Why should I submit my article to a scientific‐society journal?

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Limnology and Oceanography Letters 2023
© 2023 The Author. Limnology and Oceanography published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
on behalf of Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.
doi: 10.1002/lol2.10353
EDITORIAL
Why should I submit my article to a scientific-society journal?
Scientific publishing is a business enterprise that publishes
journals following a diversity of models including those
where: (1) journals are owned and published by a publishing
company that retains revenues and (2) those published by a
partnership between a publishing company and a scientific
society where revenues are shared. Authors choose where to
submit their articles from over 40,000 peer-reviewed scholarly
journals (Johnson et al. 2018), and the journal publishing
model is one consideration in their decision process. Journals
published by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology
and Oceanography (ASLO) have followed model 2 since 2015
when ASLO entered a partnership with Wiley, in part because
of revenue sharing that expanded the capacity of this society
to serve its authors and members. I use lessons learned from
the ASLO publication experience to describe three benefits of
the society-publisher model that you as an author might con-
sider when deciding where to submit your next manuscript.
Publisher partnerships expand the capacities of
scientific societies to serve
Scientific publishing is on a fast track toward fully open
access journals where authors pay the publication cost.
Authors are largely unaware that more than half of this publi-
cation cost goes from the publisher to ASLO. This publishing
revenue constitutes 40% to 60% of ASLOs total annual reve-
nue, depending on income from conferences. This revenue
supports services and benefits provided by ASLO to its mem-
bers and beyond. The most direct benefit is publication of
ASLO’s journals—one of the most valued functions of scien-
tific societies for its members (Johnson et al. 2018). But many
other benefits are enabled by this partnership, including ASLO
operations and programs that target students, early career
researchers (ECRs), and under-represented groups. Examples
include:
The “Meeting Travel Award”pays travel costs for stu-
dent and ECR members to attend an ASLO meeting.
The “Raelyn Cole Editorial Fellowship”provides pro-
fessional development for ECRs in publishing, peer review,
and scientific writing.
The “Early Career Publication Honor”pays the publi-
cation cost of open-access articles authored by ECRs in need,
including those from the global south.
The “Science Communication Internship”provides
opportunities for graduate students to learn about science
communication.
The “Global Outreach Initiative”assists members out-
side the U.S. in communicating aquatic science to non-techni-
cal audiences.
The “Multicultural Program”builds cohorts of con-
nected students from under-represented groups and provides
travel support to ASLO meetings.
The “Ecological Dissertations in the Aquatic Sci-
ences”is a symposium that builds collaborations among
recent PhD recipients.
The “Amplifying Voices Webinar”series for Early
Career Researchers from historically excluded groups.
Through their payment of publication fees, authors who
publish in ASLO journals provide financial support that
enables these kinds of programs. Wiley also contributes indi-
rectly to this support by pointing authors to opportunities
they might have through their institutions to pay open-access
publication costs: https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-
resources/Journal-Authors/licensing-open-access/open-access/
open-access-account-codes.html?1.
Stature of scientific-society journals
ASLO is a globally respected and recognized brand of both
freshwater and marine science. That respect and recognition
have accumulated over 68 yr, beginning with ASLO’sfirst
publication of Limnology and Oceanography (L&O) in 1956.
Articles published in L&O have reported major new discover-
ies, developed and challenged conceptual models, shaped and
reshaped the directions of freshwater and marine science. I
compiled 10 examples of transformative science published in
*Correspondence: loletters-eic@aslo.org
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1

L&O during each of its first five decades (Table 1). These arti-
cles, many authored by icons of limnology and oceanogra-
phy, illustrate the range of topics where scientific
understanding was advancing rapidly in the second half of
the 20th century, including: (1) rates of primary productivity,
nutrient assimilation, element (e.g., sulfur) cycling, and deni-
trification; (2) diel periodicity and light limitation of photo-
synthesis; (3) nutrient (N, P) concentrations, sources, forms,
limitation of ocean production, eutrophication of lakes, and
geochemistry; (4) exchanges across air-ocean, river-ocean, and
sediment-water interfaces; (5) classification of ecosystems
based on their physical features and biological communities;
(6) size-based scaling of ingestion rates and C content of
plankton; (7) food web structures and connections including
heterotrophic components of the plankton, grazer control of
primary producers, and fate of autotrophic production;
(8) DOM excretion by phytoplankton, use by bacteria, photo-
reactions, and attenuation of light; (9) stoichiometric rela-
tions including the P:Chlorophyll ratio of lakes, N:P ratio as a
control on algal growth and composition, and the C:N ratio
of particles; (10) harmful algal blooms, their occurrences and
ecophysiology; (11) ocean color and satellite-derived primary
production.
