Hello everybody welcome to our webinar publishing your research inside the head of a journal editor with our great host Richard Wallace who will introduce in just a second. Please share your name and your affiliation in the chat box if you would like. And go ahead and get started. So we'll start with Jessica Do you want to introduce yourself. As I like run through the slides accidentally Sorry about that. So my name is Jessica Johnston I am Education Programs Coordinator with the ecological Society of America. And I'm kind of the lead contact for the scientists and parks fellows, but more importantly I would say there's a new kind of role that ESA is taking on which is an engagement portion to provide professional development webinar series, or any intern or, or fellow or visiting scientist, that is within the scientists and parks program. So, that's kind of our big initiative. And this is our second time doing a webinar for engagement and professional development, and we are kind of new to this game so your feedback and your interest in this program in series is really important to us. So, thank you for coming and hopefully you have a good time and you learn some stuff, and I'll stop there and I'll give it back to Jesse. Thanks, Jessica hi everybody I'm just here to meta. I'm the society Programs Coordinator. I was brought on to help Jessica with planning this webinar series. So I hope to see you guys in future ones. You want to go the next slide. So, a little housekeeping rules of this chat today. It's a really informal q and a with ESA's editor in chief Rich Wallace who will introduce in a second. Please join in the conversation you know you can, if you would feel comfortable you can turn on, turn on your video. And if you have any questions you can drop them in the chat if you're not in a place where you can ask them out loud or, you know, raise your hand and we'll call on you to ask your question. Please keep your mic muted until we call upon you. And we also will be recording this event, so yes so real quickly our next webinar is going to be science communication workshop on February 17 at 2pm called pitch it.

So I hope you guys will register Jessica will drop the registration link in the chat if it's of interest to you. Yeah, I'll do that in a second. Do a screens open. All right. And now on to the main event will introduce today's host Richard Wallace, if you want to give us your background and we can get the chat started. That sounds great. Thank you, Jessica Jessica, so much for, for inviting me to be here and thank you everyone who has joined us this is great I Am I guess I'm going to, I'm going to reiterate with what Jessica said earlier if you are able and willing to share your video that's great I do not have slides, this is designed to be a conversation. So it'd be great to see you if you if you're able and willing. If not, we'll still treat it as a conversation. And, and, and I'm happy to, you know, we'll have to introduce myself a little bit more depth and then, and then we'll start talking about stuff, some of you shared questions ahead of time and we might use those to start and then we'll talk a little bit about the National Park Service and and and and the work that goes on there and how publishing that work is vitally important and what role I play in that and other editors of others are adults as well. So, so, my name is Rich Wallace. I work for the ecological Society of America so that means that I am on staff there with Jessica and Jesse and, and I work in the publication's division. No surprise, and I'm my, my principal role is as editor in chief of the journal frontiers in ecology, in the environment and I'm going to have as I talk sort of a bunch of links that will drop into the chat. So you can sort of see where it is that I'm pointing us to when I refer to things. And my sort of. I've only been in this position for a year actually last week was my one year anniversary. But I'm involved, I think you.

I've been involved in publishing for for a long time as an associate editor or an editorial board member and before that a reviewer and throughout my whole career is an author publishing in scientific journals and and so I came to this job with having spent a lot of years sort of thinking and acting on on the importance of sharing information and and I'll talk a little bit more about that. My prior to coming here I spent almost 25 years as a college professor and Environmental Sciences environmental studies and sciences. And, and that doesn't really say much in detail about what my background is my background is that I have graduate degrees that are more or less split between public administration and ecology and my work for about the first 10 years of my career was in the application of federal law to the protection of species and ecosystems and on an even more micro level than that, I worked principally under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. I worked for a while for a tiny government agency that few people have heard of called the marine mammal commission. And then, and then after that I worked as a consultant and and sort of looked at what the challenges were to implementing policy and regulations that came with an ecological mandate. I can talk more about that later if anybody's interested but that's sort of my background. As I shifted to undergraduate education which is where I spent my entire teaching career. My broadened out substantially. And for about the last 10 years. I've worked in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. So, so I have developed with work and relationships, both in Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park and that's become one of my favorite those of those those two parks, but also the larger ecosystem is one of my favorite places on earth. So national parks are very close to me. In terms of where my work is my love of the outdoors and and sort of the most active work that I was doing before I started at the ecological society.

