Bernard Corfe has had nothing if not a varied journey into nutritional science. “I was always interested in core biological processes, from school years, genetics was the area of biology I found most inspiring and through my BSc and PhD in molecular microbiology, I was fascinated by the relationship between what is coded and how life unravels and uses that code. I spent a huge amount of my PhD time doing manual DNA sequencing and manual DNA sequence entry, almost unheard of these days. Nonetheless, this was as part of an international collaborative effort in genome sequencing so I learned a lot very early on about teamworking and the scientific value of data deposition.”

Bernard moved into cancer research in his second postdoc post for a range of reasons, some pragmatic and some related to wanting to understand how derangement of biological processes led to disease states. “Cancer research is a bit of a shark tank and I very rapidly became much more interested in nutrition and cancer prevention, at a very mechanistic level.”

Bernard’s initial research in nutrition was around the mechanisms of action of the short chain fatty acid butyrate and how it might regulate apoptosis, including the reprogramming of cells lining the colon to be more responsive to pro-carcinogenic damage. “Being part of the small nutrition group in Sheffield introduced me to human trials (learning that there is life beyond the petri dish) and the more epidemiological and qualitative approaches also used across Nutrition.” Bernard has published prolifically, supporting and training his own students to write and to understand the scientific publication process, as well as passing on these skills through delivering formal training courses in scientific writing and publishing, and in manuscript reviewing through The Nutrition Society.

A regular reviewer of papers for journals, Bernard moved into editing roles around 2011. “Over the last decade I have been a member of several editorial boards, but notably European Journal of Nutrition and International Journal of Experimental Pathology, where I have learned about the manuscript handling process, the relationship between publishers and editors. This was also the timeframe when the Open Access (‘OA’) narrative took hold. It’s difficult to judge quite where we are in the hype cycle at the moment. I think a lot of the issues that people are raising about the quality of reviewing and editing at certain journals and publishers were entirely foreseeable. The dynamic shift to author as client has led to a predictable reduction in quality and an increase in the volume of nonsense being published. I’ve also seen the OA publishing model shift from being the disruptor opposed by big publishers, now to being leaned into hard by those same houses as a massive cash cow.”

“With scientific publishing at a crossroads, I was particularly attracted to the Editor-in-Chief role at the Journal of Nutritional Science (‘JNS’) for a couple of reasons. To my mind, JNS treads a line perfectly between the advantage of old and new publishing models. It is editorially independent of its publisher, meaning decisions on publication are made solely on quality and not on profit metrics. One particular advantage of the OA model is the lack of dependence on novelty: JNS has a strong reputation for publishing science that is reinforcing or questioning of established paradigms. Avoiding the publishing bias arising from pursuit of ad novitatem – a hallmark of the old model of publishing – is absolutely critical if we as a community are to deliver robust evidence bases upon which to found knowledge, advice and policy.”

Bernard’s strategy for JNS will be to continue to build on JNS’s reputation for quality, to publish work supporting scientific reproducibility (and to support research identifying irreproducibility), and to continue to emphasise the critical place of this mission in a changing world of scientific publishing.

Bernard Corfe is the new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Nutritional Science. He is Professor of Human Nutrition and Health at Newcastle University and is director of The Human Nutrition and Exercise Research Centre and of the Centre for Healthier Lives.