JAWRA Blog

Our Wiley-Blackwell production partners have alerted us that overly-long abstracts are causing problems with page layout. Our limit is 200 words, and some have been going 330 and more. This crowds out the footnotes, keywords, and citation information.

Once again, an abstract is NOT the whole paper! It should concisely summarize what you did and what you found.

Like Garrison Keillor’s description of a good sermon, an abstract should have a strong beginning and a strong ending … and the two should not be all that far apart!

We just came upon a good example of why one should strictly follow the International System of Units (SI), as defined in http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/introduction.html . An author represented a flow rate, cubic meters per second, as “cms” instead of the standard, m³/s. Nobody caught this in review, so the copy editor saw a non-SI unit. Not understanding “cms” was meant to represent a flow, they thought it meant the plural of centimeter and corrected it to the standard “cm”.

Using cms is a throwback to the old cubic feet per second abbreviation, cfs. While not as ambiguous as cms, cfs still requires users to interpret an arcane form. It’s one of the reasons most of the world has left English units behind.

Bottom line: Use SI or risk having to write an erratum.

I’m just back from Seattle, where AWRA held a very successful Annual Conference. One of the many events was the presentation of the 2009 Boggess Award to Dustin Garrick, Katharine Jacobs, and Gregg Garfin – see my earlier post on this. Dustin (dustingarrick@gmail.com) asked that I post the acknowledgment below on the blog. Congratulations to all!

“The authors wish to credit the stakeholders – led by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Arizona Department of Water Resources – for their invaluable contribution to the manuscript at all stages from study design through execution. This paper is part of a larger multidisciplinary effort to enhance water supply reliability in the Lower Colorado River Basin by incorporating climate and paleohydrological information into river operations modeling and management. The project team also evaluates economic and management tools capable of mitigating the impacts of water supply variability during prolonged dry-year conditions. Research tasks share an interdisciplinary methodology driven by active stakeholder engagement. At the project’s outset, the University of Arizona team solicited feedback from water managers and users to refine the research scope and identify the core decision support challenges and research questions. This engagement process began in 2004 amidst unprecedented reservoir declines in the Colorado River system and provided the impetus and inspiration for the research and manuscript that received the 2008 Boggess Award. To date the project has produced a range of outcomes linking climate science and water management, including 20 publications and a number of workshops or focus group sessions. Support for the research has been provided by the University of Arizona Water Sustainability Program and the Bureau of Reclamation. More information on the project, publications, and stakeholders is available online at: http://www.azwaterinstitute.org/ewsr.html .”

Open Access. The concept is shaking up the publishing industry more than anything since the printing press. At its heart is a noble desire to disseminate knowledge as widely as possible, regardless of one’s means. But, it runs into the practical realities of economics, copyright, and how the web is run.

Websites offer great economies of scale, but they can not be run for free. I know. I’ve managed a huge public website (water.usgs.gov). Content must be organized, authenticated, checked for quality, maintained to changing standards, updated as needed (discussions, replies, and errata come to mind), monitored, and made available at high speeds all the time. You can’t do this on the cheap, which, unfortunately, seems the fate of too many government and university repositories. Maintenance is not glamorous, but once you put a journal paper online, you must serve it forever.

In an earlier posting, I talked about some of the problems which occur when duplicate, unofficial copies of papers appear on the open web. Nevertheless, some natural-resources agencies are beginning to insist the research they fund be made freely available to the public. The Wiley-Blackwell answer to this is OnlineOpen, whereby authors pay a fee to make the official online copy of their paper available to all. The process is compliant with all major public-access requirements. Authors and institutions are freed of the burden of serving the paper. Search engines see a single version for classifying and ranking. The paper is presented in the context of its journal, where it may be compared to other papers and more properly evaluated by readers. AWRA and Wiley-Blackwell have an obvious interest in making sure JAWRA’s content remains current and adjusts to current standards.

OnlineOpen papers can be identified on our website with the green “Free” icon next to their title. (Some papers are temporarily made free for promotional purposes as well.) Overall, I think OnlineOpen is a win-win situation for those who need it. Researchers get their work distributed in a legal, effective manner under an economically sustainable publishing model.

The preferred target of a link to a JAWRA paper is its abstract. Viewable by anyone, the abstract gives concise information about the paper, links to the PDF and HTML versions, provides instructions to those who do not have access, and links to related papers.

The simplest way to construct the link is to find the abstract with your browser, then cut-and-past the URL. Here’s an example with a recent paper:

Garrick, Dustin, Katharine Jacobs, and Gregg Garfin, 2008. Models, Assumptions, and Stakeholders: Planning for Water Supply Variability in the Colorado River Basin. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, (JAWRA) 44(2):381-398. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2007.00154.x

You can find this paper in the April, 2008 issue (Vol. 44, No. 2) table of contents. Then, just click “Abstract” and this address appears at the top of your browser:  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119414237/abstract .

The above URL is fairly persistent, since AWRA and Wiley-Blackwell have an interest in making it so. However, for those who insist on a long-lived URL, you can use the Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-1688.2007.00154.x .

