Freshwater Biology – the end of an era

Abstract

In 2006, on looking back over 25 years of editing this journal (Hildrew & Townsend, 2007), we wrote ‘We have enjoyed it immensely and hope to continue to do so for some time yet’. Well, we have now completed a third of a century of editing, we HAVE enjoyed it immensely, but our time is now up. Thirty-three years is a very long time indeed to be an Editor, and there can be few who have achieved this in the modern era. In our time, we have accepted more than 4000 papers but rejected almost 13 000, which makes for a large number of disappointed authors. Some years ago, one of us (Alan) went on a post-conference tour cruising round the Danube delta with about a dozen well-known aquatic ecologists. One of them noted that it was rather like Agatha Christie’s ‘Murder on the Nile’ – but who should be murdered? They all agreed it should be Hildrew, as he had rejected at least one paper by each of them! We hope that, in the end, murder is not in the hearts of most of our authors, and indeed, we salute the grace of so many who have accepted our decisions without demur and sometimes even with expressions of gratitude. It is worth recording that each of us, as co-Editorsin-Chief, has rejected at least one paper submitted by the other! Here, we discuss how the journal has been transformed over the last 33 years, some evident changes in the field, and finish with a few personal thoughts about the role of journals and publishing in the modern world. First, growth in the journal was rapid and sustained. Freshwater Biology, which began life in 1971, published fewer than 50 papers per year in its first decade or so but now we are publishing over 200 (Table 1). The growth in submissions has been even greater, from fewer than 100 per year before 1982 to over 700 in 2014; in other words, our acceptance rate has fallen from more than 40% in the early years to <25% today. A particularly abrupt change occurred in 2005/06 when submissions increased from 377 to 509, coinciding with the introduction of electronic submission, now almost universal. This change also helped us further the ‘internationalisation’ of the journal, with most of the extra papers coming from places where use of the traditional postage service presented problems. Most readers will find it hard to believe that when we began our term, every aspect of publishing – submission, referee’s reports, editing and dispatching final copy to the publishers – made use of paper, typewriters, red ink (Colin) or green (Alan), and the postman. The speed of publication has inevitably increased, partly via new technology but also by relaxation of traditional page limits as electronic publication took over. Until 2005, accepted papers had to wait to be allocated to a paper issue, a delay we worked hard to minimise (down to 3 months by 2005). Papers now make it into press, on Wiley’s Early View system, in a little over a month from acceptance. It has been a story of quantitative growth and increased speed of handling, but also several steps up in quality and influence, from an essentially British journal at its inception to a leading, international journal in aquatic ecology today. Some of these changes, rather than being led by technology, have been the result of a good deal of strategic thought and effort, some of it crystal-ball gazing to look Correspondence: Alan Hildrew, School of Biological & Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, London E1 4NS, U.K. E-mail: a.hildrew@qmul.ac.uk