Mary Ann Liebert
What motivated you to enter the publishing industry?
News has always been my thing. And not just the news. But the news behind the news and its implications. I was born with the gift of insatiable curiosity. In high school, a journalism teacher helped put me on the path toward developing lifelong journalistic skills. The studies emphasized writing stories and developing designs in a way that attracted readership. That teacher encouraged me to pursue a career that would capitalize on my inquisitive bent. From a high school experience that came with superb mentoring, I knew I wanted to pursue journalism as a career.
Why did you choose the fields of science, technology, and medicine?
My interest in science and medicine also took root in high school, and I had opportunities to visit major medical centers and observe surgical procedures. But I knew I did not want to be a physician, mostly because I would become too attached to each and every patient. In college, I never really warmed up to biology, and the dissection of a frog made me certain to continue on the journalistic track.
Early in my life, my father developed Parkinson's disease, for which there was no treatment let alone a cure. While attending Northwestern University and majoring in journalism, I was determined to find something in the literature, an esoteric treatment perhaps, that would benefit my father. I accepted an internship with the Journal of the American Medical Association so I could undertake a comprehensive search of the literature. Although I never found anything that would help my father, I honed my editorial skills. I became fascinated with the world of publishing and quickly understood the importance of peer-review articles to advance research and therapy. My path became clear. I wanted to pursue a career in medical and scientific publishing.
Your company, Mary Ann Liebert publishers, has been at the forefront of biomedical research publishing for decades. How many journals, trade magazines, and newsletters do you publish? Do any of the publications cover the fields of regenerative medicine and stem cell research?
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., now publishes close to 80 journals online, in print, and with an open access option, and we publish fully open access journals as well. Regenerative medicine and stem cell research, which we cover in various publications, have significant implications in many of the fields we reach.
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is a privately held company, which gives us an enormous advantage in that we can launch and support journals focused on embryonic research and nurture them as the fields mature. Unlike publicly held publishing conglomerates, we have the absolute luxury of not being obliged to meet stockholder expectations. Our ability to have this flexibility is a vital asset to creating new and noteworthy publications that will contribute both to the literature and the field it serves. We advocate strongly for increased funding from both the public and private sectors and help initiate meaningful collaborations. We have close ties in the scientific and medical community, and the structure of our company gives us a unique ability to respond to the needs of our constituents. Also, there is a Mary Ann Liebert at Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., and that makes a difference.
Stem Cells and Development, in particular, encourages submissions on contentious issues, particularly in their Issues in Development forum. Do you think scientists still look to publishing houses for debate, or are social media outlets a more suitable forum?
I believe strongly that while social media has its place, scientists will still want to publish important opinions and debates within the indexed scientific literature.
I believe strongly that while social media has its place, scientists still want to publish important opinions and debates within the indexed scientific literature.
Do established publishing houses such as yours see any way of policing, or at least establishing the credibility of, the myriad online publishing opportunities being pushed on scientists, which in their electronic form look legitimate but can be bogus?
Today there are many predatory, spam publishers that emanate primarily out of India, give themselves lofty names, and flood the scientific community with invitations to edit or contribute to their journal of the hour. They are like the Burmese pythons in the Florida everglades, and they are proliferating at an alarming rate.
The peer-review system is in serious jeopardy; there will be more retractions, and the integrity of content is hostage. Members of the scientific community are inundated by the barrage of invitations, and most scientists have no idea that these companies are not reputable. So yes, I am quite concerned about the long-term effects of these endeavors. The libraries must be much more diligent to protect the integrity of their collections, which predatory journals can compromise.
You have been a witness to the birth of the biotech industry. How does it compare with the emerging industry in the field of regenerative medicine?
I do not view regenerative medicine as being different from biotechnology but as something that actually arose out of the biotechnology industry, with the term “biotechnology” being used as a sexy handle to attract Wall Street capital.
Biotechnology is a very broad concept. Companies in regenerative medicine and stem cell research and development are considered part of the biotechnology industry. Our flagship publication, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), provides regular coverage of these fields. GEN is the most widely read biotechnology trade publication around the globe and reaches members of the biotechnology community in more than 40 countries.
The world of publishing has shifted from print to digital/electronic. How is Mary Ann Liebert publishers adapting to such change?
Libraries have definitely shifted to digital editions of journals, and the scientific community reads digital versions—some in addition to print; others in place of print. Print is not going to disappear, however. Reading a print journal is different than reading an electronic journal and print may, in fact, be more effective in terms of the “serendipity factor.”
Alex Rich, PhD, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has quite effectively made this point. He has said that the page or article in print that he didn't intend to read often turned out to be the most meaningful. All of our publications are available online, and the majority still have print editions.
There is an emerging but strong movement proposing Open Access to all published scientific research. Some major funders of scientific research, such as the U.K.'s Wellcome Trust and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, are actively promoting Open Access to the published output of research. In your opinion, what is the future of the Open Access movement? And how it could potentially affect the publishing industry?
My concern about the Open Access system is that it takes money from the budget of the bench researcher. I am very troubled by this. It is my opinion that institutes such as Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes, and Max Planck need to use their precious resources to most fully advance research endeavors. There are plenty of publishers!
How do you see the future of the regenerative medicine and stem cell fields? What role does the patient advocacy community have in shaping the future of those fields?
The future is about personalized medicine—nextgen sequencing, biomarkers, metabolomics, systems biology, genome analysis. The future is already here, and its broad applicability is promising. I have grave concerns that these advances, many of which will call for more patient testing, expensive procedures, other ancillary tests, and follow-up, may not be reimbursable.
The public needs to understand that this is a likely battle and must insist that new technologies including stem cell transplantation and regenerative technologies and procedures be covered in all health-care plans. One of our staff members lost her life because her insurance company denied a stem cell transplantation that would not only have saved her life but completely cured her. I was devastated.
The biotechnology community has to be careful not to overpromise cures in the short term. This is especially the case regarding regenerative medicine and stem cell research. In the early 1980s, interferon was hailed as the potential magic bullet for cancer, and it never lived up to that promise. The public will support funding for biomedical research, but there ought to be realistic determinations about when and how broadly these new technologies will be available and accessible to many patients.
We also must improve outreach to people of color to increase diversity and ensure their participation and contribution to life science research. We are indeed attracting members of these communities to the field of medicine, but not to biomedical research. We must do better.
I am also quite concerned about the emigration of talented scientists to countries whose governments provide stronger funding. This situation has to be addressed quickly, and everyone in the field needs to help get this point across to legislators and voters to ensure that the promise of stem cell research and regenerative medicine is advanced and fulfilled.