So that's me in a nutshell, and and what I do is editor in chief. I pretty much what any editor in chief of a paternal does is sort of shapes the vision for the type of content that's being communicated. So, so I'm going to cut right to the chase because you're, we're all here together because of our shared interest in the national parks and our shared experience in the national parks, that there's so much critical work that is undertaking and national parks, but then the United States, obviously, which is the context for what we're doing here today, but all across the world. And, and, using the national parks as a platform from which to conduct research particularly interdisciplinary research which is to say, not just ecological or scientific research that crosses the boundaries between the ecological of the scientific and, and, and the social and and the values related because of what the mission of the Park Service is is also vitally important. So, so what the journal that I'm in charge of frontiers in ecology then environments for what are what are our Gestalt is what I think is really that it's different from a lot of other scientific journals is that we we prioritize the ability of our of what we publish to be communicated to a broad and diverse audience. And what I mean by that is that there are a lot of typical, there's a lot of sort of stereotypical science journals out there. And this this sounds like a criticism, it's not entirely criticism, in which folks in one field or writing for other folks in the same field. And you have to learn the language of that field, and then your work it's read only by people in that field. So, when I'm talking about the importance of work in the national parks, and the type of work that in frontiers in my journal we publish, talking about work that is important to the public at large. And that we are trying to communicate to as broad base of scientists and administrators and conservation professionals as possible.

And, and, and someone asked want to. Claire I think it was you, I'm going to just call you out by name, I apologize, hopefully hopefully I won't put you on the spot too much. But, Claire, you shared a question, ahead of today about. Does the National Park Service publish in my journal in an in an ecological society journalist and the answer is yes really actively and and in part for the reasons that I'm talking about now, particularly for the, for my journal frontiers because we pride ourselves on articles on pieces papers that are written so that they are understandable by people outside the field of the authors, we hit a lot of National Park Service folks and other agency folks and folks who work for conservation NGOs, as well as sort of more traditional academic researchers submitting stuff to us but we're publishing probably at least a couple of National Park Service papers per year in our journal and many more across all the ecological society journals and and and recruiting actively. And I guess this could be a bridge towards sort of talking about what your interests are because I've been talking for too long already, but but but I'm recruiting actively and and we all the ecological society journals are interested in recruiting from folks in the national parks and in the agencies to consider how their work can fit in our journals so that we can publish and provide you with a platform to have the voice that we believe that you should have. and that we can provide to you. So that's really important and that's that's a little bit of a view into sort of my philosophy as well as the, the sort of feelings I have about, about what it is that we do, and I'm happy to open it up to questions again, I wanted this to be sort of an informal discussion. And I know that you all represent sort of different places but also different stages in, you know, in the early stages of your career, and so have different publishing needs and I'm hoping to be able to in the time that we have addressed everybody's questions and provide some information that will be helpful or useful for for everybody regardless of sort of where you are and what your perspectives on publishing are.

But I'm happy to open it up. If anyone has any questions after all my blather. Hi. So kind of like an internship. And something that I've started while I've been here I've been here for almost a year and I've been reinstated for next year. So something I've started is the neighborhood newsletter so basically it's just like three or four pages of kind of basic information for our volunteers. And for a lot of the residents that live really close to the neighbor them sorry to the monument, and their neighborhoods are right by monument. And we kind of want to reach out to them and give them information about what's going on in the park and how they can be more involved. And so that's kind of the primary purpose of it. And I guess, going into my next year here. Um, I've been wanting to fight had a little bit more something to it a little bit more of a serious element, either about current events going on in the conservation world, or something, having to do with wildlife for, you know, things like that. And I'm not really sure where to start. This is kind of my first job was kind of my first task of writing and publishing something, and it's on a small scale. But I just wanted to get your opinion on that. I'm going to law school for environmental law. And so I'm kind of trying to work, something like with what I'm learning into what I'm publishing out to our volunteers and neighbors would be really great. And so just kind of having to build out that is kind of my question. Yeah, that's great. First of all, congratulations on your renewal and also on your on your law school plans. And let me ask a clarifying question Are you are you in terms of what the type of information that you're hoping to sort of put together and process and then and then reflect back into the community.

