Editors of several journals in the field of hydrology met during the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna in April 2017. This event was a follow-up of similar meetings held in 2013 and 2015. These meetings enable the group of editors to review the current status of the journals and the publication process, and to share thoughts on future strategies. Journals were represented at the 2017 meeting by their editors, as shown in the list of authors. The main points on invigorating hydrological research through journal publications are communicated in this joint editorial published in the above journals.
Over the past five years, the editors of a number of journals in the discipline of hydrology have met informally to discuss challenges and concerns in relation to the rapidly changing publishing landscape. Two of the previous meetings, in Gothenburg in July 2013 and in Prague in June 2015, were followed by joint editorials (Blöschl et al., 2014; Koutsoyiannis et al., 2016) published in all participating journals. A meeting was convened in Vienna in April 2017 (during the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union – EGU) which was attended by 21 editors representing 14 journals. Even though the journals are published in quite different settings, the editors found common cause in a vision of the editor's role beyond just that of gatekeeper ensuring high-quality publications, to also being critical facilitators of scientific advances. In that enabling spirit, we as editors acknowledge the need to anticipate and adapt to the changing publishing landscape. This editorial communicates our views on the implications for authors, readers, reviewers, institutional assessors and the community of editors, as discussed during the meeting, and subsequently.
The previous joint editorials have reflected on the increased productivity across the discipline, and more broadly in science, as evidenced by a rise in manuscript submissions. This growth in submissions and publications has continued in recent years at an unfaltering rate. Collectively, the 14 journals represented in this editorial published 46 000 pages in 2017, compared with only 26 000 pages a decade earlier. The main driver of increased submissions has been intensified publication pressure, which has given rise to a number of trends of concern that privilege quantity over quality of science: in “salami publishing” (Martin, 2013; Koutsoyiannis et al., 2016) authors split a body of work into several papers in order to increase the number of their publications and their citation counts. There is also a tendency to publish work prematurely, where the contribution is incremental rather than significant. Despite the standard use of plagiarism detection tools by most journals, plagiarism still does occur, and “recycling”, where authors repackage their own work with minimal extension for a different audience, is on the increase. Some of this would be regarded as self-plagiarism (Martin, 2013). There have been cases of authors submitting the same manuscript simultaneously to multiple journals, and authors immediately submitting a rejected manuscript to another journal without any reflection or revision in response to reviewer evaluations. There are also instances of reviewers (and editors) attempting to promote their own (or their journals') citation metrics by requiring authors to cite their list of papers (citation coercion and citation stacking). None of these practices are conducive to advancing the science of hydrology. On the contrary, they contribute to a system overload and a dilution of useful information in the published literature.
Another trend that has become acute recently is that of a push towards speedier publication. New media have created a culture of immediacy for traditional journals (Brossard and Scheufele, 2013), and editors are under pressure to reduce turn-around times, both in relation to time to first decision and the subsequent review process. Most hydrology journals have reduced their turn-around times by at least two months in the last decade, little of which can be attributed to technical and system improvements. A number of journals have introduced a “fast-track” or “rapid communication” route in an attempt to report quickly on an extreme event or new technology. These types of papers place a higher burden on reviewers in relation to speed and additional challenges to editorial teams regarding review quality, while authors risk compromising quality for expediency. Recent experience has highlighted the additional risks of premature press releases, where a paper is subsequently rejected but broadcasters have already acted on a press release. Various approaches to providing a “fast-track” stream are being considered by hydrology journals, with varying degrees of success. As a discipline we need to reflect on whether these approaches are consistent with the notion of high-quality communication in our journals or whether other communication forms (e.g. newsletters, professional magazines, new media) might be more appropriate. It may well be that different approaches may coexist within hydrology.
The third, conspicuous trend is that of an increase in the number of authors
per paper. In the 1980s, the average number of authors per paper of
hydrological journal articles was below 2 while this figure has soared to 4
to 5 in 2017, depending on the journal. While European Research Council
(ERC) and other internationally funded research often necessarily involve
multiple authorships, this does make an individual's contribution difficult
to determine and advantages “networkers” as much as “true contributors”.
Although long author lists are evidently not negative per se, as they
demonstrate the need for collaboration and integration of specialized
knowledge, they may be problematic when used for research assessments.
Koutsoyiannis et al. (2016) suggested addressing this issue by normalizing
citation statistics by the number of authors. There have been similar
discussions in other disciplines. In medicine, for example, a new approach
to authorship transparency has been formalized through the CRediT
(
The main purpose of scientific publication consists of communicating new, important findings to peers in order to advance the science. The main role of editors, together with authors, reviewers and associate editors, is to maximize the potential towards fostering progress. During the publication process, the degree to which the manuscript contributes to advancing our science is in theory detected by the peer review system. However, as publications become more numerous, models more complex and data sets more extensive, it has sometimes become very difficult to assess the validity of a new theory or model prediction on the basis of the material contained in a manuscript. Most hydrology journals have therefore adopted a policy of open data and open models (e.g. Data Citation Synthesis Group, 2014), to allow peers – at least in principle – to repeat any published study. While the open data/model policies are recognized as being important, there are particular challenges in hydrology as, in some countries, the data (and models) used are often proprietary. Also, publication strategies often involve keeping part of the data for further analyses by the same group. Open data/model policies will certainly need particular attention in the near future and will likely require a change in the thinking of researchers and data collection agencies. Given the increasing burden that open data and open model policies impose on authors, institutions and journals should seek approaches that facilitate compliance.
