revisions or being transferred to another journal, it's a little bit under two months currently. And then time to publication, we try to keep it under a year. So we're trying to help the authors publish in a timeline that makes sense to everybody.

Oliver Bogler:

Great, thank you. Thank you for outlining that.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

I was going to say, so this is the process that happens in typically a primary research journal at Cell Press like Cancer Cell. But we also have within the Cell Press family other journals that are reviews journals. And my colleague, Cansu, she works half time with Cancer Cell and also half time with Trends in Cancer. And over there, the process is slightly different.

Cansu Cirzi:

Yeah, so maybe I can just go through differences because the review process is more or less similar that, of course, we are also searching for scientific rigor, accuracy, and the reviewers need to be in the field of expertise. But until to that point, how the papers go through this process is a bit different because we engage with authors in a slightly different way. We either invite scientists to write on a specific topic ourselves, or we also consider submissions suggested by other researchers through a so-called pre-submission inquiry. And this is done by authors reaching out to the inbox of the journal where they just gauge interest of the journal to see whether the topic that they are suggesting is of interest to the journal, whether it is timely. And then we make a decision upon that. And with this, we open a proposal in our submission system so that the authors can submit their papers. Or if they are invited, then we already open a proposal and they can submit their papers through the system and from there on the review process is very similar to research journals.

Oliver Bogler:

Great, thank you, that's really helpful. So, you've spoken primarily about the role, I guess, of the primary assigned editor. Is that titled Scientific Editor at Cancer Cell? Yeah, okay. My audience can't hear you nod.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

[laughs] Yes.

Oliver Bogler:

And then you also have associate editors and Montse, you are a deputy editor. What are those roles, those other additional roles, like what does an associate editor do in addition, presumably, to being just also a scientific editor?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yeah, so I would say, you know, to the audience and to the scientists that we work with, I would say for them, we should all be scientific editors because truly what matters is that we're all handling their papers and we're all doing it with the same level of rigor that's required and with the same level of care.

But internally, we do have different levels that are more related to different levels of expertise and also different levels of responsibilities and extra activities that we can gain. And this will be more of interest to the career side of things and for people interested in maybe exploring this as a career opportunity.

Some of the levels that we have and these titles sometimes change names internally, so this is subject to change. But we do have associate, then scientific, and then senior. And then we can have deputy level, but that's not very common across different journals and different teams. That's like a special case. But what changes as you are climbing up the ladder is the level of independence and expertise that you are gaining.

So at the entry level with associate, you're basically more focused on learning how to do your job well and how to gain independence and expertise. So you're mostly focused on handling papers and starting to do other extra activities because not only do we handle papers, but we also have other projects and other career development opportunities to do. For example, we work on doing collections and we work on doing different projects, for example, lab links where we do one or two day, like mini-meetings at an institution, that we organize. But we can also organize larger scientific meetings called Cell Symposia. But that's like a more advanced quote unquote stage in your career.

We can also be part of organizing consortia groups within the NIH, for example. We work with different consortia and like interest groups. And we can handle like paper packages with them and help organize coordinated publications and websites to promote the content and all of that. So those are different things that you can start doing as you gain more seniority in these things.

And then in some journals, there is the special case where they have the deputy level position for some editors. In those journals, the deputy editor are in charge of helping the editors-in-chief manage the team. And that happens in teams where they have many editors. So they need to break down the teams into manageable subgroups. Or for example, Cancer Cell is one of the smaller journals. But our editor-in-chief has dual roles in that he not only is editor-in-chief of Cancer Cell, but also publishing director. So he manages many other journals in the life sciences portfolio for Cancer Cell. So when he is doing some of those activities, I step in to help manage some of the daily activities of the team and help manage our colleagues. So those are some of the exceptions where you can have that level.

Oliver Bogler:

Yeah, makes sense. Interesting. So I wonder what are the biggest challenges that you face sort of on a day to day basis as editors of your journals?