Is it mostly local focus, or would you like to bring issues from all over that you would share with the, with with with your intended audience. I think it could be from like outside but just as long as it would be somehow related, um, you know like, during coven, we had a lot of more visitors and I know that that has been a pretty widespread problem across national parks. And I see a problem just because you know more people unfortunately means more trash in the monument. More unauthorized use, like we have a lot of people that a lot of neighbors who walk their dogs that a leash and. And a lot of people don't want to ride bikes in the monument which is not allowed for tribal reasons, and then also people, you know going off trail creating social trails. So something that could be related to what's going on it's really nice. I got it. So, so thank you that's very helpful and I'm going to give them. I'm going to give an answer that sort of general enough because obviously I don't know Albuquerque well enough to sort of focus in at that level but I'd like to also to give an answer that sort of general and so that everybody who's listening. So that's relevant to everybody who's listening. But before I do that I also want to make an offer, not just to you, Rachel that everybody that if there are things that I'm talking about or that come up in questions either from you or from others that you would like to explore further. I am absolutely happy to be to hear from you after the webinar, right and that's that's part of. It's something that I enjoy doing I mean I spent 25 years as a college professor right so I love talking with folks about stuff, but also in my job at the ecological society. You know, I have a sort of a technical job about putting out this journal on a monthly basis but I am really a science communicator. That's how I see my job, and that's very important to me so. So, Jessica or Jesse Can I get one of you to put my email address my email address into the chat and then, and then anybody who wants to contact me afterwards with a question that you didn't feel like asking or that you want to follow up on something you should be welcome to do so, so, so, so the my answer Rachel to you, that is sort of a general answer to everybody has to do with sense of place.

And, and, and, and the ways that we, in our field which is sort of the ecological thinking, think about sense of place. And, and because I don't know, New Mexico, I mean I've been there but I don't. I've never lived there I've never spent enough time there to sort of know. I sort of default to this answer and that is is that everywhere that any of us lives and that anyone's ever lives. There is this wealth of information current information that's happening historical information about the you know the evolution of culture as well as you know ecosystems that that is just there to be found right so so when I turned my attention for example to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem after having spent most of my career, focused on the marine environment, which, which is harder to do in terms of sense of place right because I was studying species that many of which were high seas species have you developed sense of place for the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Right, nobody's there reporting back on it so so so there are some challenges and so I had to rethink this and and obviously teaching sort of helps that but. But when I oriented back to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem I found what those sources of information are like, literally, who are the people who are writing about the ecology the culture, the intersection of those two of the environmental issues of the, you know, of the, of the importance of community, and, and, and sometimes I found stuff that was you know like, like my, my, I help run, I hope to run an organization actually that's located in Jackson, Wyoming, conservation organization called the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperatives.

And so Jackson is my home base when I'm out there. So there are sources in Jackson, that are about, sometimes, nothing bigger than Jackson Hole which is a valley, in which Jackson sits and then there are larger, you know, sort of their folks writing about the larger region and their folks writing about the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem sort of writ large and then there folks writing about the American West, and said I found all of these sources of information that I could follow. covers all sorts of Western issues, but which covers stuff that would be really relevant to the folks who I work with, even on the local level in Jackson, and and keeping abreast of what these folks are writing and choosing to communicate about nature and culture and history, helped me develop sense of place. So, so, so my response. Rachel to you and you probably probably nothing new. From me to you, you're probably doing this, already right but that any of us anywhere we live should take the time to investigate those sources, helps us develop our sense of place and helps us sort of integrate our thinking, as well as our practice. into into wherever we're living. And then, and then, and then what you find is that as you were sort of through osmosis, and through concerted reading and everything else, gathering this information if it makes you a better communicator. Right, just because you have access to this information that's important for everybody. So that's that's that's the best I can do not knowing New Mexico or Albuquerque well enough to sort of say something you know something more specific but that I feel like benefits that approach benefits us all wherever we're living, working. Thank you. Yeah, and and again I'm happy for Rachel with you and for any of you too, if their follow up questions and you want to dig deeper into something, I'm happy to do that, offline or by email on a separate call sometime. It looks like there's a question in the chat rich from Anna and recruiting from federal agencies to publish.

Are there specific kinds of papers you're looking for. That's a great question. I'm topically, we're not topically were so in my journal, we're very broad in the sort of the title gives that away frontiers in ecology in the environment and the original description of the journal, again I'm only been sort of at the helm for a year and the original description of the journal that I inherited was so all encompassing that really anything could could could be included were somewhat narrow or the mat right where we are at our sort of at our heart and ecological journal, but, but much more broadly, considered than that. And. And so, so we're not topically specific. And that's important so like just looking back so one of the things I was doing before, before we started here today was, I was looking back over, like the last several years worth of articles that my journal has published by National Park Service employee authors and and and actually, because I had never done this search before so thank you for inspiring me to get to know my own job better, something I should have done before. But um, but I was looking at the, at them topically, and they were really all over the place right there are there are national park service, authors, writing and submitting just to me, to say nothing of hundreds of the journals to which National Park Service folks are submitting. So just to me on on climate, obviously going to be sort of a top concern because there's a lot of climate related research going on national parks. Invasive Species interface with the public, new theories of management, you know and and and sort of novel ecosystems, given so so Yellowstone, you know where I work is a prime example right have a place that's thought of like the reputation of Yellowstone is this sort of frontier wilderness and the thing about the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that the sort of stereotype that folks who want to promote it and really Rosie way talk about it being like the Serengeti of North America because about this full complement of predator ungulates and apex predators, and it is all of that.

