So Long, and Thanks for All the Flysch

Abstract

AGU Editors-in-Chief traditionally write a farewell editorial upon completing their service to the journal, and I have put off writing mine for three months, the longest I've ever procrastinated anything. It's been difficult to sit down and write a reflection on the last several years because, just as the JGR: Earth Surface editorial team was changing over, the outlook of the scientific community was shifting into a time of upheaval, fear, and loss.

I am, of course, writing in my personal capacity, not that of a federal government employee, and I am expressing only my own views here. But like so many others, I have been deeply affected by the fiscal and organizational cuts to science in recent months. Although I am fortunate to remain employed for now, I have lost many colleagues recently to early retirement and removal. Long-planned work is being curtailed or canceled. Many of us are working with a sort of grim determination to continue doing the best job possible, under new and sometimes mystifying restrictions, knowing our remaining time in this career path could be short.

Our field of Earth-surface processes encompasses some of the science most at risk of de-funding and de-prioritization in the current political shift—climate change, weather- and climate-driven hazards and their effects on human communities and ecosystems—and the impacts are already affecting our authors and publications. Authors whose JGR manuscripts I am still handling have told me they were required to remove the phrase “climate change” from their work during revision. Some authors are removing their names from submitted manuscripts in order not to endanger their careers by association with “controversial” topics. The loss of government funding is having profound effects across academia. As of this writing, U.S. scientists wait in some confusion to learn whether the Sixth National Climate Assessment will move forward given recent changes at the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and some authors' permitted participation in the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report is also in flux. Having been in the middle of these situations directly in the last several months, some days I have difficulty recognizing our professional environment as the place I've served and thrived in for many years.

None of this detracts from the immense gratitude I have for our editorial team and what we accomplished over the past six years at JGR: Earth Surface. It has been an absolute privilege—the highlight of my career—to share the responsibility of running this journal with such excellent colleagues: Editors Olga Sergienko, Ton Hoitink, Mikael Attal, and Noah Finnegan, more than 50 Associate Editors (AEs), and the AGU Publications staff, with special thanks to Matt Giampoala, Mia Ricci, Erin Syring, and Paige Wooden. AGU Publications comprise an incredibly dedicated, skilled, and good-humored team who manage all sorts of complex situations behind the scenes in addition to keeping the outward-facing journal operations running smoothly. I am especially grateful for the opportunities to share ideas and develop great working relationships with other Editors-in-Chief, thanks to AGU's conscientious team building and facilitation.

Our outgoing editor team was faced with the unprecedented challenges that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic. Juggling the new personal and professional situations caused by lockdowns, online teaching, canceled field seasons, conferences moving to virtual-only, and upheaval at home as children's schools closed had to be managed simultaneously with an enormous increase in manuscript submissions. As happened with most AGU journals, submissions to JGR: Earth Surface increased approximately 20% during 2020 and 2021 as authors stayed home and wrote papers. Although we welcomed the increase in exciting science coming in—the best part of this job is getting a first look at new advances—the workload for the editorial team and reviewing community in those years was substantial, and I am immensely proud of our Editors and AEs (some newly recruited to help manage the surge) for adapting.

One of the foremost initiatives we have taken at JGR: Earth Surface was to increase representation of scientific contributions from a demographically and geographically broad community. We incorporated these concepts into our strategic plan and our reflections on the journal's progress over 20 years (East et al., 2022, 2023). Since late 2018 the editorial board of this journal has tripled in size, allowing us to handle almost 50% more papers per year (we received over 500 submissions in 2024, for the first time), accelerating manuscript turnaround times, and increasing the topical range of subject-matter expertise. In the past six years we added AEs from many newly represented countries and increased the proportion of women to more than a third, consistent with the gender composition of AGU membership. We did not strive for gender parity on the editorial board, however, because I felt it was important to welcome eager, well qualified volunteers, and more than 90% of those who volunteered to become AEs during my tenure were men. Interestingly, my records from our targeted recruitment efforts also show that men tend to accept invitations to join the board at a slightly higher rate than women do (83% and 72%, respectively), for various reasons we could speculate on but not answer definitively for a board with relatively small numbers. Editors and AEs engaged in author/reviewer workshops in person and online with the intent to encourage high-quality manuscript submissions from across the geographic spectrum of our field. These outreach workshops, about a dozen of them in the post-pandemic years, were some of the most enjoyable activities I took part in as Editor-in-Chief, involving great questions and side conversations with mostly early-career scientists.

The outgoing Editors and I also tried other means to increase geographic representation that did not seem productive after all, such as inviting what we hoped would become high-impact papers. For reasons we (and AGU) are still working to understand, direct recruitment of manuscripts appears to have a low return-on-investment, as the hoped-for papers often do not materialize. Our board also struggled at times with finding the right balance between wanting to work with authors to bring their manuscripts up to publication standard and not placing unreasonable burden on the editors and reviewers; burnout is a real concern as manuscript submissions increase but the community does not grow at the same rate (Beal et al., 2022). And, naturally, there is variation among cultures in what authors and reviewers want and expect from the peer-review process, which requires careful navigation at times.

Even as political pressure is now leading to de-emphasis of diversity and inclusion, I remain encouraged that these efforts to represent more fully the breadth of Earth-surface science and scientists will have strengthened the scientific endeavor, as AGU recently reaffirmed (Xenopoulos et al., 2025). We know more about how the Earth works when we have information from more people in more places. In the current climate it is worth recalling how much reflection on representation in the Earth and space sciences went on during the past several years (e.g., Burton et al., 2023), and how these conversations affect scientific publishing. Because fair and rigorous peer review requires awareness of and honesty about unconscious biases, AGU Publications developed related training resources for all ∼800 Editors and AEs that were formalized in 2023, and a “tone table” for reviewers (available on the AGU Publications website under “Reviewers: Ethical Obligations, Tone Table, and Inclusive Practices”) intended to help mitigate some of the more egregious instances of bias during review. The development of AGU's Inclusion in Global Research policy (Xenopoulos et al., 2024) has been another recent step forward in which I was glad to play a small part.

When the AGU Publications Committee asked about my biggest concerns for the journal as my term ended, my answers related to maintaining scientific rigor and integrity. One major concern among editors today is the impracticality of regulating generative AI in creating manuscripts. Although its use for smoothing the writing has been welcomed among editors, any editor will tell you they are concerned about its misuse for falsifying literature summaries, creating inaccurate graphics, or plagiarism tweaked just enough to avoid detection software (which AGU journals use). We are acutely aware of the ethical implications of pressure to publish coupled with the accessibility of generative AI and the rise of predatory journals (AGU Editorial Network, 2024; Washington Post, 2024). The simultaneous shift toward Open Access publishing models (and I say this as a cheerleader of open science) creates unintended new pressure on journals to accept manuscripts. Imagine what happens to an orchestra when, instead of an audience buying tickets to hear the music, the concerts are now provided free to the audience with the musicians paying to play. The orchestra's continued existence relies on increasing contributions by musicians, but how to ensure the music quality remains high? Even a non-profit society needs to stay solvent. We don't want to be “gatekeeping” in the historical sense of unjust, biased exclusion; but in this emerging publication model, the role of editors as gatekeepers of scientific integrity and quality is more essential than ever.

I thank AGU Publications and my excellent, brilliant, tireless Editor team for the privilege of serving as JGR: Earth Surface Editor-in-Chief, and I wish all possible success to Dr. Ann Rowan and the current editorial board. The journal is in good hands and despite current challenges, the scientific community will continue working to ensure that our field has a bright future.