Editorial |
Publishing the ICES Journal of Marine Science: facing fresh challenges in a competitive environment
1 Editor-in-Chief: c/o Cefas, Pakefield Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk NR33 0HT, UK; tel: +44 1502 524344; fax: +44 1502 524511; e-mail: andy.payne{at}cefas.co.uk
2 Senior Editor: Journals, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK; tel: +44 1865 353673; e-mail: cathy.kennedy{at}oxfordjournals.org
This issue marks the start of a new era for the Journal. It first appeared in 1903 under the title Publications de Circonstance, and was published from 1926 to 1991 as the Journal du Conseil. In 1991, the title was changed to ICES Journal of Marine Science (with the subtitle Journal du Conseil), when ICES entered a formal agreement with Academic Press. That title was maintained when Academic Press became part of Elsevier, and the agreement and contract was honoured through several extensions until the end of 2006 when, following a comprehensive and competitive tendering process, the contract was taken over by Oxford University Press (OUP).
Before looking to the future and the challenges ahead, it would be remiss of us not to say a few words about how the Journal has changed during its successful 16 years in total with Elsevier and Academic Press. From being somewhat of a drain on ICES' financial resources and run by an editor and an assistant editor, the Journal immediately started growing and increasing its penetration internationally, with the production and marketing process soon rationalized and run in a very businesslike way by committed professional publishers whose staff knew how to make the most of what the ICES scientific community and its collaborators had to offer. It is informative to learn that during the whole 16 years, just three Academic/Elsevier Publishing Editors and two in-house ICES Technical Editors held the reins: Andy Richford, Els Bosma, and Christiane Barranguet for the Publisher, and Judith Rosenmeier and Bill Anthony for ICES. Of course, editors and later editors-in-chief came and went, perhaps because of burn-out, perhaps to face new challenges, but still just 13 have been associated with the Journal since 1991. Alphabetically, they are Ray Beverton, John Blaxter, Mike Chadwick, Niels Daan, Chris Frid, Audrey Geffen, John Hislop, Bernard Megrey, Andrew Payne, Pierre Pepin, John Ramster, Stephen Smith, and Verena Trenkel; six are still associated with the Journal, including John Ramster who has served it faithfully for 23 years! We also welcome a seventh editor to the current team, Panayiota Apostolaki, with this issue, but that still only makes 14 editors since 1991—a huge burden on each, given the rising submission rate. To the Publishers and the senior ICES office-bearers who saw the potential and made the decision to go down the professional publishing road and to all those named above plus Søren Lund at ICES, who has been acting as postbox and focal point for the Journal for many years, the ICES community owes a debt of thanks for placing the Journal where it is in 2007. It is thriving, its impact factor impressive and rising, its size (number of pages) increasing (including the two, soon to be three, annual ICES symposia), quality (especially colour reproduction) improving, and the flow of manuscripts from scientists worldwide seeming to burgeon year on year.
OUP therefore takes over from Elsevier a well-oiled machine, but many will ask what this actually means for the Journal. First, we believe that a partnership with a not-for-profit organization that is a department of a university brings with it aims and values that are closely aligned with those of ICES. "Not-for-profit" does not mean financial deficit: on the contrary, OUP has agreed excellent terms that should see a secure financial future for the Journal. It is more a question of priorities: fair pricing, a continuing emphasis on quality in all aspects of publication, maximizing dissemination to those who need the Journal, and a long-term strategy.
How then will these priorities be manifest? First, the new regime is very much one of partnership. ICES and OUP editorial staff have already engaged in frequent, stimulating, indeed animated, discussions, both informally and at meetings organized by OUP that have given us the opportunity to discuss topical issues with representatives of other journals as well as each other: the status quo is very much one of shared, informed decision-making. We have discussed impact factors (rising higher, we hope) and rejection rates (also rising, to maintain and enhance standards), online submission, open access, self-archiving policies, pricing, etc., all within the context of an open, convivial atmosphere.
Next the practicalities; here are some of the more significant changes already agreed (some, of course, were already part of the agreement with Elsevier, but we aim to develop them further).
Production times: We will continue to publish electronically the corrected proofs of papers as soon as they are ready, well in advance of publication in print/hard copy. Typically, this will be within 4–6 weeks of the manuscript's submission to the publisher. Publication in print, we hope, will take place much sooner than currently, as little as 4 weeks later (though not initially, as Elsevier and now OUP are currently handling a backlog of papers that needs to be eliminated before this target can be achieved). Similarly, we will seek to avoid backlogs that would extend the publication time beyond our target.