Plus, like, four to 5 million visitors a year. And what people don't understand about Yellowstone Park itself is that it's just 60 miles to aside. So think about wherever you're sitting. Think about the hours draw have that it would take you to go 60 miles. So Yellowstone small, it feels big renew there because it's got a huge sky and the mountains, and all that, but it's basically 60 miles to aside. So 5 million people year, mostly between April and the end of September. So that just opens up an enormous diversity of concerns ecological climate, sort of interdisciplinary related to how you how you communicate science and conservation needs. So, so this is a long way around and your question that we're looking for all of that stuff right and and and the way I tend to, to promote it with, with my friends and just folks from the from the agencies from the Park Service and other agencies who contact me, is what it is I answer the question with a question. What do you think it's important to get out into the community. You know what information is important to get out into the community and. And if you think about the type of work that's being done in the national parks right there's huge amounts of really wonderful basic research, but I'm not going to be publishing stuff on, on, like, the incubation periods of this species of birds versus that species of bird or of, you know, the, the, the, the phenotypic and genetic differences between two subspecies of plant. That's all really important information that we're gathering in national parks, as well as lots of other places but that's not what I'm interested in publishing and frontiers. I need it to be stuff that's going to be broadly important to really in terms of my readership is to the professional conservation community. That's how I tend to think of it, and and and then beyond that any topic is, is welcome to like the impacts of their use because of Kobe 19 on public lands would be an interesting publication for frontiers you think, yep, yep.

Absolutely. And we've received lots of I mean especially now that people have had a little time to collect some data and write it up there receiving tons of manuscripts like that. Actually, the more than I started this is a tangent but, but, more than any other sort of sub topic of coven related research. The use of urban parks. Everybody's because it makes perfect sense right people are locked down, and more people live in cities than elsewhere. And so there's been this huge boon for the urban parks researchers, so they're pumping out manuscripts I'm seeing those all the time. But anyway, yes. Other questions here. Do you want anything you wanted to add anything. Yeah, yeah I just had a follow up question to that, um, I guess what kind of like spurred my original question was because I noticed that a lot of the research that I see going on in national parks is like monitoring focused and looking at you know like just like more and more like simpler questions like where are things you know how can we, how can we know like where wildlife is and how and how does that affect how we can steward it, which isn't quite the like broad applications that you're talking about. So I was wondering if you know of any papers that are maybe more focused towards those kinds of questions more like monitoring focused. So you're asking about papers that I'm aware of that are about the monitoring as opposed to the more applied conservation. Yeah, kind of like the other side of the research that goes on. Yeah, so we would not probably publish as many of those, so let me I should have said this earlier. So frontiers, my journal is very small scale compared to most and in part that's because we still have a print edition tend to wave it around, when I get the opportunity. So here I'll wave it around, look at our antiquated archaic version of science publications, actually made out of paper from renewable tree as they say.

So because we publish in on paper. And we published 10 issues a year we only publish 50 peer reviewed articles here. So that's nothing. And that's why I can say you know we're publishing like two to three national park service authors a year, doesn't sound like much but out of 50 articles a year. It's actually a pretty substantial proportion. Other ecological society journals and journals and other journals are publishing vastly larger numbers of articles. Right, so, so, so, so I'll just speak, sort of, from what I know best rate the ecological society journals have a number of different outlets for monitoring for papers that are reporting on monitoring data. There'd be a place for that actually in almost all of the other ecological society journals, and it's not that it's, it's not that it would never make it through review at frontiers. Right, but but because we publish so few, and we're certainly received so many submissions. Were looking for sort of the greatest bang for the buck in terms of application. So the most conservation relevant manuscripts are the ones that I'm seeking to publish, but but but and you know ecosphere ecology ecological applications and ecological monographs are the other ecological society journals and then of course there are hundreds of others, dozens of others probably to be more accurate that are very much like ours, and then hundreds of others that that will publish work that that we might publish as well. Oh, thank you. Yeah, see another question at least in the, in the chat from Claire, who I also know Claire that you don't have access I see that in yes I'm glad that you submitted your question I was happy to talk about it so the question is how do you how do you disseminate information to such a variety of readers PhDs in a specific field by managers seasonal Rangers etc. to publishing scientists have to simplify convince the research to make it accessible to such a wide audience, or your publications more often in house field research literature reviews.

