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Bridging the gap from novice to expert is a complicated endeavor. Expertise is acquired over many years, if not decades, but that amount of time is simply not available in many scientific research situations. The In Focus series of digital primers from the American Chemical Society (ACS) were conceived as a way to bridge the knowledge gap between new trainees and established experts in a given field. This goal heavily shapes how these primers are conceived and produced.
The Necessary Knowledge to Start Something
Sara Tenney, the publisher for the In Focus series, recalled that when she first talked to chemists about what content they would find most valuable, they said “Graduate students, when they come into the lab, they need to get up to speed. But when I send them to the literature, the literature is too sophisticated.” So, Tenney sought to rectify this core pain point by creating something that could give a novice enough information to read the literature, become familiar with common research methodologies employed by a field, and understand the jargon. The In Focus series also serves as a way for experts to quickly learn about new fields. “We were told by researchers that they needed to learn new things to accelerate their research, especially with the ascension of artificial intelligence (AI). But they could not easily process papers in those fields without a better understanding of the fundamentals,” Tenney said.
Choosing a Topic and a Scope
These core objectives guide how In Focus’s editorial staff select new topics to cover. “I want to attract a broad readership and have a broad reach to maximize the series’ impact,” Tenney explained. As such, while the series does cover both broad and narrow topics, there will be more primers that focus on broader areas of research such as machine learning, AI, neural networking, and computational chemistry. That said, Tenney keeps an open mind for more niche topics: “Sometimes, I’ll want to work with a professor, and they will say that they want to write about something like colloidal quantum dots. I’ll be on board, because I know they will do a great job.”
First published in May 2020, the In Focus series approaches its fifth anniversary in 2025. Over this time, the series has grown from an inaugural collection of ten titles to its current schedule of 20 titles per year. Because it takes roughly one year for an individual primer to progress from conception to publication, titles have to be planned in advance. For Tenney, that means not only making sure that the core fields are covered, but also anticipating what will become popular. “I like to seize opportunities, and you can do that because [popular topics] usually appear in scientific literature before they make the mainstream news,” she said. Tenney also looks at grant funding patterns for inspiration. “I like to have 40 [titles] in the works [simultaneously],” she said. “This lets us move things around if something comes up.”
The In Focus series also looks at practical skills development, offering primers on techniques, analysis methods, and even career trajectories. As of October 2024, the series has featured primers on commercialization, alternative career paths, Python, and statistical analysis, just to name a few. Tenney explained that this direction was taken in response to direct feedback from graduate students. “The graduate students that we talked to were much more interested in skills. They wanted to learn how to code, how to write papers, how to design figures,” Tenney said. Importantly, In Focus primers on these non-scientific subjects approach them from a scientific perspective. “The thing is, it’s Python as it relates to chemistry. The primer talks about different scenarios in chemistry that use Python,” Tenney noted. “It’s more targeted, and therefore, we hope, more valuable.”
A Team Effort
In Focus primers are written by subject experts. However, they are created via collaborations between these writers and the ACS editorial staff. Finding the right expert is a key part of Tenney’s job, and is integral to getting a project started on the right foot. “We look for prominent scientists in the field, but we also look for scientists who are really interested in teaching or mentorship,” she said. This process involves some trial and error, with authors being requested to first submit one chapter for editorial review. “We want to see what level they are writing to, and we give them feedback here because a lot of times the level is too high,” Tenney noted.
The expert writers take this initial feedback and create the first full draft, a process that usually takes several months. The first draft then undergoes peer review by both subject experts and end users such as graduate students. Finally, the draft enters the pre-publication editorial process. “We have a manuscript editor, so this is more hands-on work than a research paper, which typically only undergoes copy editing. We do some development work, we make the figures consistent, and we do video interviews of field leaders,” Tenney explained. In total, each primer undergoes three rounds of editing before publication.
What the Future Holds
Tenney is already exploring several initiatives to keep pace with what scientists and trainees need, ranging from the possibility of breaking up large fields into two or more primers to expanding beyond chemistry-related topics to meet the needs of researchers working on multidisciplinary projects. She is also exploring how best to update previously published primers: “At the start, we didn’t think we would need to do this, since we’re talking about the basics. But even the basics of a rapidly evolving topic like AI can change rapidly.” The future is bright for the In Focus series, even in the face of a rapidly evolving research landscape.
