Dr. Adrienne Grant is a Research fellow University of Sydney, Australia. Dr. Adrienne Grant works in Marine Symbiosis Lab. The Marine Symbiosis laboratory studies the biochemical interactions between the animal host and its intracellular algae. Understanding how cells communicate with one another will help us to understand how a stable symbiosis is maintained.

We study the biochemistry of cell-cell signals that maintain a stable symbiosis between intracellular algae (zooxanthellae) and their marine invertebrate hosts. Coral bleaching is one event that is evidence of disruption to coral symbioses. We have isolated two signalling molecules from homogenized tissue of the scleractinian coral, Plesiastrea versipora that contains Symbiodinium algae. One molecule, host release factor (HRF), stimulates the release of photosynthate from isolated algae and also reduces synthesis of algal starch and triglycerides suggesting that it acts to divert carbon from further algal metabolism to the host. 

1. What makes an article top quality? 

Response: Accurate and succinct information that provides new information, new ideas and sound methods which other scientists can use to expand their knowledge.

2. Do you think that journals determine research trends?

Response: Yes, because they are often selective and thus usually include a narrow range of subjects.

3. What makes a good position paper?

Response: Depends upon what you mean by 'position'. Hopefully, one that stimulates scientists to expand their ideas about a specific topic.

4. What are the qualities you look for in an article?

Response: First of all, are the methods reliable? Have negative controls (solvent) been included in every experiment? Are the conclusions justified by the methods and the results.

5. Can you give us a broad indication of the types of themes a scientific journal should cover?

Response: As per no.1 above.

6. What sorts of research methods and frameworks do you expect people to use, and how will they balance conceptual and applied research?

Response: If the methods are not reliable, then the data may be flawed. Thoughtful conceptual research can arouse the interest of other scientists and offer new ideas for their own applied research.

7. How would you describe the journal’s mission and editorial objectives to our readers?

Response: That's a difficult one. But again, honest and reliable methods that provide accurate data are of highest importance.

8. If you could be granted dream articles, what would they be on?

Response: New discoveries that provide wide opportunities for learning new science and also for providing new, safe drugs. I'm currently trying to write a succinct article to support my honorary status here at Sydney University. It is not easy because our group has made several discoveries which have aroused little interest because they have covered the usually kept separate fields of marine, endocrinolgy, plantss, cell biology and cancer.

9. Are there any particular areas which you would like to see, or expect to see, collaborate?

Response: I believe that all science groups should include chemists, physicists, biochemists, cell biologists, botanists etc, because each specialist can provide a different perspective for a study.

10. How does the research published percolate through to practitioners?

Response: Mainly by including a variety of keywords and also by making papers freely available.

11. How can a publisher ensure the authors/readers a rigorous peer review and quality control?

Response: Again, by including a variety of scientists with different areas of expertise. Preferably include practising scientists as reviewers rather than those whose role is mainly as a lab director rather than a researcher.

12. Your editorial policy is to be eclectic and welcome perspectives from other disciplines and schools. How does this translate into the types of contributions you encourage?

Response: Finding a way to demonstrate that all disciplines are linked within biodiversity. And that all organisms have evolved similar pathways to maintain life.

13. What do you see as the merits of journals, as opposed to book series, as a means of scholarly communications?

Response: Readily available on line for downloading an Adobe file to one's own computer. For example, as well as printing a copy of journal articles for reading on buses etc. en route to and from university, I find that if I can search an Adobe file for a specific word that is mentioned 50 times in the article, then I can search the article on my computer, then highlight the word of interest in my hard copy.