It's great question. We have four principal manuscript types that we publish, one is sort of just a straightforward research paper, you know, Introduction methods. Results analysis discussion format, like, like so many other science journals. And then we have some sort of traditional review type paper which is somebody has a question about a field. You know that they're interested in exploring and it's, it's, I hate to call it just a literature review because it's more than that it's actually trying to push forward thinking on a certain field by looking deeply at the work that's been done at it or done in it already that's a review manuscript. Then we have something called concepts and questions, which is sort of based on the review model but is more theoretical, but not theoretical in a sense of like esoteric. Excuse me, theoretical, in the sense that we have so many questions that we're asking about ecological change or climate change that we don't have the answers to. But we want desperately for folks to think about what we need to know in order to answer these questions that you may not have empirical, you know research or results on which to report, but you want to, but you have a good sense of what the questions are. And so we have a paper type to suit those needs to suit those interests as well. And then the last one is actually a short form, basically a sort of a research note we call them letters, but they don't have to be literally letters in response to previous published articles, they're just very short things that, that, that, very briefly report on something of note in, you know, in the in the applied environmental science or ecology field. And so, so because we have four very different types of papers that we publish it opens the doors, because a lot of people have different interests you know there are the folks who are just simply interested in collecting their data that they think, or they know is relevant to management or policy.

And so we can allow them to report on their data, and then they're the folks who are thinking like we had, you know, we had a good paper. I'm thinking about this because it was partially done by a team of folks in the Yellowstone ecosystem including Park Service folks. I think lead authored by a guy at University of California Berkeley and. And it was about wildlife migrations, you know and and and the question is how do we do conservation of highly migratory species. Crossing multiple boundaries. Right, physical boundaries, as well as political boundaries like going between multiple states going across all sorts of boundaries. How do we how do we think about the, the ecological interactions that those species have with others like where they sit in the food chain, and then and then taking that concept that you know those ideas, how do we think about national park management, were protected area management or public lands management. Given the species need to move over long distances and the huge barriers that there are those movements. So that's a pretty applied, but also pretty conceptual set of questions. It's incredibly relevant to Yellowstone, for example, as well as many, many other places all around the world. So, that's a good example of sort of something that we put that we love to publish and that we did in that case it was a December 2019 paper. But the last part of the answer to this question really is that what we're looking for, given all these different types of orientations that people might have to what they want to write. We're really looking for folks who are interested in writing clearly for folks outside of their field that said that nominate sorry for being repetitive, but that's really important to us, right that you're not writing just for folks who have the same background and understanding that you do.

Right, I want folks who are writing about climate to be understood by the folks who are writing about, you know, animal behavior and I want the folks who are writing about, you know, atmospheric change to be understood by the folks who are studying soil science and, and vice versa. So. Other questions. There was one in, in that was sent ahead of time. And I don't, the person who asked it isn't here someone call that by name but but the question was how best to prepare a manuscript to be submitted for review. And that's one that I get a lot and it's fun that I'd like to just talk about for a minute. And one of the things that all of the all of us who are editors in chief of the journals of ecological society believe is incredibly important to the process of of communicating science is fostering community around that communication. So that sounds like very big and vague idea. And what that means in practice is that we welcome anyone who's interested in publishing to contact us to talk about your interests in publishing before you jump through all the hoops necessary to meet all the stipulations of our author guidelines, or any other you know journals and and and and simply to have a conversation. And, and sometimes that translates into, you know just sort of quick advice or you know that you're thinking along the right lines and sometimes it translates into something sort of a more concerted mentoring effort. And that's great too. But all of that is about building the community, rate of folks who are interested in doing this applied work and and having and having a voice, because that's at the end of the day, that's what we're interested in ecological society that's what we're interested in doing is giving those of you who want to publish your work, a voice. So, so when people ask. So when people ask me sort of how do I get started right I haven't you know it's particularly somebody say starting a doctoral program, you know, some published yet or in a master's program and just thinking about publishing, or an undergrad who's looking at that down the road and saying, How do I even start to think about publishing.