Cansu Cirzi:

Yeah, I guess this is a multi-layered answer. So in terms of scientific hurdles, I guess borderline papers can be challenging. For instance, if it's paper that we don't really quite know whether or not that would be a good fit for the journal. Or sometimes we may have split decisions among editors. Also finding the right reviewers is always an issue, and getting back the comments on time, of course. From the ethical perspective, it's also our obligation to investigate scientific allegations and help contact the authors when it's necessary to help correct the scientific record.

Oliver Bogler:

So interesting that you mentioned that. I did want to talk about that. And since you brought it up, we could just take a moment. Obviously, scientific literature has experienced, certainly the biomedical literature has experienced a significant increase in the number of retractions that have been often identified based on the activity of the crowd, crowdsourced sort of issues. So I wonder how do you manage those? And have you been affected in Cancer Cell with this issue.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

There's many different ways in which we get notified about these issues. So sometimes authors themselves come forward and they let us know they have identified some of these issues themselves or with their colleagues that they have been brought up. Sometimes we get anonymous tips in the email. Sometimes we find them when we are looking through X formerly known as Twitter. Sometimes we also see them posted on PubPeer or the people like retweeting about PubPeer allegations. So there's different ways in which this can happen. Even the Offices of Research Integrity can reach out to us and let us know. So it's a multi-pronged approach.

Oliver Bogler:

And then you have a process presumably to validate or investigate or take a look and then take action, right?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Sure, sure. I mean, it takes a while because we have to do a thorough investigation. We have to contact all the involved parties. We have to contact the authors, sometimes tracking down authors can be a little tricky, especially if they have moved on from academia and you can't really find the emails. We have to reach out to the Offices of Research Integrity.

And, you know, sometimes people can feel a little frustrated, whistleblowers when they don't hear back from us. But the thing to understand here is that these processes are also confidential. So sometimes we can't just be divulging information while the process is ongoing. But we do take all of these allegations seriously. And it's it's part of the process and the things that we do on a daily basis.

Oliver Bogler:

Are you at the front end also trying to prevent such things getting into the journal in the first place?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

So right now, before we formally accept a paper, all of our papers go through image detective software. The limitation is that the scans only apply to that paper. So we're not comparing it to like everything else on the outside. So we can only identify things within a paper and that's, you know, our own limitation. And I know the company is trying to find ways to incorporate, you know, technology to try and see how we can have something more powerful to use. But we definitely do whatever we can on our end to also contribute to research integrity.

Oliver Bogler:

Of course. And Cansu so I think I interrupted you in the middle of a thought so I apologize Please continue.

Cansu Cirzi:

No worries. Yeah. So I was just going to say that the last challenging part, I think, is related to operations, so how we operate. Of course, as Cancer Cell, we receive high volume of submissions, so that can be challenging for a small team such as ourselves.

And that we also have relatively busy work schedules. We try to go to as many conferences as possible, with as many scientists as possible. So time management can be an issue, but I guess that's an inherent problem of scientists.

Oliver Bogler:

Yes, modern life. Cansu, what is a small team? How many editors are there at Cancer Cell?

Cansu Cirzi:

Yeah, so for now we have Steve as our editor-in-chief, Montse is our deputy editor, and then we have Zhaodong and Feline, they are the scientific editors, and I myself am a shared editor between Trends in Cancer and Cancer Cell. Yeah.

Oliver Bogler:

So that is a very small team. Yeah. OK. I hear you. OK, so we talked about the challenges. What about the most rewarding things? What do you love about being an editor?

Cansu Cirzi:

I guess the answer to this is very short, but, I can talk about it for an hour at the same time. It's this continuous process of learning. I really enjoy the, the brilliant science that I get exposed to as a, as a scientist slash editor. I think it's been amazing for me. Also the chance to share this with the community has been really truly enjoyable for me.

Oliver Bogler:

How about you, Montse?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

I second that. To me, it's the opportunity to remain at the forefront of the most exciting science and also not having to get my hands dirty.

Oliver Bogler:

Fair enough. you just mentioned the forefront. I mean, Cell Press is celebrating its 50th anniversary, right? Cancer Cell is not itself yet 50 years old, right?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Twenty-two. Yeah.

