Publishing in ESA Journals Supports Critical Programs for Science Communication, Training, and Diversity

Abstract

The Ecological Society of America has been publishing journals for more than 100 years. Our distinguished ESA family of journals includes the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, first published in 1917, Ecology (1920), Ecological Monographs (1931), Ecological Applications (1991), Frontiers in Ecology and Environment (2003), Ecosphere (2010), and the newest journal, Earth Stewardship (2023). The ESA journals offer high-quality options for presenting scientific findings for all ecological topics. In 2022, our journals published 1,034 new papers, and the cumulative number of papers downloaded was more than 5.7 million. The acceptance rate for Ecology, Ecological Applications, and Ecosphere ranges from 20 to 49%, and the time length from submission to acceptance averages 155 days. The ESA journal acceptance rates are higher than Global Change Biology and Nature, and comparable to Limnology & Oceanography and Limnology & Oceanography Letters. Time to acceptance is longer than Global Change Biology, shorter than Nature, and similar to the aquatic journals.

Authors weigh multiple considerations when choosing a journal in which to publish, including prestige and impact factors, exposure to the most appropriate scientific audience through prolific use of social media, value of peer reviews, professional quality of the finished product, and speed of publishing. Beyond these important practical considerations, there is an additional value of publishing with ESA as a non-profit professional society. Several essays have recently called attention to the value of publishing in professional society journals rather than journals that support commercial publishing companies' bottom lines (Cloern 2023, Glibert 2023, Thorp 2023). An important message of these essays is that the financial returns from publishing in society-sponsored journals benefit the broader scientific community, not only shareholders in a for-profit corporation.

Some of our members question why ESA partners with Wiley, a commercial publisher, rather than self-publishing as ESA did for most of its history. Like many other professional societies, ESA recognized years ago that self-publishing was no longer financially feasible in an ever-expanding market. Partnership with Wiley in 2016 helped stabilize ESA's financial model. The ESA continues to study the publishing landscape to ensure its publishing practices remain contemporary, and future partnerships with other publishers may be considered.

The continued emergence of open-access journals and mandates to publish open-access papers are dramatically changing the scientific publishing landscape, and the ESA will continue to evolve with these changes. Researchers have an ever-increasing buffet of journal choices when they look for a place to publish. In addition to knowing that publishing in ESA journals is a premier way to communicate ecological science, we hope that you will also consider the added value of supporting programs at ESA that enrich our community.

More information on ESA's journal portfolio may be found here: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/.

All authors contributed ideas and text.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.