Geophysicist Marcia McNutt will be taking over the editor-in-chief slot at Science, reports the Nature News Blog. Previously, McNutt was the director of the US Geological Survey and, before that, she was the president and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. In addition, McNutt served on Science's senior editorial board between 2000 and 2009, giving her a taste of what running the journal may be like. "It gave me a chance to know many of the editors and staff at Science, and to understand at a high level a lot of the decisions that the editor-in-chief is responsible for," she tells ScienceInsider.
She also tells the Nature News Blog that she is coming to the post without too many plans. "I think it's dangerous … to come in with too much of a set agenda, because that can mean that you are speaking too much, and not listening enough," she adds.
McNutt, who will be starting at Science at the beginning of June, is succeeding Bruce Alberts, who announced last May that he was stepping down from the editor-in-chief position.