Why should I submit my article to a scientific-society journal?

Abstract

Scientific publishing is a business enterprise that publishes journals following a diversity of models including those where: (1) journals are owned and published by a publishing company that retains revenues and (2) those published by a partnership between a publishing company and a scientific society where revenues are shared. Authors choose where to submit their articles from over 40,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journals (Johnson et al. 2018), and the journal publishing model is one consideration in their decision process. Journals published by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) have followed model 2 since 2015 when ASLO entered a partnership with Wiley, in part because of revenue sharing that expanded the capacity of this society to serve its authors and members. I use lessons learned from the ASLO publication experience to describe three benefits of the society-publisher model that you as an author might consider when deciding where to submit your next manuscript.

Scientific publishing is on a fast track toward fully open access journals where authors pay the publication cost. Authors are largely unaware that more than half of this publication cost goes from the publisher to ASLO. This publishing revenue constitutes 40% to 60% of ASLOs total annual revenue, depending on income from conferences. This revenue supports services and benefits provided by ASLO to its members and beyond. The most direct benefit is publication of ASLO's journals—one of the most valued functions of scientific societies for its members (Johnson et al. 2018). But many other benefits are enabled by this partnership, including ASLO operations and programs that target students, early career researchers (ECRs), and under-represented groups. Examples include:

The “Meeting Travel Award” pays travel costs for student and ECR members to attend an ASLO meeting.

The “Raelyn Cole Editorial Fellowship” provides professional development for ECRs in publishing, peer review, and scientific writing.

The “Early Career Publication Honor” pays the publication cost of open-access articles authored by ECRs in need, including those from the global south.

The “Science Communication Internship” provides opportunities for graduate students to learn about science communication.

The “Global Outreach Initiative” assists members outside the U.S. in communicating aquatic science to non-technical audiences.

The “Multicultural Program” builds cohorts of connected students from under-represented groups and provides travel support to ASLO meetings.

The “Ecological Dissertations in the Aquatic Sciences” is a symposium that builds collaborations among recent PhD recipients.

The “Amplifying Voices Webinar” series for Early Career Researchers from historically excluded groups.

Through their payment of publication fees, authors who publish in ASLO journals provide financial support that enables these kinds of programs. Wiley also contributes indirectly to this support by pointing authors to opportunities they might have through their institutions to pay open-access publication costs: https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing-open-access/open-access/open-access-account-codes.html?1.

ASLO is a globally respected and recognized brand of both freshwater and marine science. That respect and recognition have accumulated over 68 yr, beginning with ASLO's first publication of Limnology and Oceanography (L&O) in 1956. Articles published in L&O have reported major new discoveries, developed and challenged conceptual models, shaped and reshaped the directions of freshwater and marine science. I compiled 10 examples of transformative science published in L&O during each of its first five decades (Table 1). These articles, many authored by icons of limnology and oceanography, illustrate the range of topics where scientific understanding was advancing rapidly in the second half of the 20th century, including: (1) rates of primary productivity, nutrient assimilation, element (e.g., sulfur) cycling, and denitrification; (2) diel periodicity and light limitation of photosynthesis; (3) nutrient (N, P) concentrations, sources, forms, limitation of ocean production, eutrophication of lakes, and geochemistry; (4) exchanges across air-ocean, river-ocean, and sediment-water interfaces; (5) classification of ecosystems based on their physical features and biological communities; (6) size-based scaling of ingestion rates and C content of plankton; (7) food web structures and connections including heterotrophic components of the plankton, grazer control of primary producers, and fate of autotrophic production; (8) DOM excretion by phytoplankton, use by bacteria, photoreactions, and attenuation of light; (9) stoichiometric relations including the P:Chlorophyll ratio of lakes, N:P ratio as a control on algal growth and composition, and the C:N ratio of particles; (10) harmful algal blooms, their occurrences and ecophysiology; (11) ocean color and satellite-derived primary production.

These kinds of advances have accelerated and expanded in scope during the 21st century, so the widely respected and recognized ASLO brand has been earned from nearly seven decades of publishing durable and transformative articles. Authors recognize and value the ASLO brand just as they value the brands of other scientific societies such as AGU, EGU, SIL, ESA, CERF, SWS, AFS, ECSA, etc.

The articles listed in Table 1 are bricks in the foundation upon which the aquatic sciences have been built, and each was highly cited. This is important for authors because citations are one indicator of the scientific impact of our work. Clarivate's journal impact factor is the mean number of citations of articles published the previous 2 yr, so it is an index of the impact of individual articles. For 2022, ASLO's two research journals, L&O and L&O Letters, ranked #2 and #1 respectively among 21 journals in the field of limnology, and #5 and #2 among 63 journals in the field of oceanography. Authors submit to ASLO journals because of their stature built from 68 yr of publishing innovative research, and because authors know their articles will be read, cited, and impactful.

Scientific peer review is a process of quality control to assure readers that they can trust the contents of published articles. Although often maligned and widely discussed, the peer review process has been described as “one of the glories of science” (Rennie 2003), and a “golden standard” for validating published research (Tennant 2018). Editors use peer review as a basis for making editorial decisions, and the Editors of ASLO's journals are committed to providing fair, critical, and constructive evaluations of each manuscript we receive. Readers consider rigorous peer review as a badge of trust that the methods and data analyses of a published article are sound and clearly reported, the data and analyses clearly support the author's conclusions, the writing is clear, logical and accessible to the journal's readers, and the article advances science at a level that merits publication. Authors appreciate the guidance provided by reviewers and editors to strengthen their articles. From a survey of 3040 academics, 90% “said that the main area of effectiveness of peer review was in improving the quality of the published paper” (Ware 2008). This has been my experience too. Every article I have authored and every manuscript I have handled as an Editor is stronger (clearer, more rigorous, and more concise) than the original submission, and often substantially stronger.

Authors understand that rigorous peer review takes time, and the time required to make editorial decisions is one criterion they use to select a journal. In making this decision, authors weigh the balance between their priorities for fast publication and careful authoritative reviews. Table 2 shows the median number of days for each of five steps in the editorial handling of manuscripts submitted to L&O Letters from late 2016 to mid 2023. In recent years, the median time from Editor receipt of a manuscript to a first editorial decision has been about 50–55 d; most (60–65%) of that time has been to secure peer reviews. I regularly receive messages from authors like those in Box 1 indicating that the constructive guidance from reviewers and editors is highly valued and worth the time required to receive an editorial decision.

Authors should know that ASLO uses its publication-derived revenues to support the community of aquatic scientists, targeting in particular students, ECRs, and under-represented groups. ASLO's widely respected brand has been built from nearly seven decades of publishing research at the cutting edges of limnology and oceanography. And, the editors of ASLO's journals view their jobs as helping authors publish clear and compelling presentations of their research.