Editor Spotlight – Yash Gupta

This month’s Editor Spotlight features Dr. Yash Gupta who shares with us his experience in reviewing Lab Protocols, his career in drug discovery, and the most exciting development in Open Science.

Yash Gupta is a postdoctoral researcher at the Penn State University, Hershey. His research focuses on disturbances in the crosstalk between gut and liver during liver diseases and identifying therapeutic targets through precision probiotics. In his previous projects, he has been directly involved with drug discovery with a particular focus on chemotherapeutics. During his research career, he has worked with various methods in cell biology, biochemistry, and bioinformatics.

You’ve acted as the Academic Editor for at least one Lab Protocol, a new article type combining an online protocol with a peer reviewed article that describes new experimental methods. Why do you think Lab Protocols is a useful way of publishing new techniques?

I am impressed by the new article type as it separates out the method portion of the paper in a followable protocol format. I like the step-by-step instructions with precautions authors took and limitations set for the protocol to work. This format is very useful for reproduction in the peer’s labs. Detailed protocols also show the scope of questions they can answer and how a portion of it can be adapted for another procedure. PLOS ONE guidelines are very helpful for academic editors and reviewers in reviewing the protocol.

You have worked across many different fields and techniques in your career in drug discovery. What do you value most about working in interdisciplinary sciences, and how do you ensure that you stay up to date with the various components of your work?

My experience working with interdisciplinary sciences is often frustrating due to differences in conventions between fields. Even choices of representing in vitro drug efficacies using IC50 vs. percent inhibition makes a study difficult to interpret much less built upon. Over the past few years, there has been a significant shift in the drug discovery environment. The community-wide emphasis on SARS-CoV-2 medicinal discovery and repurposing was the cause of this shift. Computational frameworks that are now AI-powered have further expedited this.

An interdisciplinary researcher in my opinion must be able to ‘pick’ portions of study within their expertise and collaborate with experts at the conception level to understand the rigor of the study and its usage. I appreciate the PLOS format of disclosing author’s role. This has helped me a lot in the past to contact the expert for whose work I have some queries. Interdisciplinary researchers are most prone to imposter syndrome as most of the interdisciplinary papers have portions beyond their expertise. I personally prefer using X (formerly twitter) to stay up to date with major breakthroughs. In addition, I follow certain researchers on different platforms and participate in the peer review process on a regular basis to stay up to date with the field.  The classical periodicals in hard copy are now too time demanding and digital open access research is what actually shapes any future study nowadays (now more than ever).

What developments in Open Science are you most excited about?

The most exciting development is the data sharing by the journals or collaboration with databases that allow researcher to do metanalysis of multiple studies as well as using other datasets to compare their own data. This has been particularly exciting when machine learning/AI tools are used to identify patterns in the data which were beyond the scope of contributing studies. This method has led to remarkable breakthroughs and often the original study findings get a comparative validation. Open data also adds a layer of transparency to the published research. PLOS initiative for open methodology is also commendable as the most reliable method sources are still methods books which are sometimes too focused on a specific pipeline. With more parallel protocols, authors can choose and even merge multiple strategies to answer their research questions in a reliable format.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.