I summon people’s perspectives with regard to the “best” journals in which to publish an ecological paper. Every year each journal writes an editorial emphasizing all the super things about that journal (a glass-half-full perspective). The recent one in the January 2012 issue of Ecology raised my eyebrows for reasons that are as follows:
(1) In reference to Ecology vs. Ecosphere: “We emphatically reiterate that there is no difference in the editorial standards between the two journals”. - Except that papers routinely get rejected from Ecology with encouragement to submit to Ecosphere, where reviewers have lower expectations, and therefore standards are lower. This seems crystal clear, so why pretend otherwise? (2) “Ecology remains far and away the most cited journal in the ecological sciences according to the ISI Journal Citation Reports. The cited half life of more than 10 years is as long as any journal in our subject-matter area (indicating that our publications stand the test of time), and our impact factor of 5.073 is among the highest for journals publishing primary research articles in ecology. Ecology retains the confidence of readers and authors alike as the premier journal in the ecological sciences.” - The evidence is not in support of these conclusions. Everyone knows that Ecology Letters a good while ago surpassed Ecology as the premier ecology journal (impact factor > 15). I surmise it is less widely appreciated that Ecology has also been overtaken by Global Change Biology (6.3), Molecular Ecology (6.5), and Global Ecology and Biogeography (5.3). Over the past 10 years Ecology’s impact factor gained about 1 point, approximately the average across all ecology journals. So, the tortoise has stood still, being overtaken by journals formerly in the “more specialized” category for Ecology rejectees. The latter journals were born <20 years ago, gaining momentum in the last 10, making a cited half life >10, in point of fact, impossible. (The distinction of cited half life >10 is, FWIW, shared by the Texas Journal of Science, impact factor = 0.1). (3) In reaction to a backlog: “The Editors therefore took steps to further tighten up the review process (including rejections of more submissions following editorial review). We are happy to report that these measures had the desired effect: Ecology's backlog has disappeared. In fact, we overshot our mark.” So, overnight it became a wild guess as to whether a paper might get reviewed at Ecology. Strikes me as conceivable that people started submitting good papers elsewhere. Perhaps the glass is half empty? Am I nuts?