These kinds of advances have accelerated and expanded in
scope during the 21st century, so the widely respected and
recognized ASLO brand has been earned from nearly seven
decades of publishing durable and transformative articles.
Authors recognize and value the ASLO brand just as they
value the brands of other scientific societies such as AGU,
EGU, SIL, ESA, CERF, SWS, AFS, ECSA, etc.
The articles listed in Table 1are bricks in the foundation
upon which the aquatic sciences have been built, and each
was highly cited. This is important for authors because cita-
tions are one indicator of the scientific impact of our work.
Clarivate’s journal impact factor is the mean number of cita-
tions of articles published the previous 2 yr, so it is an index
of the impact of individual articles. For 2022, ASLO’s two
research journals, L&O and L&O Letters, ranked #2 and #1
respectively among 21 journals in the field of limnology, and
#5 and #2 among 63 journals in the field of oceanography.
Authors submit to ASLO journals because of their stature built
from 68 yr of publishing innovative research, and because
authors know their articles will be read, cited, and impactful.
Rigorous and constructive peer review
Scientific peer review is a process of quality control to
assure readers that they can trust the contents of published
articles. Although often maligned and widely discussed, the
peer review process has been described as “one of the glories
of science”(Rennie 2003), and a “golden standard”for validat-
ing published research (Tennant 2018). Editors use peer
review as a basis for making editorial decisions, and the Edi-
tors of ASLO’s journals are committed to providing fair, criti-
cal, and constructive evaluations of each manuscript we
Table 1. Ten of the most cited research articles in Limnology and Oceanography during each of its first five decades of publication.
Citation numbers are from Scopus (29 July 2023).
Odum (1956) Dugdale and
Goering (1967)
Sheldon
et al. (1972)
Hecky and
Kilham (1988)
Behrenfeld and
Falkowski (1997)
Ryther (1956) Eppley et al. (1969) Carlson (1977) Seitzinger (1988) Valiela et al. (1997)
Sanders (1958) Conover (1966) Morel and Prieur
(1977)
Hedges and Stern (1984) Smayda (1997)
Riley (1957) Dugdale (1967) Dillon and Rigler
(1974)
Putt and Stoecker (1989) Amon and Benner (1996)
Ryther and Yentsch
(1957)
Steele (1962) Jørgensen (1977) Westrich and Berner
(1984)
Duce and Tindale (1991)
Pomeroy (1959) Burns (1968) Jassby and Platt
(1976)
Froelich (1988) DeLong et al. (1993)
Edmondson et al.
(1956)
Hansen and Rattray
(1966)
Frost (1972) Paerl (1988) Moran and Zepp (1997)
Doty and Oguri (1957) Hellebust (1965) Sieburth et al. (1978) Ullman and Aller (1982)Duarte and Cebri
an
(1996)
Rawson (1956) Mullin et al. (1966) Rhee (1978) Benson and Krause
(1984)
Morris et al. (1995)
Wieser (1959) Paine and Vadas (1969) Zaret and Suffern
(1976)
Hedges et al. (1986) Hansen and Bjørnsen
(1997)
Cloern Why submit to a society journal?