Oliver Bogler:

Yeah, 22. That's pretty good. So how has the publishing landscape and the scientific landscape changed in that time span?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

I mean, I would say I've been an editor for six years now. And to me, it's been impressive to see how much it has changed even in this short time. And especially I would say cancer is one of the most fast paced fields there is out there. I think it's one of the fields that embraces technological changes the most quickly and it's one of the most multi- and inter-disciplinary fields. And just from a philosophical perspective also how things change.

And for example, from our journals perspective, year and a half ago, we decided to change the approach of our journal and we said, you know what, we think that to make big changes in not only the publication, but how we advance the field, we need to change our approach. And that's when we introduced our vision of the holistic view of cancer. And we said, we need to stop thinking about the cancer cell as an isolated being and just focus on one protein, one gene, and thinking of the signaling as a linear thing. We need to think of a cancer cell within its microenvironment and to think about all the interactions that are happening and that's within a whole system and to change the way that we think about things to change and use more systems biology approaches, to think of the whole organism and to look beyond just the cancer cell.

And, you know, I was joking and at the time thinking about movies and what came out is like, are we asking for everything, everywhere all at once? I'm like, yes, yes, maybe we're asking for that. But you know what? I think the time is right.

We have the technology, we have the expertise, we can assemble the right teams of people to do it. Let's just ask people to do it. There's a lot of people already doing this, but that's what we need to better understand cancer because, you know, cells in a dish, that's not how patients are.

And this all, you know, is still starting another shift in the journal and how we think about things. And we were still thinking on how to communicate this message better to our readers and to our authors. How do we use this to reduce and bridge the gap from the bench to the clinic? And this is because we want all the research that we publish to really make an impact in patients' life.

And people have said, you're abandoning basic research and just moving to the clinical and translational side. Yes, we have become more translational. Yes, we are publishing more clinical papers. But no, we're not abandoning basic cancer research. But what we are asking is that even in that basic and foundational clinic, people use the patient as the center and guiding light for asking the questions that they want to address. It's like, okay, how is this relevant for the patient? And how is this going to help me better understand cancer? Even if it's a basic question, it still needs to have some relevance to the patient, to the clinic. And we have seen that, we have seen that. It's not impossible. It can be done.

So that's the philosophical change. And to me, that's the most important part because without that, I think, you know, we're doing cell biology using cancer models and that's great. But to us, that's not the cancer research that we want.

Oliver Bogler:

Fantastic. As a survivor myself, I applaud that and I think that's fantastic.

So Cansu, you mentioned one of the challenges is getting reviewers to send in their comments on time. And in my day, I also reviewed for journals, so I understand. But peer review itself is not the perfect system, right? And I work at NCI. We do grants and we use peer review. So it's not a criticism. We haven't come up with anything better either. How do you think peer review should or could evolve to improve it?

Cansu Cirzi:

Yeah, I guess. mean, peer review process itself is really important for scientific integrity and rigor. So I think it's not a question to exclude it. But in order to improve the process, I guess what we could make sure that first of all, the right expertise is being involved in the process so that we choose the right people and all aspects of a paper is being covered. I think that's very vital for the process of accurate review. And yeah, in order to improve this, I think it's just not only one-sided, but it needs to be going on both sides of thinking of the reviewers, because we also appreciate that they have a lot of grant applications. Their own research, their own paper submissions, so they are also very busy, especially experts that we would like to reach out. Yeah, so it's been a challenge that I think is not very easy to answer.

Oliver Bogler:

So I can't help but being a little bit provocative. The listeners who regularly tune in will know that I'm obsessed, I think is a fair word, with AI. Do you ever see a future in which AI might become a helper to you in your work or even, dare I say it, a substitute for peer review: “Hey, ChatGPT, is this a good paper”?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

We don't think that AI is quite ready to either take our job or the reviewer's job. There's certainly ways in which it can help. For example, we have seen AI has been helpful for helping clean up language. And that has been fantastic. You know, sometimes we have been doing some tests using some proprietary AI to keep the confidentiality of the paper because that is something that is very important and that's why we cannot use, you know, ChatGPT or some of the other like open source and public AIs.

