Water Resources Research in 2013

Abstract

The year 2013 marked important changes for Water Resources Research (WRR). On the one hand, some of them can be considered as part of the usual development of the journal that is coevolving with the international hydrological community. On the other hand, some changes that occurred in 2013 marked a major and perhaps irreversible shift for WRR. It is well known that change, in all human expressions and even in Nature, typically induces difficult transition periods. However, change is necessary to adapt to shifting external and internal conditions and its actual impact and implications can be evaluated in the long term only. This editorial presents a summary and a personal assessment of the development of WRR in 2013, including an overview of submission statistics as well as emerging and dominant thematic areas. Reviewing the status of WRR in 2013 is an opportunity to elaborate a perspective on the current patterns in Water Resources Research. The major changes that WRR experienced in 2013 are summarized by the following events: (1) the production of WRR has been transferred from AGU to Wiley-Blackwell. As a consequence, the web site of WRR has been renewed and the layout for published papers was radically revised. (2) The Editorial Board of WRR underwent the planned transition to a new set of editors that began their term in April 2013. (3) The number of submissions and published papers increased, according to the trend that WRR has experienced in the recent years. These three events are discussed in the following sections of this editorial, which also includes an overview of the emerging research areas and some concluding personal remarks. In 2012, the Board of Directors of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) took the relevant decision to outsource to Wiley-Blackwell the production, sales, distribution, and subscription of AGU journals starting from January 2013, while keeping in house their control and ownership and the scientific aspects of publishing, including editorial control and oversight by AGU governance. The decision was motivated by the will to keep up to date in a publishing marketplace that is tremendously evolving, by adopting a business model for journal production that is widely used by scientific associations. In fact, the primary scope of these associations is to promote the advancement and dissemination of science while journal production, sales, and distribution may take advantage of the experience and resources of publishers for whom these functions constitute the main mission. A commercial publisher is expected to bring additional capabilities and expertise in publication strategy, processes, and global visibility, therefore benefiting AGU and the scientific community as a whole [McEntee, 2012]. On the other hand, we are all aware of the potential drawbacks that the shift from the AGU management to commercial production implies. In fact, the scientific community raised several concerns during 2013, while continuing to support WRR with an increasing number of submissions. In my opinion, the above motivations for the transition to a commercial publisher are justified. However, it is strictly necessary that a tight link is maintained between AGU and the research community while taking the important decisions that the transition implies. At the same time, it is necessary that the Editorial Board and the community itself make sure that the scientific legacy of WRR is preserved, by improving the quality of the articles, the quality of the service to authors, and the impact and visibility of the journal. The transition to Wiley initially implied some delay in the production process. At present, I am pleased to note that the timeliness in the production phase is excellent. On average, papers are available online, and are citable, within 6 days from acceptance and are published as early view, in their final form, within 38 days from acceptance. During 2013, the cooperation with Wiley-Blackwell led to the design of new layouts for journal articles and web sites. A one column format was adopted for articles in view of its flexibility to adapt to several visualization platforms and will be used for all AGU journals from early 2014. The new layout implies an increase of the length of papers by 20% on average, according to statistics that have been estimated on a sample size that is still limited. To keep the publication fees unchanged, the page charges have been adjusted by AGU by adopting an algorithm that is still being optimized. I am in favor of adapting the look of the journal to modern communication means, for the sake of increasing the impact of scientific publishing. Therefore, when the journal editors were involved by AGU in the design of the new layout, in September 2013, I supported its quick adoption. However, I underestimated the time required to deliver an efficient communication of this important change to the authors, and therefore, I personally take the responsibility for any mismatch that may have arisen between the expectation of the community and the final look of papers. Change always brings adaptation problems, which in this case stimulated constructive reviews of the new layout, which is still being tested. The new web site for WRR was launched at the end of 2013, with the aim to reach full compatibility with the most used web platforms. The web site is still in provisional mode. In my opinion, it represents an improvement for the web look of the journal. Still, even in this case, the transition phase is taking longer than expected: I believe it is necessary to achieve the full functionality of the web site as soon as possible. The new Editorial Board of WRR began the term on 1st April 2013. The transition phase between the former and new boards, during which former editors continued the review process for their pending papers, was