Marcia McNutt Named Editor-in-Chief Of Science

The first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of Science magazine will be former U.S. Geological Survey director Marcia McNutt. The magazine is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

McNutt, who stepped down from her USGS position in February, will begin her five-year term at Science on June 1, taking over for Bruce M. Alberts, who has served as editor-in-chief since 2008. Alberts, who is also president emeritus of the National Academy of Sciences and professor emeritus in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, announced his retirement last year.

“I am thrilled to have Marcia as my successor,” Alberts says. “We have worked together both at the National Academies and in her position on the Senior Editorial Board at Science, and I know her to be a very creative and wise scientific leader. Science magazine will be in excellent hands.”

McNutt “brings breadth, diversity, vision, and management success to the job of editor-in-chief of Science,” says William Press, chair of the AAAS Board of Directors and a professor of computer science and integrative biology at the University of Texas, Austin. “In a rapidly changing environment, we are looking to her as a new leader of change at Science and within AAAS.”

Prior to joining USGS, McNutt was president and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif. She also served as a professor of geophysics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as director of the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography & Applied Ocean Science & Engineering. McNutt earned a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1978.

As the first woman to be appointed editor-in-chief of Science, McNutt says she does not want that designation to define her legacy. Instead, “I want to be remembered because of the important things that I did for Science that made the journal such a cornerstone of communication.”

McNutt’s vision for Science is to “connect networks of scientists working across disciplinary boundaries through the innovative use of communication technologies.”

She credits Alberts with overseeing Science “during a time of great potential for instability in the publishing world with concerns about open access, consolidation in licensing, and print versus online.

“Bruce, with a very steady hand, got Science through these rough times,” McNutt says. “I couldn’t even talk about all these innovative ideas had it not been for Bruce making sure the journal was on strong financial footing.”