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receive. Readers consider rigorous peer review as a badge of
trust that the methods and data analyses of a published article
are sound and clearly reported, the data and analyses clearly
support the author’s conclusions, the writing is clear, logical
and accessible to the journal’s readers, and the article
advances science at a level that merits publication. Authors
appreciate the guidance provided by reviewers and editors to
strengthen their articles. From a survey of 3040 academics,
90% “said that the main area of effectiveness of peer review
was in improving the quality of the published paper”
(Ware 2008). This has been my experience too. Every article I
have authored and every manuscript I have handled as an Edi-
tor is stronger (clearer, more rigorous, and more concise) than
the original submission, and often substantially stronger.
Authors understand that rigorous peer review takes time,
and the time required to make editorial decisions is one crite-
rion they use to select a journal. In making this decision,
authors weigh the balance between their priorities for fast
publication and careful authoritative reviews. Table 2shows
the median number of days for each of five steps in the edito-
rial handling of manuscripts submitted to L&O Letters from
late 2016 to mid 2023. In recent years, the median time
from Editor receipt of a manuscript to a first editorial decision
has been about 50–55 d; most (60–65%) of that time has been
to secure peer reviews. I regularly receive messages from
authors like those in Box 1indicating that the constructive
guidance from reviewers and editors is highly valued and
worth the time required to receive an editorial decision.
Short answer to the title question
Authors should know that ASLO uses its publication-
derived revenues to support the community of aquatic
scientists, targeting in particular students, ECRs, and under-
represented groups. ASLO’s widely respected brand has been
built from nearly seven decades of publishing research at the
cutting edges of limnology and oceanography. And, the
editors of ASLO’s journals view their jobs as helping authors
publish clear and compelling presentations of their research.
James Cloern, Editor-in-Chief
Limnology and Oceanography Letters
Table 2. Median times (days) for five steps in the editorial handling of manuscripts submitted to L&O Letters: (1) Editor-in-Chief
assigns an Associate Editor (topical specialist); (2) Associate Editor assigns a first reviewer; (3) receipt of the last peer review; (4)
Associate Editor recommendation; and (5) Editor-in-Chief decision.
Breakdown of turnaround times to first decision (median)
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
Submission to editor assigned 3.63 4.87 4.99 4.18 2.01 1.71 1.25 1.61
Editor assigned to first reviewer assigned 6.65 7.16 7.17 8.85 5.99 7.37 7.93 6.32
First reviewer assigned to last review returned 32.76 37.78 34.18 33.67 37.64 33.85 34.19 31.79
Last review returned to editor recommendation 6.66 9.69 8.29 11.73 7.33 7.28 11.26 8.44
Editor recommendation to editor decision 8.58 8.16 5.42 3.02 0.89 1.02 0.77 0.95
BOX 1. Example testimonials from authors who
submitted manuscripts to Limnology and
Oceanography Letters.
I am impressed by the high-quality reviewing process.
Xin Lin, Associate Professor, Xiamen University,
China.
This was my first time submitting a manuscript to the jour-
nal and I can only say good things about the review process.
I would be happy to submit here again.
Clara R. Vives, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of
Copenhagen.
It has been an excellent review process.
Gregory Britten, Assistant Scientist, Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution.
Many thanks for all the support of your team during the sub-
mission process.
Hopefully it will be the first of many to come in L&O
Letters.
Jorge Salgado, Lecturer, Department of Geography,
University College London UK.
We really appreciate the comments from reviewers and edi-
tors that help to improve this paper! It is a long journey, but
I learned a lot throughout this process!
Nicole Cai, ORISE Fellow, US EPA Region 3.
Thank you for the time and effort in getting our manuscript
assessed. The three reviews are very thorough and construc-
tive, and will no doubt help us improve this piece.
Clément Duvert, Senior Research Fellow, Charles
Darwin University, Australia.
Cloern Why submit to a society journal?
3

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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Katie Simmons, Teresa Curto, Mike Pace, Jack Middelburg,
Rita Franco-Santos, Roxane Maranger, and Sam Luoma for sharing data
and their thoughtful comments on an early version of this editorial.
Submitted 16 August 2023; Accepted 17 August 2023
Cloern Why submit to a society journal?
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