Journal Transition Period Completed

Last summer we began two ambitious transitions for the CERF journal, Estuaries and Coasts: we moved to a new editorial structure in which co- Editors-in-Chief Carlos Duarte and Jim Cloern became responsible for all editorial decisions, and we joined with Springer an international academic publisher to co-publish the journal. I am pleased to report that both transitions are now complete, and the journal is thriving! 

On the editorial front, Carlos and Jim have expanded the international character of the Editorial Board with the addition of several excellent scientists. We have hired Taylor Bowen as the editorial coordinator. Taylor serves as a CERF employee, a friendly face for the journal who handles the interface with Springer on a routine basis. If you have questions or concerns with a submission or potential submission, Taylor is there ready to help.  

The time from submission of a paper to the first decision by the editors (“accept as is,” “accept with major revisions,” etc.) has been an impressive 64 days for the first 7 months of 2008, with half of this time the average time taken by reviewers to do their work. This short time attests to the dedicated service of the associate editors as well as the work of hundreds of talented reviewers. Most authors report they have been very pleased with the new processes.  

On the publishing side, papers are now available online as citable publications within a few weeks of acceptance, an incredible record. This means that a paper accepted “as is” on first submission (not a common occurrence) can be published within 3 months of submission, and a paper accepted with minor revisions (~20% of the papers thus far in 2008) should take less than 4 months from submission to publication, if the authors deal with the revisions in a timely manner. Few if any environmental science journals do as well.  

The availability and visibility of Estuaries and Coasts has grown tremendously since we joined with Springer. The journal is now available at over 3,600 institutions globally, including many institutions that support multiple libraries (such as the University of California system). This is an order of magnitude greater distribution than we have ever had in the past, with a true global reach for the first time. And the journal is being noticed. Full text downloads of papers by readers averaged almost 12,000 per month for the first 6 months of 2008, and reached a high of over 26,000 per month in April.  

Special issues are now part of the routine business for the journal. The change in our publishing model means that those who propose dedicated special issues of Estuaries and Coasts no longer need to obtain funding for these. This is a great change, since the Editors-in-Chief are now able to decide on issues based on editorial content alone. If you have a topic to propose for a issue, contact Carlos or Jim and sound them out. 

The scale of the transitions and breadth of issues addressed have been massive, and not surprisingly, some problems have arisen. As soon as problems have been identified, CERF staff and Springer have moved quickly to solve them. The most difficult problems to solve have been with the historical archives of Estuaries and of Chesapeake Science, which are now available through Springer to all CERF members and institutional subscribers. We received some complaints over the summer about quality of some archived papers, as well as mislabeling of some papers in the archives. Springer has responded by bringing in a new vendor to re-do the work of scanning and archiving old papers, and they have assured us that this work was completed as of September 22. Some errors still seem inevitable, and we are interested in identifying these and correcting them.  

In consultation with Springer we urge you, the CERF members, to participate in an extra level of quality control. If you have published in Estuaries or Estuaries and Coasts in the past or have a favorite paper published there, please go online to the archives and look for it. Can you easily find the paper or papers? Is the visual quality reasonably high? If not, Springer asks that you let their point person in the CERF partnership, Janet Slobodien, know of the problem. She can be reached by e.mail at janet.slobodien@springer.com.  

All CERF members should be proud of Estuaries and Coasts. If you have not taken a look recently, go online and check out the latest papers. And by all means, consider submitting your work for publication in the journal.