Online hosting: With the move to Oxford Journals, our publication online relocates from Elsevier's ScienceDirect to HighWire Press, a not-for-profit, high quality online service provider that hosts nearly half of the 200 most frequently cited journals publishing in science. Our new online version will incorporate many features, from superb search functionality through the facility to download figures directly into Powerpoint, to access the entire back-archive of the Journal, extending our reader's reach to the earliest days of the Publications de Circonstance and including the old Rapports et Procès-Verbaux, which now form part of the Journal series itself.
Back-archive: By the time this editorial is published, OUP hopes to have completed digital archiving of the whole series of ICES Journal of Marine Science/Journal du Conseil/Publications de Circonstance. Elsevier had already started the process, but at the time the contract was signed, there were still nearly 90 years of publications awaiting digitization. The Rapports et Procès-Verbaux des Réunions du Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer/ICES Marine Science Symposia series, which became part of the Journal in 1995, is similarly being addressed.
Pricing and sales: This will be much more flexible in future. Institutions will have the choice of purchasing the Journal in print, online only, or a combination of the two. They can purchase the Journal as a single item, in a bundle with other Oxford Journals, or they can join a consortium and jointly purchase bundles of Oxford Journals. The institution price, which increased by 10% between 2005 and 2006, will be kept constant or, for payment in Euros, will actually decrease by nearly 10%. Furthermore, Oxford Journals has a scheme that will greatly enhance access to the Journal for members of institutions in developing countries; the Journal will be offered free of charge to some 60 of the poorest countries in the world and at greatly reduced rates to another 60.
Open access: The Journal will participate in a pioneering experiment with other OUP journals, to determine the impact of open access publishing on journals such as ours with established subscription bases. From January 2007, the authors will have the choice of paying to make their papers in the Journal freely available or leaving them under subscription control. Oxford Journals' aim is to establish viable models of open access publishing using a combination of experimentation and independent reviews, the results of which are being made available to the general public. The purpose is to ensure that the authors and journals are able to comply with the rapidly changing funding agency and institutional requirements to make research results as widely available as possible.
Most of the above practicalities relate to OUP's side of the new arrangement. However, the ICES Journal of Marine Science management team and ICES itself have also reviewed their goals vis-á-vis the new partnership. Clearly, we want to grow from where we are now, providing a high quality publishing medium for ICES member and observer country scientists, as well as for good marine scientists worldwide. We note increased interest in publishing in the Journal from researchers all over the world, not only in the enlarged number of countries represented in the pages of the Journal, but also through the many letters of interest received at ICES. However, you do not necessarily see all countries regularly represented in published manuscipts because not all manuscripts get through the rigorous evaluation procedure; our rejection rate is now about 50%. Scientific subject or discipline is another issue we try to accommodate as widely as possible, provided it falls within ICES' mandate, and it is pleasing to note the greater breadth of natural and economic science output being submitted and considered. Further, we will continue to strive for a better balance between material produced by scientists employed by government and by academia, something that has fluctuated over the years, but is now dominated by the government component.
The Journal also strives for excellence in grammatical presentation and style. Editors occasionally put significant effort into smoothing the text of scientists whose home language is not English and who cannot engage a professional translation service. However, this is neither always possible nor by any means always advisable, so we will continue to advise authors to use professional translation services, if possible, to oil their manuscript's passage through the peer-review evaluation process. All Publishers, including OUP, provide final copyediting service to a reasonable standard and, on request, the names of professional scientific translators.
As mentioned above, ICES and OUP recently authorized the appointment of a seventh editor to lessen the increasing load on the six editors active throughout 2006, and that seventh editor is in the team for this volume (64). Allied to that is an ICES agreement to extend its contract with the editor-in-chief for a further term of 3 years. This will allow the senior author of this editorial (AILP) to work with the second author (CK) to put into place some of the issues and ideas that were born while deciding the eventual shape of the ICES/OUP partnership.
Finally, OUP are keen, like Elsevier, to make fuller use of an online submission system. Those most influenced by such an initiative, the editors, will continue over the next year to consider whether and when this system should become mandatory to all authors (other than to those few who do not have easy access online), meanwhile allowing those who wish to use it to do so. However, we have to say that, although the Elsevier system of online publishing for the Journal was available to the authors on request, it was rarely used. Consequently, if online is to be the preferred option of Publisher OUP (it already is!), the authors, the reviewers, and the editors, there may need to be more-focused marketing of the product that extols its virtues.
The challenges are manifold, not least in finding qualified and willing reviewers to assist in maintaining our high publication standards (it never ceases to surprise editors and publishers how little importance is attached by many scientists to peer-reviewing compared with the effort they put into producing papers themselves!). However, the publishing and editing teams, supported and encouraged by OUP and ICES, allow us to view the future with optimism. Therefore, keep those good manuscripts flowing to Søren at ICES headquarters, and we hope that you like the new layout and design in this, the first issue produced in cooperation with Oxford Journals.
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