ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Board of Editors in the Life Sciences

Okay, imagine you are playing a game with your friends. In this game, you all have different jobs to do to make sure everything runs smoothly. One of your friends is the boss and makes decisions about what happens in the game. That is kind of like what the board of editors in the life sciences does.

The board of editors in the life sciences is a group of very smart and knowledgeable people who make decisions about what gets published in scientific journals. When scientists make new discoveries or learn new things about living things like plants, animals, and humans, they write about it in a special paper called a scientific article.

But before this article can be published and shared with other scientists, the board of editors reviews it. They make sure that the information in the article is accurate, well-written, and adds something important to what we already know.

It's like the editors are the teachers and the scientists are the students. The editors give the scientists feedback on their work, just like teachers give feedback to students on their homework. They might ask the scientists questions, suggest changes, or even tell them that their work isn't quite ready yet.

The editors also make sure that the scientific article follows certain rules, just like how you have to follow rules in a game. For example, they want the scientists to use the right method to do their experiments or study, so they can trust the results.

Once the editors are happy with the article, they give the scientist's paper a big thumbs up, and it can be published for other scientists to read. This is important because other scientists can then use the information in the article to learn from it, build on it, or even come up with new ideas.

So, the board of editors in the life sciences plays a very important role in making sure that accurate and high-quality scientific articles are published for all scientists to learn from and advance our understanding of the world around us.