Just say like, what happens if, you know, I put in the reviewer comments to see if you can help me summarize things. And it does a fairly good job. But there's some concern that maybe it can be a little bit more strict in terms of assessing novelty, or maybe it won't be as strict enough. So either things would go in through the cracks or it would not be as forgiving as an editor might be and saying like, okay, let's give it a chance and see how it would do a peer review.

So, you know, we're, certainly open and that's why we started working with our own AI to see how we can introduce it because we are part of Elsevier and Elsevier is a company that's, you know, very inclined to using and incorporating technology into all of its processes. But at the same time, it's still, you know, in the very early stages. So it's hard to give a definitive answer after all that.

Oliver Bogler:

I was just I was trying to be provocative and just get your get your take. Yeah, obviously not today. Today it's definitely not ready for sure.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

And, you know, in terms of peer review specifically, I think the most challenging issue, and this is something that I have even seen being discussed on Twitter, is that as part of the things that we ask reviewers when you send an invitation for review is that the reviewer has to be accountable for the content of the review and you cannot make the AI accountable for the comments that it's making. So that's one, you know, like ethical concern that would be there, but you know, who knows?

Oliver Bogler:

I mean, the one thing it would do is, it would get you the reviews back on time. So I'm just saying.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yeah, I know a lot of authors would be very happy with that and editors too.

Oliver Bogler:

My last question before we take a break, Montse, you mentioned that Cancer Cell, Cell Press is part of Elsevier, company. So I wonder if you could briefly address the tension, I think, inherent in being a for-profit company and sort of the open access movement, right? The idea that particularly - I'm sitting here at NCI, part of the NIH, we fund with public money a lot of research and we have this stance that, well, that the research product, including the papers, then belongs to the public. But at the same time, you are a business. Where does that sit right now? What's been the sort of trajectory of that? Where will we be in 10 years?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, within Cell Press, we have a lot of gold open access journals. And Cancer Cell itself is a transformative journal. Trends in Cancer, for example, is a hybrid journal. So we do have a lot of open access options for our authors. Certainly, all of our Cell Press content is made publicly available after one year.

So we do have a lot of options for authors. And I think there's a broader discourse in terms of what's open access, because we certainly want to have dialogue and provide options, both for funding agencies, as well as authors that want to have gold open access, immediate open access.

But there's some other authors out there who have a different philosophy when it comes to that. So the company is always assessing that. The journal is providing the options. And we're always open to having that conversation.

Oliver Bogler:

I actually thought of another question that I wanted to ask before we end. And that is, thank you for that answer. That's very interesting. It made me think about other channels of communication that exist today but did not exist, for example, many years ago when I was a grad student or a postdoc. Social media, you mentioned X or Twitter. How does that fit into Cancer Cell’s mission or Trends in Cancer's mission to disseminate know, scientific information. Is social media a big part of your strategy? How do you see that developing in the future?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

I think that's a fantastic complementary approach to disseminating research. I think there's a great synergy in using social media to strengthen the dissemination of a paper and to help tailor the message to a different and complementary readership and audience. And to me, it's fantastic to see, you know, we publish the paper, it comes out, and then people have these tweet-torials to explain the paper. To me, that's fantastic. And it also allows me sometimes to catch up on reading papers published not only by my colleagues or by my own journal, but also to see what's being published by my competitors sometimes.

So when, you know, I'm taking public transportation or have a few minutes at home and I'm just scrolling through social media, that's when I get to see what's being published sometimes. And then I bookmark that or take a screenshot. And I know that's what I need to catch up on sometimes. So to me, that makes it very accessible and you know, it's something that just allows you to see everything in one spot.

Oliver Bogler:

Fantastic. Cansu of any perspective on that? From the Trends…

Cansu Cirzi:

Yeah, I just second that. Yeah, I completely agree with Montse that I myself, I don't use social media for scientific purposes, I must say, but I definitely, whenever I see something new from my friends or from my colleagues, it definitely gauges my interest more so than if I would just go to, you know, like regular ways of checking a paper through PubMed or so.

It just is much easier also visually, I think that it, just catches your attention more. So I think it's a great way of, of disseminating science. Yeah, for sure.

