The Nature Awards for Mentoring in Science show that it is crucial to support researchers in leading their groups well.

Calling all researchers: what type of mentoring did you receive during your early career? Were you nurtured in a way that balanced supervision and independence? Were you left to sink or swim, and perhaps rescued by a kindly postdoc? Did your super­visor test your results and claims to destruction, or just assume or hope you had done the job right? Were they perpetually invisible or always available? And, if your experience was less than great, who could you turn to for help?
.

Every year since 2005, Nature has held a competition to find outstanding scientific mentors in a particular region, with local judges drawn from across disciplines. Awards are given for a lifetime’s achievement and at the mid-career stage. Each nomination includes independent narratives by five researchers who were mentored at different stages of the nominee’s career; these narratives detail the nominee’s output of successful scientists, and provide anecdotes about their mentorship practices and key moments in their relationship with the nominator. This year’s competition was in Spain, and celebrated four winning mentors.
.

Read the rest of this editorial