And and the first step is to, you know, find somebody who's willing to talk to you about it. And so here on one of the editors in chief of the digital society, journals, feel the same way that I do, and are also willing to respond to emails. If you go into a journals, there's some pretty prominent journals in our field, which unfortunately, sort of don't feel the same way. And for them I guess it's a workload management issue. But there are some really prominent journals in our field where if you go to their websites at the very top of the website before you can even find where to click on the author guidelines, it says, we do not accept or respond to pre submission increase. And I just think that's terrible. Because it's, it's basically telling you. Sorry, what we do and what you need to do is part of a hoop that we're going to make you jump through. And, and, and if you missed the hoop, your shit out of luck. Because we're going to help you prepare for that jump beforehand. So enough about the negative at the ecological society what we're trying to do is to dispense with that approach entirely and build a community of folks who who want to have a voice. So it's really important to us. Other questions. I'm kind of curious, miles or Aaron Victoria and Guadalupe, I don't know what brought you all here today. But, um, if there's something about this description that drew you in, so maybe kind of talking about kind of what where you are in dating yourself in terms of publication, and maybe any obstacles that you've seen coming through this process. It's not necessarily just bring your questions to rich, so much as it is also an opportunity for rich to learn about barriers for others as well. Um, so yeah, I'm just gonna kind of reposition the thought here in, in let you know that you can also just just bring comments to the table if you want.

Yeah, I think I might take you up on that because I really appreciated the note about like the different kinds of like papers in the different types of things. I am like really brand new to this. My background was mostly like math and statistics from Penn State like undergrad and then this is like my first like internship and first foray into really any sort of like research he kind of stuff. So a question that I had and I was working with my supervisor I starting to think about like how am I going to share the work that I'm doing, I'm specifically like I've generated a new data set of frog calls like annotations around individual types of frogs and some code to build machine learning models for frog identification. And like I really enjoy it and I'm starting to realize like nothing that I'm doing is really like novel or new I'm taking in synthesizing like different things that have been been out there, but I'm going to have like a full data set, I'm going to have some code. And ultimately, my supervisor wants to work with me to like get like a technical report content like National Park side. I guess I don't really like is there an outlet for that kind of stuff where it's really more like data code, and like a little bit of analysis, even if it's not groundbreaking stuff like, I guess, where would you point somebody like me to go looking into the future of a journal for the more or less. So so so the way that you described it actually was really helpful. The idea of novelty is more important to some journals than others. Right. And so, so, so, at at frontiers and at our journal. The drop simply called ecology novelty is important. It's important criteria when we're looking at, at what to publish. And by novelty I really mean like you know or is, is, is the paper that we're looking at offering something to the field that is a different perspective, or new data that opens up a new research channel or you know that that sort of novelty.

But our journal ecosphere has no novelty criteria. They are just looking for new and interesting science, and, and, and I, I'm not expert enough in ecosphere his particular inner workings, to be able to guide you specifically but if you go to their website you'll see how it's structured very differently from the other journals, it's got a lot of sort of subsets it's really more like 20 journals in one. And so you go to the atmosphere website and then there's a whole bunch of different types of manuscripts and some are topical but some are more sort of like areas of consideration as opposed to topics, and I'm guessing that you're going to find probably more than one of them that fits what you're doing. And then, and then you would be able to live there. And, and that, let me just start say sort of say generally. That's a really important innovation in in publishing right that's something that the ecological society has done pretty well we've got really traditional journals in ecology any theological monographs which are really bite, and for ecologists. We've got frontiers which is sort of the broad sort of facing the larger apply professional community and and we've got ecosphere which is, which is really this great melting pot of a lot of different basic research basic and applied research. Awesome. Yeah, and I think that's everything else is I'm just like an information sponge at this point, so that that is ultimately what drew me to this webinar as well. Excellent. but I'm interested to get back to Jessica's question, particularly if any of you had, you know, particular concerns or actual impediments, you know, to your desires or intent or attempts to publish. You know, I mean I had the first lead authored manuscript I ever sent to a journal. I got a letter back from the, from the editor in chief, that was basically angry at me for wasting his time. And, and I was a graduate student I was an early graduate student at the time right so you just have to figure out how not to let that be crushing right when you're hearing from somebody who actually had written a textbook that I had used in grad school and who I, you know, had certain very big thoughts about.

And then my one personal interaction with them was just awful. Here's the irony sorry I'm being cagey on purpose because I don't want to speak a lot of people. But that journal is the same one that now 30 something years later, has the do not contact us before you submit notice on the top of their homepage know I guess no coincidence that they haven't evolved all that much since then. It's funny I just that just occurred to me. Anyway, so back to just question, you know concerns impediments worries. Because it does help us like Jessica said to learn about that that's how we adapt and evolve. Looks like Victoria and I have had a little back and forth in terms of, you know, cheese, theology focused, so I'm seeing if there's any significant differences in terms of, you know, responses that you're saying about us as journals. Victoria is Speak for yourself again. Yeah. Um, so I didn't really have anything in particular kind of to chime in on or questions or anything I've just been listening in. So published before in geology journals. And, you know, saw this this webinar pop up in my email and kind of just wanted to listen in and see how esa does things different than my experience with with previous geology journals, um, so nothing, you know, really big, no big differences really stand out but I'm just really really liking what you're saying about encouraging authors, pre submission to get in touch. That was not my experience my publishing kind of a bit big geology journal that, you know, for whatever reason just was, you know, focused on submissions and and you know getting things through once they've been submitted. But then, yeah, didn't have didn't have much pre submission help available. Also just thank you say that is, is really, really wonderful and yeah I've just enjoyed listening in on the conversation so thank you.