Oliver Bogler:

So I completely agree with you. So we're actually building at NCI an app called NanCI. It's an AI powered app that is designed to help early career cancer researchers keep up with the literature. So it's an AI discovery tool, matching tool. Scientists create folders of papers that define a particular interest and they can have many of these. And then the AI goes out and seeks similar papers and recommends them.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

That sounds great.

Oliver Bogler:

But we are going to take that break now. And when we come back, we will talk about career paths and what led our guests into science and then beyond into their current roles.

[music]

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Oliver Bogler:

OK, we're back. Before we get into the moves into publishing, let's start at the beginning. And Cansu, let's start with you. What first sparked your interest in science?

Cansu Cirzi:

I think that's a, I would say it's not an easy answer for me because I never really had like one path in my life to choose. I also, I'm not a person of favorites, so I always have a plan B in my life. So I guess being a scientist just came from my own curiosities. I was always a curious child and also, so I grew up in Turkey and I went to university in Turkey where we have a system: in order to get into university, need to go through an examination and then you get ranked nationwide. And with this, you just get selected by, or you need to select several universities. And if your points are enough, you get entered. So I guess it just happened both by, by the points that I received and by my interest that I either wanted to go to medicine or biology.

And, so yeah, I studied molecular biology and genetics in Istanbul in Turkey. And from there on, I just found myself in Europe. I actually came here with like came to Europe with very few knowledge of language. I learned everything during my studies here. I don't know. I was very courageous, I think.

And you know, the science itself just took my breath away, I would say it was fascinating for me just to do all these experiments and find one result after another, even if it was negative. And that actually made me just keep going. And I really enjoyed the process of just being paid by my hobby, I would say. And yeah, this is how it all happened.

Oliver Bogler:

That sounds great. You did your PhD in Heidelberg, right? At the DKFZ, the Deutsche Krebsforschungszentrum. Why did you pick that place?

Cansu Cirzi:

Actually, I went there for my master's and I went there to my master's because I was at WHO before for an internship in International Cancer Institute. And there they suggested me to go to Heidelberg because they said, it's a great university. I'm sure you're going to enjoy both the science and the city, which really was the case.

And during my master's, I was offered a PhD position in the laboratory I was, I was doing my master's thesis and then I stayed. So it wasn't necessarily a pinpoint of I want to go to DKFZ, actually DKFZ chose me in a way.

Oliver Bogler:

That's nice. But so it wasn't so it was more that you enjoyed the science rather than you that you that you were drawn particularly to cancer or did I misunderstand that?

Cansu Cirzi:

Actually I would say by, by practice, I'm more of an RNA biologist than cancer biologist. So I don't really have a very traditional path in science to, come to the position that I am right now. So I studied RNA biology through my PhD and also during my, my masters, I've, I've done a couple of different, different things. So I've basically been in, think any, any field that you could imagine from neuroscience to behavioral science.

Oliver Bogler:

With RNA being the common thread, right? Yeah, got it, got it.

Cansu Cirzi:

So I was just simply interested in, in science itself and that I think when it comes to cancer, it's, it's so vast that I wouldn't really necessarily say that you need to be interested in cancer to study cancer. Like it's just because it's everything.

Oliver Bogler:

Right, and even if you were, you would just be interested in one small part of an enormous field, like you said. So, Montse, what about you? Why did you want to become a scientist?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

So to me, it actually started with an audio book, which for me, and I'm going to really age myself, it was a cassette audio book.

Oliver Bogler:

Yeah, I remember those!

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

And it was a story. And this is a super obscure niche reference from a Mexican scientist, which I believe ended up somewhere in the University of California system. But he wrote these stories for kids. They were called overcoming in English, like superando. And there were these like fantastic stories about a kid who has these adventures. And in one of those adventures, he gets miniaturized and goes inside a cactus plant and learns about photosynthesis. And I was like, wow, what is this thing?

So I, that started my like interest in biology. So I was always very interested in biology. And that got me through, you know, most of my life and I studied biology. And then through my bachelor's, towards the end, I took an elective on cancer biology. And I was like, wow. This is like the most challenging class for me because I need to integrate a lot of many different things about molecular biology and physiology to understand this. And that's how I started to specialize in cancer biology. And that's how I got started in this field.

