Observations of a New Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

In January of this year, I became the 10th Editor-in-Chief of Groundwater since its inception in 1963. I owe many thanks to my predecessor, Lenny Konikow, for his 4 years of service and contributions to the journal, and for his generous time in training me for this new challenge. I also gratefully acknowledge all the former Editors (William Walton, Jay Lehr, John Bredehoeft, Warren Wood, Mary Anderson, Frank Schwartz, and Henk Haitjema) for building Groundwater into an internationally recognized journal and for setting and maintaining a high bar for quality content. I am humbled and honored to follow in their footsteps and will aim to maintain the journal's reputation for excellence.

I have spent most of my career as a practicing hydrogeologist at a state geological survey, with a background in applied research, teaching, and outreach. This work has given me broad exposure to most aspects of groundwater science, but there are few areas in which I can claim real expertise. For that I rely on the recommendations and advice of the dedicated executive editors and associate editors of our Editorial Board, and of course of the hundreds of individuals who support the journal by providing peer reviews.

Now that I have been editing Groundwater for several months I have several observations:

Groundwater is a very effective venue for publishing your work. During calendar year 2023 the journal (volume 61) published 100 papers. Papers originated from 39 different countries, and the journal had a 49% acceptance rate for submitted articles. Based on metrics provided by our publisher, Wiley, articles in Groundwater are highly valued and highly read, with almost 240,000 full-text views during 2023. About 30% of these views were accessed by users in the United States, followed by China, Canada, Australia, Germany, and other countries around the world.

As most readers know, in January of 2024 Groundwater became a completely digital publication; the publisher is longer printing or mailing hard copies. Instead, all articles are available through the web in the Wiley online library, and Groundwater's Early View feature makes articles available within a few weeks after final acceptance and before being compiled into final issues. An exciting new feature added in 2024 is the ability to include embedded rich media (audio and video files) as part of a paper. However, a downside to digital publication in general has been the rapid growth of new alternative journals outside of the long-established scientific publishers. Expanding the number of journals dilutes the author and reviewer pools and can make it more difficult to obtain peer reviews.

In this era when some question the validity of scientific research, independent peer review of submitted manuscripts is more important than ever. Unfortunately, the challenges of obtaining these reviews, as previously addressed by Konikow (2023) and others, are continuing and seemingly getting worse. It is not uncommon for our executive editors to be turned down by 10 or 15 potential reviewers before obtaining the requisite three outside reviews. Finding reviewers has become a problem across the scientific publishing field and is apparently related to an ever-expanding number of journals, the Covid pandemic, and reduced academic funding, among other factors. My plea to our readers is to please accept appropriate review assignments when asked; the peer review system is a critical part of moving our science forward.

I have been surprised to discover that written discussions or comments about published papers have become extremely rare, with one comment in 2022 and none in 2023. Discussions of papers can be a stimulating part of scientific discourse, and Groundwater has long offered an opportunity for discussion through letters to the Editor. Here readers can comment on aspects of a published paper, and the original authors are given the opportunity to reply or expand on their paper. Such comments need not be critical and can instead point out alternative hypotheses, other research directions, and cross-discipline connections. As Editor-in-Chief I encourage comments and discussion.

I suspect that when most people consider publishing in Groundwater, they think about the research articles and case studies that fill the bulk of our pages. Please remember that we have a number of additional (and usually shorter) publication opportunities including guest editorials, issue papers, historical perspectives, book reviews, media spotlights, technical commentaries, methods briefs, and review papers. We welcome submissions in all these areas. In addition, I seek ideas for special issues of the journal focused on specific topics related to hydrogeology. If you have ideas for a special issue, or thoughts about making Groundwater even better, please do not hesitate to contact me ([email protected]).