ACS - Agricultural & Environmental Letters Editorial Board (ACS330)
2016 Annual Report
2016 was the first complete year of publication of the new journal, Agricultural & Environmental Letters (A&EL). This journal publishes manuscripts under the following categories:
1. Editorials, including invited Guest Editorials.
2. Commentaries – commentary on relevant issues related to science, policy, research trends, business trends, exciting new discoveries, food security, etc. These can be as long as 2500 words (approximately four published pages). Brief Commentaries are no longer than 1000 words.
3. Letters to the Editor – Letters to the Editor are usually no longer than 500 words in length. They can be as long as 1000 words (approximately two published pages) if there is detailed dialog that results from the papers published in A&EL.
4. Research Letters – Manuscripts that provide research information and other related information, up to 2500 words in length (approximately four published pages). Research letters include an abstract and may be divided into sections to bring organization to the manuscript.
One important goal of this new journal is fast review and publication. For 2016, the average time from submission to acceptance was 41 days. For rejected manuscripts this time was even shorter before a decision was communicated back to the authors.
An interesting observation during this first year of publication of A&EL is that many authors have forgotten how to write short and highly focused papers. A common theme is that authors want to have the word limit for manuscripts waived. While there is certainly some flexibility, a high priority is being placed on keeping the journal a place where shorter and highly focused papers are published. The feedback from authors is that once they go through the exercise of being more concise and focused, they see the value of this type of paper.
Downloads and views of papers in A&EL have been strong for this first year and based on my personal interaction with authors, the journal is being viewed positively. I expect submission will pick up in this second year. Because of the rapid review and publication, citations of papers in our other society journals are captured quickly into the Impact Factor calculation. That should have a positive effect on the Impact Factors of all of our journals. This effect should increase as A&EL becomes more established.
Editors’ Conference
The first annual ACSESS Editors Conference took place at the ASA/CSSA/SSSA headquarters in Madison on May 23-24, 2016. We were provided an overview of how the three societies relate and a description of ACSESS and the services that ACSESS provides. The net revenues from publications represent a major input into the finances of the Societies and we discussed the role of publications in meeting financial needs of the society as well as the publication needs of society members. Reducing page charges was a change several years ago that caused a reduction in revenue. However, subscriptions to the Digital Library (DL) are replacing much of the income that used to come from page charges and subscriptions of individual journals by society members and libraries. An overview of Manuscript Central was provided, along with a presentation of Impact Factors and how they are calculated, by a representative from Thompson Rueters. As more and more agencies require, and authors choose, Open Access (OA) as a way to publish research, it will be important to create a sustainable financial model that includes these changes. Efforts will also need to continue regarding the encouragement of manuscripts to our publications and to expand our reviewer base.
The Managing Editor of A&EL is Ann Edahl and her report is attached at the end of this report.
Annual Meeting
A meeting of the A&EL Board was held in Phoenix during the annual meetings of the ASA/CSSA/SSSA societies on Monday, November 7, 2016 (4:30 PM-5:30 PM).
Tracy Hmielowski is working hard to provide publicity for A&EL as well as for other journals. Science Editor/CSANews). Brett Holte, at society headquarters, does a fantastic job working with the Editorial Board when questions arise about Manuscript Central. Currently accepted manuscripts are reviewed by the A&EL Editor who then selects papers to be highlighted and publicized. Luggage tags with the A&EL title on them were also distributed to people who came to the publications center at the annual meetings in Phoenix.
It is my goal to keep the workload of Associate Editors to reviewing about two papers a month. Because these are short, they do not require as much time to review as longer manuscripts. However, as time passes there will be a need to increase both the size and the expertise of the Associate Editor board and the number of Technical Editors. Related to this is how can we have better sharing of reviewers across the A&EL board (rather than a single TE relying only on the associate editors in his stable.)
Items Requiring Board Attention:
None
Members of the Committee:
Ellen Bergfeld (Member, Ex Officio)
Bill Cook (Member, Ex Officio)
David Myrold (SSSA Editor-in-Chief)
Elizabeth Guertal (ASA Editor-in-Chief)
C. Wayne Smith (CSSA Editor-in-Chief)
Warren Dick (AEL Editor)
Ann Edahl (AEL Journal Manager)
Thomas DeSutter (AEL Technical Editor)
Kimberly Garland-Campbell (AEL Technical Editor)
Jerry Hatfield (AEL Technical Editor)
Peter Kleinman (AEL Technical Editor)
Michael Richardson (AEL Technical Editor)
Sharon Schneider (AEL Technical Editor)
Daniel Sweeney (AEL Technical Editor)
Hailin Zhang (AEL Technical Editor)
William Anderson (AEL Associate Editor)
Brian Beres (AEL Associate Editor)
Anthony Buda (AEL Associate Editor)
Patrick Carr (AEL Associate Editor)
Francis Casey (AEL Associate Editor)
William Cox (AEL Associate Editor)
Aaron Daigh (AEL Associate Editor)
Patrick Drohan (AEL Associate Editor)
Georgia Eizenga (AEL Associate Editor)
Brian Haggard (AEL Associate Editor)
Zhongqi He (AEL Associate Editor)
Vincent Hebert (AEL Associate Editor)
Abdelbagi Ismail (AEL Associate Editor)
Quirine Ketterings (AEL Associate Editor)
Holger Kirchmann (AEL Associate Editor)
Randall Kolka (AEL Associate Editor)
R. Michael Lehman (AEL Associate Editor)
Sally Logsdon (AEL Associate Editor)
Merrin Macrae (AEL Associate Editor)
Emerson Nafziger (AEL Associate Editor)
Matthew Polizzotto (AEL Associate Editor)
Tony Provin (AEL Associate Editor)
Joseph Robins (AEL Associate Editor)
Patrick Shea (AEL Associate Editor)
Douglas Smith (AEL Associate Editor)
Jac Varco (AEL Associate Editor)
Tameria Veith (AEL Associate Editor)
Merle Vigil (AEL Associate Editor)
Forbes Walker (AEL Associate Editor)
Paul White (AEL Associate Editor)
Attachment:
Managing Editor's Report (PDF)
Prepared By:
Dick, Warren A.