Wissenschaft bei einer internationalen Fachzeitschrift I: Between Peer Review and a Science Journalism Generator

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What scientist wouldn’t like to publish in Nature? Even, as we remember with wry embarrassment, a certain Professor Hans Krebs, who elucidated the citrus acid cycle. Now known as the Krebs cycle, this is the biochemical pathway which allows cells to generate energy in the presence of oxygen. Krebs sent his manuscript to Nature in 1937 and received a polite note saying that there was a backlog of manuscripts. It offered him the opportunity to submit it elsewhere — or wait. Krebs decided to publish elsewhere, in a more obscure Dutch journal called Enzymologia. Many years later, in 1953, Nature’s editor asked Krebs to referee a research paper. Krebs reviewed the paper, taking the opportunity to point out that he had been awarded that year’s Nobel prize for the work that Nature rejected. Whoops!