The process took over 6 months. I applied in August 2018 to be part of the iScience (Cell press) and had my first interview in December 2018. The first interview was with the recruiter from Elsevier. She asked me about my motivations about forwarded my answers to the Editor in Chief. After one week, she sent me a questionnaire and I had 1 week to complete it, although it was during the Christmas break. I had to answer the following questions: 1. From the articles published in iScience, please choose two papers you think are strong and two which you deem weak. Please discuss the reasons why you think they are strong/weak. 2. Please identify 5 papers that have been published in other journals within the past year that “could” have been published in our journal instead. Explain your reasons for choosing each paper. Who would you have picked as possible referees for each one? 3. As a scientific editor, commissioning review articles and perspectives will be a way of actively shaping the content of the journal. Imagine you have been asked to commission 5 reviews. Please indicate the general scientific areas you would want to target, the articles you would aim to commission, and who you would ask to write them. 4. Please pick 3 conferences you would want to promote the journal at. Please describe how you would structure your activity (before, during, and after the conference) in order to maximize journal exposure. 5. Interdisciplinarity is an important concept for the journal. What do you think is important for interdisciplinary research to succeed? How would you go about increasing the number of interdisciplinary papers published by the journal? Which areas would you target? 6. How do you envision the future of scientific publishing 10 years from now? Please keep your ideas brief and within half a printed page. One week later, I had an interview with the Editor in chief and the lead editor to discuss my motivations and the journal ( a lot of questions on open access). Two weeks after the second interview, I had another interview with the Editor in chief and the lead editor. They sent me two publications and one abstract. I had one hour to read them and decide if I would consider them for publications in iScience and why. They never got back to me. I sent several emails to ask them if they had had further thoughts about my candidacy but I never received any answer. The interview process took a lot of time and effort and I thought I deserved an email. As a researcher, I read many publications from Elsevier and thought it was a serious company. I opinion of Elsevier has strongly changed since this experience as I realised that they do not respect candidates.

It was a single-stage interview for a temporary position (4 months), lasting 1.5 hours. The first 30 minutes consisted of general interview questions, the next 30 minutes involved reading a manuscript, and the final 30 minutes were spent discussing the paper, my impressions, and evaluating whether it should be sent to reviewers.