A secondary purpose of scientific publication lies in recognizing the
contributions of individuals and their research institutions. While,
traditionally, this was done by attributing seminal achievements to the
authors publishing them (e.g. Newton became famous through the power of
ideas in his
The quality of journals, as used in research assessments, is often
quantified by journal impact factors (IFs). They are a measure of the number
of citations to the papers of that journal over a particular period and
have been used to separate reputable journals from low threshold web
postings, new media and predatory journals (Beall, 2016). The presumption is
that the quality of individual papers can somehow be inferred from the
citation count of the journal as a whole. A comparison among six leading
hydrology journals over the period 1996 to 2016, published as an editorial
in
It is arguable whether there is any set of metrics that would effectively
measure a lasting contribution to academic thought and practice, quite apart
from whether these could be gamed by an individual choosing to do so. A
general concern therefore emerges from the current practice of assessing and
ranking scientific productivity of institutions, journals and individuals by
bibliometric indices which could indirectly incentivize academic misconduct
(Edwards and Roy, 2017). We also note that the San Francisco Declaration on
Research Assessment (DORA) (
With climate change currently being high on the political agenda and coupled with prevailing publication pressures, it is not surprising that submissions on climate impact studies, often with little novelty or innovation, have become something of a cottage industry. Equally disappointing is the proliferation of model applications with marginal innovation and/or little generality. There is indeed an interesting question of whether societal needs, fundamental ideas or new technologies are the main drivers of scientific progress. Sivapalan and Blöschl (2017) suggested that all three have been and will be important ingredients in hydrology. They also noted that research progress has come about in discrete steps or “eras”. For example, the two decades from 1970 to 1990 focused on hydrological processes involving substantial field work. Later the interest in field work ebbed away because of the high cost-to-benefit ratio (Blume et al., 2017) and changing societal priorities.
Indeed in the 21st century the human footprint is fast becoming a dominant
feature in the hydrological cycle, and research across the disciplines is
becoming mandatory. Publishing interdisciplinary research, however, still
remains challenging. There is a tendency for researchers and their
communities to be socialized within their own discipline niches, and
communities may become self-reinforcing to the detriment of fresh outside
perspectives. Most hydrology journals have already responded strategically
to these interdisciplinary publication needs, for example, by selecting editors and
reviewers from a diverse set of disciplines. The strategic response of
Whether the research is disciplinary or inter-/multi-disciplinary, journals
play an important role in communicating and setting the trend for the vision
of hydrological research, and for fostering innovation in a coherent way. We
need to work collectively to ensure that science of the highest quality and
that innovative content is published in our journals. To do this the hydrological
community must redress research investment deficiencies and the publication
biases that arise as a result of a lack of funding. Research agendas should
not be so narrowly linked to today's problems, and we need to be bold in
setting out the grand challenges of our discipline. For example, the
International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), in collaboration
with the Hydrology Divisions of EGU and AGU, has recently called for
compiling a list of unsolved scientific problems in hydrology that would
invigorate research in the 21st century ( ideally relate to observed phenomena and why they happen are universal (i.e. not only apply to one catchment or region) are specific (so there is hope they can be solved).
We commend this initiative and urge colleagues to contribute to shaping progress in hydrology.
Hydrology, a traditionally integrative science with high societal relevance
and geographic diversity, is perhaps an optimal place from which to launch
the movement to reassert the academic spirit in a time where there is
dramatic change in the way people learn, synthesize and interact with each
other. Our community stands at the cusp of perhaps the greatest societal
revolution in the democratization of access to resources and knowledge, as
well as to the largest population the world has ever seen. These societal
and technological changes have major effects on the publishing landscape.
For hydrological journals there is a unique opportunity to learn through
harnessing the energies of the moment to continue to improve our concept of
the world and the role water plays in it.
As a hydrological community we are experiencing unprecedented challenges emerging from the rapidly changing science communication landscape. These challenges also represent an opportunity for a renaissance in the scope and societal impact of our discipline. As we engage with new modes of communication, we must remain vigilant to ensure top-quality science distinguishes our journals from the mass of unverified online information. The success of new measures for author transparency, for reducing scientometric bias, and for reinvigorating the hydrological science agenda depends on your participation and engagement. To realize this renaissance, we urge all to act in support of the issues raised in this editorial through activities within journal institutions, professional societies and the broader community of practice.
This editorial has benefited from the insightful critique of three reviewers – Dani Or, Murugesu Sivapalan and Ian Littlewood – and we would like to extend our collective thanks to these reviewers for their useful perspectives, comments and additions.