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From the Managing Editor

Stephen Threlkeld
Stt@estuariesandcoasts.org

The year 2000 was a busy one for Estuaries and Coasts ! It was the first year ever that the journal was published on a bimonthly instead of on a quarterly schedule, and also the first year in which some of our members (students) only received the journal in the online version. The worldwide distribution of access to Estuaries and Coasts Online is very exciting to us here in the editorial office

Special Issues

While 2000 marked a change in our production and delivery schedule, 2001 and 2002 seem slated to be publication years busy with special issues. Five special issues are currently in the works to be published in the next two years. The topics of these special issues include the River Seine Estuary, estuarine turbidity maximum processes, coastal eutrophication (from a National Academy of Sciences meeting held last October), multiple stressors in the Patuxent River Estuary, and freshwater inflow effects on estuaries. Special issues are important to our readership, and I look forward to being involved in their production.

Submissions Rise

Estuaries and Coasts received 168 manuscripts and published 67 manuscripts in 902 pages in 2000. The average time from submission to acceptance for papers published in 2000 was 12.67 months (range 4.6-22.5 months), and the time from acceptance to publication averaged 4.8 months. As of March 31, 2001, we received 49 manuscripts (projected to be 196 for all of 2001), compared to 168 manuscripts for all of last year (a 17% increase).

Reviewing The Review

Although I am pleased that the time from acceptance to publication has been reduced over the last 2 years to about 5 months (and is holding steady there), the task of completing timely reviews of submitted manuscripts continues to challenge the editors and staff of Estuaries and Coasts. There are two main issues: more than half of our requests to reviewers are turned down and, in many cases, the review is not delivered in a timely fashion if an individual has agreed to provide a review.

The problem, simply put, is that reviewers are busy and there are lots of manuscripts to review. I found that authors in Estuaries and Coasts for 1996-1999 also published work in about 150 other journals. Even with the simplifying assumptions that all these journals are of the same size as Estuaries and Coasts, and that all have the same rejection rate, and that rejected manuscripts are only resubmitted to one other journal, I still estimated that each ERF member would have to review 14 manuscripts per year for these journals alone. Still, something has to be done to improve review of manuscripts submitted to Estuaries and Coasts.

Tracking the Review

We have started using online tracking tools that automatically send reminders to reviewers and which notify the associate editors in charge of manuscripts when it is appropriate to nag slow reviewers (and to suggest other ones). We are undertaking these new online scripts advisedly, because there has to be improvement in manuscript review but we also depend on ERF members acting as volunteers to do the very important business of serving as associate editors and as reviewers.

We hope that our new system will let us be more effective in getting timely reviews. In all cases, we are not intending to use reviewers who have been asked to review a manuscript for us in the last 3 months.
Our goal is to have our readers and authors know that the articles in the journal are being produced in a timely fashion and that the results reported there are of current interest, so we feel that we should remind reviewers to review, authors to revise, and associate editors to make their [acceptance/rejection] decisions at every opportunity. On the other hand, we know that delays are unavoidable, and we hope that our reminders will not offend but, rather, encourage timely contributions to the peer review system.

Timeliness + Fair Review = Quality Articles

The quality of the journal is first and foremost a reflection of what authors submit for consideration for publication in Estuaries and Coasts. When an author submits an article to any peer-reviewed journal there is an implied contract and an expression of confidence that their work will receive a fair and timely review.

As Managing Editor of the Federation's peer-reviewed journal, I hope that everyone who is asked to review manuscripts for Estuaries and Coasts will recognize the impact that their decision has on the timeliness of the articles that appear in the journal. The reviewer's contribution to the journal's quality is very important, and we rely on the reviewers to participate as fully as possible.

If you are approached to do a review and cannot do it, please feel free to say so. Potential reviewers should not hesitate to decline a request to review if they don't have the time (a decline is in many ways better than a promise to do a review in 6 weeks). Don't be afraid to suggest a colleague or collaborator be contacted as a possible reviewer (if you like, we won't even tell on you).

My personal goal is to reduce the average time for review (from submission to decision) of articles submitted to Estuaries and Coasts to 3 months, with 6 months being the absolute maximum time an article could spend in review. I think it is possible to achieve this goal, but I will need the reviewers' help to do so.

Hug a Reviewer Today!

For all the reviewers who have so generously volunteered their time and expertise to the enhancement of Estuaries and Coasts, I believe I speak for the editors and our readership in offering our heartfelt thanks. We appreciate your contribution and your dedication to promoting the dissemination of the excellent research that is published in our journal. We couldn't do it without you.

Let me know at ERF 2001 in St. Pete Beach, or before then if you wish, how you think the new reminder and manuscript tracking systems are working, and especially what you think of the latest issue of the journal.

Thanks.