JPR Advance Access originally published online on November 12, 2007
Journal of Plankton Research 2007 29(12):1021; doi:10.1093/plankt/fbm084
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... and goodbye for now!
EXECUTIVE EDITOR 2004-2007
Swansea University Swansea SA2 8PP, U.K.
k.j.flynn{at}swansea.ac.uk
I have been the Executive Editor of the Journal of Plankton Research (JPR) for three years (even if it feels like longer) but from January 2008 the baton is passed over to Roger Harris.
My association with JPR started in earnest in the early 1990's; I was doing so much reviewing for the Journal that David Cushing, the then Editor (and, of course, the Founding Editor of JPR) suggested that I may as well join the Editorial Board. In 2003 I started to be involved with the handling of submissions, helping Ian Jenkinson and Tim Wyatt, who had by then taken over as Editors from David. I became Executive Editor in January 2004.
The changes that have occurred to JPR during the period of my Editorship have been considerable.
Immediately we shifted to a fully electronic submission system speeding up the whole process, aided by the appointment of a Managing Editor (Aditee Mitra). Thanks to the efforts of Jim Ruddock and his colleagues at the Press, the time from receipt of the final manuscript to publication on-line also steadily decreased. A Strategic Editorial team was created, consisting variously of Roger Harris, Paul Harrison, Ian Jenkinson and John Lehman, and together we came up with several changes and innovations. Most obviously the Journal acquired a colour front page; thanks to Daniel Paxton for helping to drive this. The "Horizons" concept arose in 2004 as a vehicle to promote discussion about topical aspects of our science. We altered the Journal scope slightly, and removed the "short–communication" section (as there was no longer any relationship between the size of submission and the duration and extent of the referee process). While we retained an interest in publishing classic taxonomy papers, molecular biological work has become very much a part of JPR. For all that, 2/3rds of the papers are still marine-orientated.
Running JPR has occupied about 3.5 days a week (2.5 for Aditee, and 1 for me), every week. If we missed out a week, the work just accumulated. It has been quite relentless. Over the last 3+ years we have handled well over 1500 submissions, and I have ultimately edited about 400 of them. The bulk of submissions have been made just before and during major holiday periods when, naturally enough, most potential referees also make themselves scarce. It is also amazing how some papers took what seemed like an eternity to attract referees while others were quickly snapped up. And no, it is not due to the identity of the authors, because at the point of sending review requests we withheld this information (providing just the title and a single summary sentence). If your submission was one of those slow through the system, I apologise. However, one can only work as fast as the slowest link allows.
Throughout all of this we have been helped by our Editorial Board members, who have done an excellent job in helping the Journal. They not only have provided reviews (often at very short notice) but they have also helped to adjudicate between conflicting reviews. The bulk of the reviews have been, however, provided by the wider scientific community that the Journal serves. I thank you all.
John Dolan warned me, when I announced my decision to step down as Executive Editor, that I would miss not doing the job. He is right, but things must move on.
Ultimately the Journal of Plankton Research belongs not to the publisher, who owns the title, or to the Editorial team who runs it. The Journal belongs to those who submit to it, review for it, and read it. The future of this journal thus rests with you. Please continue to support it.
I wish you all the best.
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