concluded in December 2013. The vision of the current Board was presented in Montanari et al. [2013] and is basically centered around further improving the visibility and quality of hydrological and water resources publishing. This target will be achieved by pursuing the open access publication mode for WRR, by promoting the dialogue with society and the quality of papers as well as the review process [Van Der Hilst and Hanson, 2013; Blöschl et al., 2014]. The transition phase between editorial boards is always a matter of concern for potential authors, for the risk that lack of continuity occurs in the management of the review process. I am pleased to note that such risk is very limited for WRR, as the Editorial Board includes more than 100 associate editors that ensure a tight connection with the community and are rotated with a different timing with respect to editors. Associate editors are the ambassadors of WRR. Their tireless effort (WRR is a demanding journal; see Figure 1) is essential for preserving the quality and the legacy of the journal. Managing the editorial process through associate editors implies longer times to deliver the decision to authors, but significantly reduces the risk of discontinuities in the journal management therefore ensuring a more robust treatment of papers. I believe this is an important issue that marks a clear distinction between involving, or not, associate editors in the review process. Being an associate editor of WRR is a time demanding task. Figure 1 reports the frequency density of the number of newly submitted papers managed by WRR associate editors in 2013. The actual workload included the management of papers that are resubmitted after revision. The number of submission to WRR from 2010 is reported in Table 1. A markedly increasing trend is clearly visible. Table 1 also shows the number of published items and provides an estimate of the rejection rate. The latter is computed by dividing the number of rejected items by the number of submissions in each year and therefore the resulting rejection rates are slightly overestimated. In 2013, about 22% of the papers were rejected without review. Table 1 shows that WRR is keeping its traditional behavior of being a rigorous journal. The new Editorial Board is continuing the policy of accepting for publication the contributions presenting innovative findings for the international community of water scientists. Case studies are usually not accepted, unless they present research results that have general validity. Table 2 provides statistics on the timing from submission to first decision in 2013, not considering rejections without review. Figure 2 shows the frequency density of the number of days required to reach the first decision for all 2013 submissions. The distribution is bimodal because of the presence of the above mentioned significant number (about 22%) of rejections without review that are quickly handled. The average time to the selection of the first referee is 12 days after submission (including the initial quality control). The above statistics show that WRR is efficient, especially if one considers that any one step of the editorial process is double checked. The initial quality control is overseen by an AGU staff member, who also monitors the timeliness of the process. Late referees are chased in consultation with the relevant editor, and decision letters are also reviewed by the AGU staff before sending them out. Statistics are computed on the performances of each editorial board member and referee, and timeliness is continuously pursued. Nevertheless, some late handling of a few papers may still occur. It is interesting to look at the subdivision in thematic areas of WRR papers that were published in 2013. Figure 3 presents the relative frequency of the primary and secondary index terms (pooled in macro groups), and therefore, depicts a first classification that was operated by the authors. Apart from the dominating role of the index term “Hydrology,” which one would of course expect, it is interesting to note that the second most used term is “Natural hazards,” followed by “Informatics.” The significant role played by “Biogeosciences” highlights the emerging role of that area. “Global change” and “Atmospheric processes” display comparable relevance, as well as “Mathematical geophysics.” “Oceanography” and “Cryosphere” are also important and it is interesting to note the relevant role played by “Policy sciences,” therefore highlighting another emerging area. A second classification was operated by the editors, by associating each published paper to a single thematic area. Accordingly, we found that about 118 and 72 published papers were dealing with groundwater and soil science, respectively, while 69 papers (about 21% of the published items) referred to river processes (river hydraulics, river temperature, sediment transport, river morphology, etc.). Ecohydrology and atmospheric processes counted 41 and 34 papers, respectively, while floods and drought were dealt with by 33 contributions. Water quality, cryospheric sciences, and climate processes counted about 20 contributions each, while approximately 15 papers focused on each of the areas of uncertainty, hyporheic exchange, and water policy. The above distribution of subjects is markedly different with respect to 30 years ago, when catchment modeling, system theory, and applied water resources management were more relevant. What is surprising, in comparison with the past pictures, is the striking dominance of modeling studies and the index term “Informatics.” It is well known that the massive increase of computing power that occurred in the 1990s radically changed the research activity in water resources. While one may say that our predictive capabilities and understanding did not increase as much, it can be recognized that significant progress has been made. There is