Editorial Article Swipe

This first issue in 2019 of Limnology & Oceanography is my last issue as Editor-in-Chief. Since taking up this position in the fall of 2014, I have managed the transition of the journal from self-publication by ASLO to co-publication with Wiley. Overall, I am pleased with the transition and with the state of the journal, despite some stresses and a few setbacks. The journal remains strong, receiving and publishing papers of the highest quality from around the world. Over the past 4 yr, all regular issues were published on time, and the citation index has steadily increased. Our mean time to first editorial decision has decreased to well under 2 months, and the mean time to final decision to under 3 months. In addition to the regular issues, we published three special issues, the first ones in Limnology & Oceanography since 2009, on methane cycling in aquatic systems, the headwaters to oceans aquatic continuum, and long-term studies in aquatic ecosystems. Furthermore, we produced the first ever virtual issues of the journal, with five of these published so far and all highly acclaimed. These virtual issues bundle together previously published articles from Limnology & Oceanography for easy viewing, grouped around a particular topic. The first of these celebrated the 60th anniversary of the journal by highlighting the top-cited 60 papers over the past 60 yr. Others include a companion to the special issue on methane, a virtual issue on large lakes of the world, an issue commemorating 50 yr of research at the Experimental Lakes Area, and a celebration of 30 yr of research at the Hawaii Ocean Time-series. In 2017, ASLO created a new position of Deputy Editor-in-Chief to help oversee the special and virtual issues. Maggie Xenopoulos has done a fantastic job as the first person to hold this position. I am very proud of our successful effort to increase the gender balance and geographic diversity of the Associate Editors. The participation of women editors has increased from 12% of Associate Editors in 2014 to 43% in 2018. In 2014, Associate Editors came from only eight countries and half worked at institutions in the United States. By 2018, a strong majority of the Editors worked outside of the United States, representing 17 countries including nine additional ones: China, India, Japan, Brazil, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and The Netherlands. All of the Associate Editors are talented, highly respected scientists, and all have contributed greatly to the ongoing success of the journal. I am extremely grateful for their support and dedicated service. Despite the strength of Limnology & Oceanography, the journal is facing a major challenge. The nature of scientific publishing is changing rapidly, with a strong push toward greatly accessibility. In September 2018, 11 national grant-awarding bodies in Europe announced that, by January 2020, they will no longer allow work they fund to be published in “hybrid” journals (Enserink 2018). Hybrid journals are sold for subscription but also publish some papers in open-access format, requiring additional payment by the authors. Limnology & Oceanography is one such hybrid journal and so, within a year, authors who are funded by government sources in France, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (among others) may no longer be able to submit to us, should this ban stand. A similar requirement is already in place with the Gates Foundation, and pressure is building from the European Commission and from university libraries in the United States to move away from hybrid journals. At my home institution of Cornell University, we have a growing consensus among library officials and those of us who serve as editors of academic journals that real change must come soon. How should Limnology & Oceanography respond? One approach would be to make the journal fully open-access, dropping the hybrid model. This is the approach already taken by our sister journal, L&O Letters. This change would, I believe, ensure the long-term health of Limnology & Oceanography if open-access fees were kept modestly low. However, Wiley would likely respond by reducing the payments to ASLO that make up part of their contractual arrangement. These payments are supported by the income stream to Wiley from co-publication, including page charges, open-access fees, and library subscriptions. If Limnology & Oceanography were fully open-access, the subscriptions would no longer have value: why would libraries continue to pay for what is freely available without subscription? Currently, more than 50% of the total net income stream to ASLO comes from Wiley's payments. ASLO uses a very small portion of these funds to support the journals, and so the editorial costs of the journal should still be sustainable under a fully open-access model. However, non-journal operations by ASLO that are currently supported by the Wiley funds may suffer should alternative funding sources not be identified. How Limnology & Oceanography reacts to this challenge is a decision for the ASLO Board of Directors to make. I believe it is critical, though, for the larger community of aquatic scientists represented by ASLO to participate in the discussion and to understand the full nature of the situation that the ASLO journals face. I therefore urge the ASLO Board to establish a Blue Ribbon panel to study possible pathways forward for Limnology & Oceanography and the other ASLO journals. The response to the changing publication models should be a central focus of the panel, but I suggest they further consider other aspects of the ASLO publications. Does the current model best serve the intellectual needs of the community of aquatic scientists? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having three different journals, as opposed to one journal with separate sections to incorporate what is now being published in L&O Methods and L&O Letters? Might one unified journal allow us to more efficiently and effectively make the best use of our combined, incredibly talented pools of editors and reviewers, and better serve our authors as well? I also suggest that ASLO consider hiring an in-house Managing Editor to oversee the standard editorial work of Limnology & Oceanography and provide an interface with the many employees at Wiley who support the journal. Over the past 4 yr as Editor-in-Chief, I spent significant time and effort on routine issues that could have been handled well by an in-house Managing Editor, as a consequence leaving me less time to work on the general betterment of the journal. Several other organizations that co-publish with Wiley or other commercial publishers have followed this model of having an in-house Managing Editor, including the Ecological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, and the Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation. My final reflection on 52 months as Editor-in-Chief of Limnology & Oceanography: I am incredibly honored to have followed in the footsteps of Alfred Redfield and his colleagues who established the journal in 1956. Their vision of a journal that integrates across ocean and freshwater systems is central to the progress of aquatic sciences, and has influenced my own personal approach to science over the decades. I am also honored to have followed in the steps of the seven other Editors-in-Chief who preceded me in this role. As I wrote in my first editorial 4 yr ago, it is in one sense remarkable how little the journal has changed: the breadth, quality, and integrative nature of papers that so exemplified the early days of Limnology & Oceanography remain today. This speaks to the foresight of those who established the journal, to the value of integrative science, and to the vigor of the ASLO community. The need continues for a high-profile, society-based journal that crosses and integrates aquatic systems from freshwaters to the ocean.