Jessica Polka is a biochemist and the Executive Director of ASAPbio (Accelerating Science and Publication in biology), a non-profit initiative promoting innovation and transparency via
preprint
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset vers ...
s and
open peer review
Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are:
# Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's ident ...
. She was one of the organizers of a recent meeting they held on
scholarly communication
Scholarly communication involves the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of academic research, primarily in peer-reviewed journals and books. It is “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, eval ...
.
Education
Polka received a BS in Biology from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
in 2007. While there, she was a Morehead Scholar. She obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...
under the supervision of Dyche Mullins in 2012.
Career
In 2013 Polka became a research fellow in the department of Systems Biology at
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is cons ...
with
Pamela Silver
Pamela A. Silver is an American cell and systems biologist and a bioengineer. She holds the Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professorship of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Systems Biology. Silver is ...
as advisor.
She was also held a visiting scholar at the
Whitehead Institute in Massachusetts. Polka conducted research in the assembly, function, and applications of protein polymers in
bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were am ...
, such as membrane-breaking protein needles called
R bodies. Polka's work on R bodies was discussed in the American magazine ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
,'' and covered by the
American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...
. Polka discovered that
carboxysome, a protein organelle in
cyanobacteria
Cyanobacteria (), also known as Cyanophyta, are a phylum of gram-negative bacteria that obtain energy via photosynthesis. The name ''cyanobacteria'' refers to their color (), which similarly forms the basis of cyanobacteria's common name, blue ...
, grows like a crystal until it is coated by a layer of shell proteins.
Polka was co-chair of the
American Society for Cell Biology's COMPASS (Committee for Postdocs and Students) during 2013 and 2014.
Improving research culture
Polka is on the steering committee for Rescuing Biomedical Research, an initiative to discuss solutions to problems addressed in the April 2014 ''
PNAS
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scie ...
'' article "Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws".
Polka is recognised as having insight into issues surrounding open peer review, preprint and early career progression, and has been quoted in numerous articles by ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...
'' and ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
'' on these topics. In 2015, Polka and Viviane Callier wrote an article for the careers column in ''Nature'' where they argue that funding agencies should support more than 16% of postdocs through fellowships. This would allow postdocs to "strike out away from the beaten path
ndwill bring fresh ideas and approaches to the table".
Future of Research
Polka was one of the organisers of the first Future of Research Symposium in Boston in 2014. She was on the executive committee until she became President of the Board of Directors in 2016. Polka is involved in creating debate amongst early-career scientists about the financial, historical and political influences on academic research. Future of Research was awarded the People of the Year award in 2015 by
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
journal for their "efforts to empower early-career and aspiring scientists...".
ASAPbio
Polka was a founder of ASAPbio which began in 2015 after
Ron Vale showed that
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...
students were taking a long time to publish and proposed that
preprint
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset vers ...
ing might mitigate the issue. Vale recruited Polka,
Daniel Colon-Ramos and
Harold Varmus
Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center.
He was ...
which led to the first ASAPbio meeting in February 2016 attended by scientists, representatives from funding agencies, journals and preprint servers. The meeting Polka led was widely recognized as a turning point in scholarly communication
and a catalyst moment in the so-called "preprint revolution" in biology and science more generally. Polka began working full-time at ASAPbio in 2016 after funding was granted from the
Simons Foundation
The Simons Foundation is a private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the US with assets of over $5 billion in 2022, the foundation's mission ...
,
Sloan Foundation
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors.
The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support o ...
,
Arnold Foundation, and
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is an American foundation established by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore and his wife Betty I. Moore in September 2000 to support scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements ...
.
In 2016 Polka was described in the journal ''Nature'' as an "agent of change" for explaining how junior researchers can increase the impact of their work. For instance, ASAPbio encourages preprints within biology.
ASAPbio tries to mitigate the effect of lengthy waiting times before publications are reviewed and published, following the example of physics, computer science and maths, fields that have already adopted preprints. She has also taken an interest in strategies for preventing sexual harassment in the scientific community.
In 2017,
PLOS
PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and launc ...
cast interviewed Polka about her work which contributes to the changing way that science is published.
Since 2019, ASAPBio has begun to host open databases to collate information about academic publishing practices.
ReimagineReview tracks the different peer review policies and models of academic journals, with a focus on experimental forms of peer review.
The Transpose database extends on this to cover journal policies including on peer review, co-reviewing, preprints, licensing, and versioning.
Awards and honors
*
Beckman Coulter
Beckman Coulter Inc. is a Danaher Corporation company that develops, manufactures, and markets products that simplify, automate and innovate complex biomedical testing. It operates in two industries: Diagnostics and Life Sciences. For more than ...
Distinguished Graduate Student Prize (
American Society for Cell Biology) (2013)
*
Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship (2013–2016)
References
External links
*
Rescuing Biomedical Research
ASAPbio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Polka, Jessica
Systems biologists
Harvard Medical School faculty
Living people
American molecular biologists
Women molecular biologists
University of California alumni
Synthetic biologists
Open content activists
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
21st-century American chemists
21st-century biologists
American women chemists
21st-century American women scientists
American women biochemists
Year of birth missing (living people)
American women academics