Oliver Bogler:

You did your undergraduate in Mexico, right, at the National Autonomous University, and then you moved to Spain, is that right, for your PhD?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

No, so I was still in Mexico and I did a master's, yeah, from the National Cancer Research Center from Spain. And I was doing distance learning before COVID made that a thing.

Oliver Bogler:

Okay. You're ahead of the curve. And then you came to Arizona, you came to the States, right? Is that right? Okay.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yeah, after that, I moved to Tucson to do my PhD in cancer biology and then after that, I started working for Cancer Cell.

Oliver Bogler

Okay, both of you, I'm curious, so you were in this career track, and then what was the impetus for you to decide to move into publishing? What was that thought process, and what attracted you to that?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

So for me, towards the end of my PhD, I was doing interviews for a postdoc. I actually went to the NCI. They have this program where they select some PhD students to go and present their research and do interviews with people there. But when it came to the time to pick a lab, I started to panic because I didn't want to keep super specializing in something because I liked many different things and I didn't want to lose that.

Oliver Bogler:

You're not talking about the Graduate Student Recruitment Program, you? OK. That's run out of my center. I had no idea. OK. Wow. All right. OK.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yes, yes, that one. Yeah. And I started looking for alternative careers where I could, you know, keep working on many different things. And I knew that one of my strengths was scientific communication. I was very good at writing. I had been helping my lab write a lot of grants and like different projects and I was involved in writing a lot of papers for my grants as well and I by chance I was submitting a review to Cancer Cell and I saw that job posting and I was like wow! I knew there were scientific editors, but I had just never considered that as a career because we really don't talk much about careers other than, you know, going through the academic route or industry and sometimes government. And that's when I started to pivot and look at different things.

Oliver Bogler:

Fantastic. I mean, that's what this podcast is all about. So we're trying to remedy the fact that, like you said, we don't talk about enough about all the different careers you can...

And just for our listeners, the Graduate Student Recruitment Program is now called the Postdoc Recruitment Event. We just rebranded it and reorganized it a little bit. So if you look for it on our website, that's the name you should look for.

Cansu, what about you? When did the move into publishing happen?

Cansu Cirzi:

Yeah, so actually after my PhD, I did a brief postdoc. I was at the Max Planck Institute here in Germany. But I would say there's never been a straight path for me to choose becoming an editor. So I didn't really know from the start that, okay, I want to be a scientific editor and these are the steps I should take. It was more of an enlightening that just came towards the end of my postdoc.

But even today I still enjoy many parts of research actually. So it's not that I made this choice because research was not an option for me. It's just that I'm already made this decision because I enjoyed many parts of editorial job per se. For instance, I started even enjoying debating about research papers that I initially had no expertise in, but that I had basic knowledge from my bachelor studies and that I just realized that, okay, I think this is the part that I really enjoy and that similar to Montse, I really did not want to specialize on one teeny tiny protein in a signaling pathway that will not really help people who actually are in need.

So I just felt that, okay, I cannot be a clinician. It's maybe a bit too late for me right now to be truly maybe helping patients, but that I could maybe help science in different way. And for this, I told that since I really enjoy reading, I really enjoy learning. I think that's maybe a bigger part than just reading in this job. I just decided to embark on this journey. Yes.

Oliver Bogler:

Fantastic. Yeah, I grew up in that reductionist era that you both described so well, right? Where frankly, you know, there were years when you could open up an issue of Cancer Cell and you could read that this particular gene was absolutely the one and only important gene in this cancer. And then next, the next issue you'd open up again, it would be a different gene with the same cancer. And, know, so this integrated picture. Yeah. So I think you said in a very interesting vantage point in your work.

What skills do you think were transferable for you when you moved sort of from that traditional research track into the publishing world? What did you bring with you? And then what did you need to develop? What new skills did you need to acquire to be effective?