no doubt that hydrological models are increasingly applied in the operational practice. By comparing the past and present publication showcases, there is another relevant difference that immediately emerges, namely, the globalization of hydrology that has been favored by the much more powerful communication means that are available today. International cooperation has risen significantly and, as a result, the number of authors per paper has increased as well. Figure 3, whose data are confirmed by the present submission trends, provides evidence that aqueous biogeochemistry, ecohydrology, and water policy, in connection with social sciences, are the emerging research fields. Some WRR papers that were published in early 2013 have already achieved a significant number of citations. According to Web of Science, the most cited 2013 WRR paper, up to 20 February 2014, is Revil [2013], which was published in the January issue and has already received 10 citations. The next most cited papers are Lutz et al. [2013] and van Dijk et al. [2013], both of which were published in the February issue and received eight citations. Voss et al. [2013], also published in the February Issue, follows with six citations. For the sake of comparison, it is interesting to note that the most cited WRR papers published in 2012 are Revil [2012], Schöniger et al. [2012], Landerer and Swenson [2012], and Gupta et al. [2012], with 29, 25, 19, and 18 citations to date, respectively. WRR papers published in 2013 have already received a total number of 270 citations (up to 20 February 2014). If we were to consider the total amount of WRR papers published since 1965, amounting to more than 13,800 items, than they have received approximately 22,000 citations in 2013. This number is impressive and testifies to the massive volume and interest of WRR contributions. By considering that the total count of citations to WRR contributions since 1965 is about 380,000, one notices that WRR received in 2013 more than 5% of its total citations. The above perspective highlights the marked increase of the number of citations in recent times. In fact, it is well known that the number of published items in science is tremendously increasing, and therefore, the rise in the number of citations is to be expected. However, the impact factor of WRR (that reached the value of 3.149 in 2012) still does not reflect the pivotal role that water plays for society. A more timely communication of recent research results, by giving due reference to recent works, is needed in order to increase the public awareness of research in hydrology. I call on all authors to make their own, and their colleague's research quickly known, by involving the most recent work in discussions. During 2013, 26 papers were categorized by the editors as featured contributions in WRR, which correspond to about 5% of the published items. These contributions provide another detailed perspective on emerging areas in WRR. It is interesting to note that the topics covered by featured papers are diverse and complementary. Precipitation was the focus of the contributions by Paschalis et al. [2013], who proposed a new stochastic model for space-time simulation of rainfall fields, and Lu et al. [2013], who focused on large-scale precipitation predictability by analyzing global and regional atmospheric circulation. The aim of the latter research was to verify whether the study of global atmospheric moisture pathways may provide information to predict large-scale flood events, like the one that persisted over western Europe in 1995. Synoptic weather events were also considered by Farlin et al. [2013], who studied their impact on isotopic composition of atmospheric moisture. Their study is relevant for constraining isotope-enabled global climate models (GCMs) in future investigation of atmospheric water cycle. Downscaling of climate model simulations and remote sensing images was the subject of the paper by Jha et al. [2013], who presented an approach based on multiple-point geostatistics. The impact of a changing climate on freshwater withdrawals was investigated by Brown et al. [2013]. Interestingly, they conclude that increasing water use efficiency and decreasing water demands for domestic, public, and industrial use will nearly compensate the planned increase in freshwater withdrawals due to growing population in the USA for the next 50 years. Allen et al. [2013] analyzed a tree ring reconstruction of the Logan River streamflows from 1605 to 1921 and found that the inherent uncertainty in contemporary water management and planning in the considered region is due to hydroclimatic variability that has persisted for at least the last four centuries. The two above conclusions are somehow in agreement in showing that recent climate change interacts with several other drivers that are significantly impacting water resources planning and management. Beck et al. [2013] presented an analysis of recession curves in 3394 catchments all over the world and indentified links between significant physiographic characteristics, the base flow index (BFI), and the base flow recession constant k. Global maps of the estimated BFI and k values were produced and made publicly available. A large-scale study was also performed by Sutanudjaja et al. [2014] by exploring the possibility of using remotely sensed soil moisture data and in situ discharge observations to calibrate a large-extent hydrological model. Parameterization of hydrological models, at regional scale, was considered by Kumar et al. [2013a] who presented a framework to reduce the computational expense that is required for over new by using Kumar et al. focused on for models at and [2013] analyzed the of on model and simulation were the subject of the paper by et al. [2013] and the contributions by et al. [2013] and et al. [2013]. 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