Pleasure. You did good. Despite the, the lack of sort of the smooth entry into the process you did get published in the geology journal and you had a happy ending. I did. Yes. Good. Good. Excellent. It's, um, you know it's it's it's I mean I'm sorry I'm being redundant now but it's the it's the ecological society sort of. It's not limited to the ecological society this desire to build community through the work that we're doing right i mean obviously what Jessica and Jessica you're doing is very explicitly building community, but academic publishing is not traditionally that. Right, so, so, but it should be it could be if you think about what the peer review process is right, you know, there's the, there's the, the, the light and truth side right not to be silly about it right and then there's the dark side right and the dark side is that it's all you know like a trial by fire and the peer review process is meant to be harsh and, and, and, and, and we say, hell with that that's wrong, right, that doesn't encourage anybody to do what we think that we that that that be done, so so so so what I'm telling you sort of I've repeatedly said that, that the other editors in chief and I have this particular approach, but so to our editorial board members. And so to our reviewers and and it only takes like like for my editorial board. There's a one strike and you're out, not for my editorial board sorry for my reviewers, like we have a you know huge minute as you might imagine there's lots of people who we call upon to do reviews. But there, but we have a one strikes and you're out policy. So if we get a review back that is disrespectful. That person will never get asked again, because there's no, there's no space in which a disrespectful review is allowable and. And so, and in fact I won't share it. And even if it means I have to go to get another reviewer, even if that means a delay in the manuscript.

And now we're getting into the weeds and I don't, we don't need to talk about the sort of logistics of it unless you want to but but or all, I'll take liberties and only communicate part of the review and just cut the bad stuff out, which is the prerogative to the editor in chief here that's having been on you know the receiving end of some, some, you know, not, not great comments but it's really wonderful to, to hear that. I'm glad and we feel really strongly about it, we talked about it all the time actually. So it's funny because I was thinking in my mind, how many people that are si p interns are currently even thinking about trying to publication about their experience or internship experience and then I saw Claire's comment here in the chat about, you know, that you have a genuine interest, but you're feeling as though the people you may be directly collaborating in your internship. I don't have the same drive for the publication and whether or not, which you've seen that the publications that are from MPs are phenomenally from PhD, holding employees. Yeah, you know, and I would probably take a safe bet and say yeah, on that one, you know, a big, but not necessarily you know i mean like I worked for a guy in state herpetologist in Virginia, who did not hold a PhD, but was very motivated to publish a lot of his findings, because he's working with rare threatened endangered species and it was important valued work that needed to be related to the public, but also because he had a lot of collaborative work with the surrounding universities. And so having that tied to academia, kind of, also, I think, throw the, the need for publishing, because a lot of people in academia, are evaluated on their number of publications Right, Yeah, they were driving that need for publication and then through that, so it was like the state or the federal people had the funds to employ the interns, and then the, the partnership with the University p eyes have the drive and publications, So I don't know if that's even an option and I'm kind of differentiate, feel free to chime in here but like there's something hurt from my personal experience, I noticed that it was more likely if you were working with just a land manager you would probably have to carry the brunt of the work if you genuinely wanted to publish, but if that land manager had partners in that partnership directly related to some of the research that was happening in their lab that now you have another person that can kind of help you mold your paper.

Yeah, I would agree with all of that. And, and, and, you know, the challenge is to find yourself, you know, depending on what your, what professional path you choose, you know whether grad school is not the weather the sort of sort of multiple stages of grad school is not an immediate plan. You can still find folks who are interested in communicating what it is, you know, the research that is that they're doing and and i mean I'll use as an example like I have I have a friend in one of the National Parks who has a doesn't have a PhD, and who at this point values are, you know, still relatively young but getting on towards being consistently employed by the National Park Service for long enough to be an old to convict to be considered an old hand. And, and I recruited a manuscript from her because she's doing work that, frankly, very few other people are doing. But her boss is a PhD holder and for all I know. I haven't seen this particular manuscript yet for I know he'll end up being the, like, I don't know how the power dynamics in their particular program work. She's the one I'm working with, and she's the one who's clearly leading the charge on this paper, whether her boss with the PhD will end up being the lead author. I can answer that. But, but the challenge for folks who are sort of, and then I was, this was the same for me when I was in my early 20s and sort of thinking about how I wanted to do this in my career was to find somebody who was willing to be, you know, a mentor, and, and, and, and that's harder than it sounds.