Cansu Cirzi:

I would say I personally see my job as an editor to be like an extended academic career. So I still see myself as a scientist. So for instance, like reading papers, staying up to date with researches, of course, like these are parts that are necessary in research too. And I would say we also evaluate scientific rigor, like very similar to how scientists approach today on projects.

And the most important skill that you can bring personally, I think, is critical thinking. Because it's very important to be critical about your own work, but also others, and to be able to find weaknesses and strengths of a paper. And also searching for scientific accuracy. These are, think they are the two skills that are big merits that you can bring along from research.

And what needs to be personally, I needed to develop is time management, because I think more often than not, when we are doing experiments or I guess it's different for a computational biologist's part. For me at least, I had always incubation times in between where I could do some other things or just like maybe switch myself off. But it's important that in an editorial job that you will be able to manage your time in a way that you're effective, efficient, but at same time you do not really overwork yourself. So, that for both sides it's beneficial that you do the job that is necessary, of course, in the best possible way, but that's within the time frame.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yes, think those are excellent points that Cansu made. I think another great thing that you can bring in from the lab is that you know project management and you know how to plan certain things, you know how to multitask because oftentimes you're running several different experiments and projects in parallel and we do that. You know, we always have several different papers at the same time and we have new papers. We have papers under review, papers coming back from revisions. We're chasing reviewers, we're chasing authors, we're preparing papers for publication. So many different things at different stages. We always have to be very aware of our deadlines because we always have, you know, issues that have to be published and things that have to come out on time. So those are things to keep in mind.

And the other thing is, you know, a scientist, sometimes we tend to be very critical. And especially if you think when you are doing journal club, many times when you are presenting a paper, you tend to be overly critical of a paper and you present a paper trying sometimes to destroy the paper that you're presenting and trying to find like all the flaws and all the things that are bad with the paper. I think, you know, as editors also try to do that when you read a paper.

And when you present a paper in the future, try to think, why was this a Cell paper? Why was this a Cancer Cell paper? Why was this a Nature paper? Why is this a landmark paper? Why was this so important? Or am I sure? Why was this a Cancer Cell paper? Why not? Why shouldn't it have been? But try to see the positive sides of the paper as well.

As editors, sometimes our job is a little bit about contradictions because we have to be rigorous, but we also have to be open-minded. If we are overly critical, we would not be publishing anything. We would not be sending anything out for review. So we always have to keep an open mind. We have to give papers the benefit of the doubt. We have to know that papers can grow over the review process as well. And that no paper is going to be a perfect paper. And it's like when authors publish a book too, or when musicians compose a piece, nothing is going to be perfect in itself. But if it's good enough, it's good enough. So just give it the benefit of the doubt and keep that open mind.

Oliver Bogler:

And so I wonder what some of the challenges were in your transition. And I wonder, connected to that, what advice you might give to people who are listening who are like, wow, I'm excited. I'm interested in maybe making a transition into publishing as well.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

I think like Cansu mentioned, sometimes disconnecting can be a huge challenge, especially at first. Because when you run an experiment, if you do a Western blot, you know when the Western blot is done. But when you're doing this and reading papers and everything, papers are coming in all the time and they never stop. And issues are being published all the time and you never stop.

So it's very hard at first to learn how to set boundaries and healthy boundaries and say, you know what, it's impossible for me to clear out my inbox every single day before I go home. Or if I'm working from home, when to learn how to like close my computer and say the work day is done. So, finding that work-life balance is very challenging.

And also as the field is very broad, the learning curve at first is very steep and the learning time is very long. So, for new editors, it is a little bit frustrating at first because it can take a few months to a couple of years to feel very comfortable with your knowledge base because it's not only, there's so many different types of cancers, but like all the technologies and all the techniques you have to learn, it's a very broad field. But you have to be gracious with yourself and enjoy the learning process.

Oliver Bogler:

Cansu, what advice to our listeners?

Cansu Cirzi:

I think I agree with Montse quite a lot. Actually, she's one of my mentors and she has been telling me that the learning is very steep in this job and it's indeed true. I would say the advice I could give to people who consider this option as a career is maybe time management is really one of the biggest virtues that you could acquire. And that you need to just give yourself some time when you first start a job, knowing that it's going to get better in terms of finding the balance between feeling like, do I really am expert in this topic that I'm taking over right now? Or do I have the right time to read the whole paper in a timely manner, get back to the authors. And yeah, so I guess time management from my side, I would say.