Now you know what those strange numbers at the end of a citation do! For more information on Digital Object Identifiers, see http://www.doi.org .

I’ve spent much of today on one of my least favorite tasks: dealing with copyright issues. JAWRA’s Copyright Assignment Form (CAF) gives authors certain limited rights to distribute their papers among colleagues. However, it does NOT allow authors to put our PDF of their paper on a public website!

Many “violations” are well-meaning attempts to give a paper more exposure, but there are unintended consequences:
1. Having two identical copies online confuses search engines and can lead to lower rankings.
2. Every hit on an unauthorized version is one less hit on the AWRA site, thus lowering our count of times a paper is viewed. Libraries and researchers watch this number.
3. Any Discussion/Reply or Errata are a critical part of the scientific record which only the official site can provide.
4. The official site maintains updated links to related articles by the authors and others, increasing the chances of citation.

Publishers, including Wiley-Blackwell, Inc., are getting better at finding copyright violations. Our approach upon finding a problem begins with me writing a gentle email to the author. Most quickly reply with apologies.

Authors can distribute their papers to colleagues, including students, in a variety of legitimate ways without using an open website. For a paper which must be freely available to the public, we offer Wiley-Blackwell’s OnlineOpen for an additional fee. I’ll cover this in a later posting.

So, authors, please take a little time to actually read the CAF before you sign it. We’ve gone to some effort to establish terms which are fair and let our official website do a good job of distributing your paper.

Kate Dwire’s shoes will be hard to fill, but we must start.

All our Associate Editors’ areas overlap somewhat, and I think we have fairly good strength in the areas of aquatic biology, forest hydrology, and physical stream restoration. The areas where I’ve really come to depend upon this position are in (1) indices, and (2) riparian buffers. If this country is serious about restoring and preserving the stream ecosystems, these will be key areas of research and public interest.

JAWRA receives about 220 submissions each year, with about 10-15 on the subject of riparian ecology and management. All manuscripts are handled with ScholarOne™ Manuscript Central. The AE’s role in the review process involves selecting reviewers and, when reviews are returned, making a publication recommendation to the Editor.

AE’s also are encouraged to seek out qualified authors in their subject areas and encourage them to submit papers to JAWRA. These could be individual submittals or featured collections of related papers organized around an introduction.

Associate Editorships are volunteer positions, with a term typically lasting 3 years, often extended by mutual agreement. There is no payment, but AE’s are listed on the inside cover of JAWRA, are invited to an Associate Editors’ Luncheon at the AWRA Annual Conference, and receive our heartfelt thanks.

Intereseted candidates should send their CV to the Editor at editor@awra.org before December 1. 2009. The Editor is happy to answer questions by email or in phone calls arranged via email.

Kate Dwire, JAWRA Associate Editor for Riparian Ecology and Management sent me the following message: “With this message, I wish to submit my resignation as Associate Editor for Riparian Ecology and Managment, JAWRA. I started my service as an AE under John Warwick in March, 2005, and have greatly enjoyed working with the journal. I have learned much from the manuscripts that I have managed – they’ve covered a range of riparian, stream ecology, and sampling/stream condition assessment topics. It has been my sincere pleasure to be part of a strong editorial team and to contribute to a journal that continues to improve in quality and breadth.”

Though decisions on some papers were difficult, I could always count on Kate for sound, fair advice. Kate also is a key player on the forthcoming featured collection on riparian ecology, which she will see to completion. Kate, I wish you the best as you move on to your new projects.

JAWRA is looking for Associate Editors in the fields of (1) Subsurface Hydrology, and (2) Geospatial Analysis. JAWRA Associate Editors (AE’s) serve as primary advisors to the JAWRA Editor. Responsibilities fall into two areas: reviews and subject development.

JAWRA receives about 220 submissions each year, with about 15 each in the subject areas of Subsurface Hydrology and Geospatial Analysis. All manuscripts are handled with ScholarOne™ Manuscript Central. The AE’s role in the review process involves selecting reviewers and, when reviews are returned, making a publication recommendation to the Editor.

AE’s also are encouraged to seek out qualified authors in their subject areas and encourage them to submit papers to JAWRA. These could be individual submittals or featured collections of related papers organized around an introduction.

Associate Editorships are volunteer positions, with a term typically lasting 3 years, often extended by mutual agreement. There is no payment, but AE’s are listed on the inside cover of JAWRA, are invited to an Associate Editors’ Luncheon at the AWRA Annual Conference, and receive our heartfelt thanks.

Intereseted candidates should send their CV to the Editor at editor@awra.org before December 1. 2009. The Editor is happy to answer questions by email or in phone calls arranged via email.

Dr. Ragahavan Srinivasan, JAWRA Associate Editor for Geospatial Analysis, will be stepping down at the end of the year. One of the longest serving Associate Editors, Srini has done much to make JAWRA so prominent in this field. He also is one of the most cited authors in water resources. With an upcoming GIS specialty conference keeping interest high, Srini and I felt this was a good time to make the change. Thank you, Srini, for all your efforts over the years, and best wishes!