I know you know but I ended up going through multiple those multiple steps of grad school, in order to get there right and and I have had a couple of this is so to belabor this at a couple of it sort of two main advisors once I got to my doctoral work. advisors once I got to my doctoral work. I did my masters in my doctoral work at the same place so these are both folks that I'd started working with as a master student, and one of them size their role, sort of pushing me through the hoops and seeing how I would do, and and was happy to do research together, in which I would be the research assistant, but not be the co author and and you know and and this person is this advisors idea of reward structure was to thank all of his students in the acknowledgement acknowledgments section of the papers that that he wrote, and the other advisor that I had actually was responsible for my first paper. And, and she, she took a whole class and she said let's write this up and submit it somewhere and it ended up getting published and to make a really long story short, I was like okay this is the person I want to be my mentor and and and to fast forward that was more than 30 years ago, and we have published about 25 papers together since and she became my principal research partner through my career. And that was sort of locking privilege a place that I happened to be in who I was working with but but if you can work it's that you find people who are willing to work with you. And then, and then support your goals, as opposed to use your time to support their goals. That's the key to get to a technical question, which is embedded in. In Clara's question in the chat, and which Jessica spoke to a little bit as well. And Jessica, you're right. Most of the papers that we receive are written by folks with PhDs, but that's not a prerequisite.

I don't check people's degrees. like when I'm reviewing manuscripts and and and so so that you know that doesn't matter, like I said I recruited this paper from this friend of mine who works for the Park Service, she doesn't have a PhD. But um, but that's I think partially because. And this is not just true frontiers but for all so called academic journals right. The vast majority of our readership is PhD holding folks. And, and we aspire at my journal frontiers, to be read more broadly than that by folks in government by folks in the in the NGOs who are responsible for Applied conservation programs that were published about. And we do publish work by them. But if you're most behind a paywall that's controlled by a big multinational publisher right and if you're not at an academic institution that has a library that has journal access privileges, then you may not have access. So, and that's a whole separate discussion about open access and we don't have time to talk about that today. But um, but, but it's a that's that's one of the impediments right to sort of broadening our scope to folks who are not just not PhD holders but who are in non academic careers. But we're working on that too. Yes and Claire to your follow up comment there. Thank you. long time ago and it's fine. But, um, but the looking for employers who are willing to support your goals particularly. You know, I think, an early stage of the game is really essential. Yeah, I would have a discussion. But I would have the discussion with your co workers or land managers that if they have partners that they think are gonna. I don't know why I'm going to bed. I don't hear it. Okay, I hear it maybe it's just my headphones for proofreading I don't know if they intend to publish the work, who their partners may be and if you can kind of find the authorship through collaboration. This authorship can be a contentious topic that you should probably address early on in any stage of doing research projects.

If you think that there's going to be a publication comes out of it that you are aware of whether or not you are going to be putting that acknowledgement section or you get to be slapped in the middle of the file of our authors or even get first authorship. If you're lucky. Yeah, and that's, that's something that goes on a lot in grad school to, more so than I am aware of, with the internships, process but you never know. That's it. We have, we're at an hour. Does anybody have any lasting questions, things like burning, burning to ask rich, or we end off. Okay, I guess I'm so, um, that's my email, so that's that's what I would close with is if you have any questions that you think of later you want to be in touch want to ask anything you didn't want to ask publicly be in touch. All right, as you progress through your process. Good to know you have an editor you known now know a face and email and he's a real person, not a robot, who's just going to give you desk rejection. Thank you rich for your time. My pleasure. Thank you for asking me and thank all of you for coming and spending an hour with us. This has been great. And if you are interested to know more about why Science communication is important that is our next webinar registration link is in the chat but you know We are going to keep doing these each month depending on how long your internship is. If you want to sign up for them just email sipfellows@esa.org and we will send you the link even if you are done with you internship I am all about students having access to anything that makes them stronger and more competitive as they enter their careers. Not just students because I know that not every SIP Intern is a student, early career scientists whatever you call yourself A smart inspiring future Jessie thanks, okay I am just rambling. Rich can you hang out just one minute and thank you all to those that came email Rich if you have any questions.