[music]

Oliver Bogler:

Now it's time for a segment we call Your Turn, because there's a chance for our listeners to send in a recommendation that they would like to share. If you're listening, then you're invited to take your turn. Send us a tip for a book or a video, a podcast, a talk, anything that you found inspirational or amusing or interesting.

You can send those to us at NCIICC@nih.gov. Record a voice memo and send it along. We may just play it in an upcoming episode.

Now I'd like to invite our guests to take their turn. Let's start with you, Cansu.

Cansu Cirzi:

I would suggest a book that's in German called Schachnovelle. In English it's The Royal Game from Stefan Zweig. It's about a book where someone is being trapped in a hotel room and that he just starts playing chess in his mind. And it's a fantastic book. I would definitely recommend. Actually, without knowing how to play chess, he just imagines different scenarios. And with that, he becomes a master in it.

Oliver Bogler:

That sounds really interesting. Thank you. Montse?

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

I recently read The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson. So the, story about, Jennifer Doudna and I said read, but as an editor, I prefer audio books also because after the whole day of, of staring at my screen, I really enjoyed not having to, stare at anything else during my off hours.

But to me, what I enjoy about that book as a woman in STEM is also all the female characters and obviously the protagonist, but like all the other female characters and that many of those characters also have very different personalities because we know Jennifer is a very competitive and strong character.

But we can see that you can also be a very successful woman in science with different personalities. So for anybody else reading that, I hope that you can see yourself portrayed in somebody else and that there's many different paths to success there.

Oliver Bogler:

Very true, very true. Interesting. I haven't read that myself, but I think I might pick it up.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Yeah, if you are in the audiobook and in the public library system, it takes a few weeks to get on off the waiting list, but it's worth it.

Oliver Bogler:

It's worth it. Yeah, fantastic.

I'd like to recommend a book as well. This is not a science book. It's a book that I found really interesting and fascinating and moving. It's the memoir by Salman Rushdie called Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. It recounts the attack on his life in 2022 and his subsequent recovery. On August 12th, 2022, Rushdie was stabbed 15 times by an assailant motivated by a religious fatwa while speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. And the book explores the incident, Rushdie's physical and psychological recovery and his reflections on the importance of love and free speech and personal growth. Most fascinating to me were the sections in which Rushdie delves into the motives of his assailant through these fictionalized dialogues and grapples with the impact of the assault on his life and person and that of his family as well.

The memoir is really a testament to Rushdie's convictions and his commitment to art and free speech. It's written in a rich lyrical style with allusions to literature and culture, something very different maybe for our science brains on a day off.

So I'd like to thank you both very, very much for joining us on this podcast and sharing your paths, your lives, your current roles in Cancer Cell and Trends in Cancer. Really helpful and really, really great to talk with you. Thank you.

Montserrat Rojo de la Vega:

Thank you, Oliver. And to anybody listening, if you'd like to reach out and talk a little bit more about editorial careers, feel free to do so because I know there's not a lot of resources or information out there. So I'm always happy to share a little bit more and connect with anybody interested in this.

Cansu Cirzi:

Yes, it's the same with me. Thanks a lot, Oliver, for this fantastic podcast. I really enjoyed it. And for anyone who wants to reach out, I would also be happy to answer any questions either through LinkedIn or by email.

Oliver Bogler:

Perfect. That's generous of both of you. We will put those links in our show notes so that our audience can easily find you. But thank you for that.

[music]

That’s all we have time for on today’s episode of Inside Cancer Careers! Thank you for joining us and thank you to our guests.

We want to hear from you – your stories, your ideas and your feedback are welcome. And you are invited to take your turn and make a recommendation to share with our listeners. You can reach us at NCIICC@nih.gov.

Inside Cancer Careers is a collaboration between NCI’s Office of Communications and Public Liaison and the Center for Cancer Training. It is produced by Angela Jones and Astrid Masfar.

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