The community site for and by
developmental and stem cell biologists

Katherine Brown

I'm the Executive Editor of Development. My job involves working with the academic editors and the in-house team on the content and production of the journal, commissioning and editing review articles, attending conferences and generally keeping up-to-date with the field and the community. In my earlier life I was a developmental biologist working on eye morphogenesis in flies and then fish, before a stint as an editor at The EMBO Journal.

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Posts by Katherine Brown

Development introduces format-free submission

Posted by , on 20 April 2017

At Development, we are committed to making submission as easy as possible for our authors. We realise that submitting a paper to any journal can be a lengthy process: authors ...

The Naked Scientists: from stem cells to brain cells

Posted by , on 12 April 2017

Last Sunday evening found me sitting in the BBC Cambridge radio studio, headphones on and mic in front of me, talking about developmental and stem cell biology with Dr. Chris ...

Internship opportunity on the Node

Posted by , on 27 March 2017

I am delighted to announce that we are offering an opportunity for a 3-month internship on the Node. This is being offered as a PIPS placement to students on the ...

Preprints: biomedical science publication in the era of twitter and facebook

Posted by , on 27 October 2016

Earlier this week, I took part in a workshop on preprints – organised by Alfonso Martinez-Arias and held in Cambridge, UK. Inspired by the ASAPbio movement in the States, Alfonso felt ...

Would peer review work better if reviewers talked to each other? An interview for Retraction Watch

Posted by , on 21 September 2016

As you may have seen, we at Development have recently announced a change to our peer review process, introducing a cross-referee commenting step. This should be in place within the ...

Recent jobs by Katherine Brown

Reviews Editor for the journal Development

Posted by , on 11 October 2022

Development, published by The Company of Biologists, is currently seeking applications for a Reviews Editor, a role that has become available following an internal promotion. Development is our flagship journal for the developmental biology and stem cell community. Joining an experienced and successful team, this is an exciting opportunity to make a significant contribution to […]

Community Manager: the Node

Posted by , on 19 March 2021

The Company of Biologists and its journal Development are seeking to appoint a new Community Manager to run its successful community website ‘the Node’ (https://thenode.biologists.com) and the journal’s social media activities. Launched in 2010, the Node is the place for the developmental biology community to share news, discuss issues relevant to the field and read […]

Recent comments by Katherine Brown

I love how the Zoology museum has opened up in recent years - I visit regularly with my toddler, who loves looking at the specimens (though generally keeps me running after him too much for me to have found all the 'growing a backbone' exhibits!). It's a far cry from my earlier experience of the museum, having undergrad supervisions looking at the display cases - which certainly weren't interrupted by over-excited children or harried mothers...! Thanks to all the team at the museum for making it such a welcoming place for families, while still keeping the science at the heart of what they do.
by Katherine Brown in An afternoon in the museum with an exploded skull and a 3.5m python skeleton on March 19, 2024
Agreed - we definitely expected to see more disruption. And while all the averages look normal, I think it's fair to say that we've seen greater variation in some of these metrics than most years! I also think we might continue to see effects well into the future as the long-term consequences of delayed experiments, lab shutdowns and funding squeezes continue to play out.
by Katherine Brown in Development through the pandemic on December 3, 2020
Indeed - and it's those corridor (or exhibition hall) conversations at conferences that are particularly hard to replace virtually. Hopefully we'll figure out better ways of doing this in the online space, and hopefully we'll be able to do it again in person one day!
by Katherine Brown in Staying connected during the COVID19 pandemic on May 22, 2020
Thanks for posting Sofia - this was a great idea and glad to hear it went well. What kind of 'objects' did the scientists bring along, and did some things work better than others to initiate discussion?
by Katherine Brown in Opening the doors of scientific conferences to local citizens on November 28, 2018
I'm interested to know whether any Node readers have experience with using sites like ReviewerCredits or Publons - why did you sign up, what do you get out of it and how do you think journals should engage with these initiatives? Any comments gratefully received below!
by Katherine Brown in Recognition and metrics for peer review activity: reviewercredits.com on April 26, 2017