Our Wild Lives

Why Publishing Matters: Inside TWS Journals

• The Wildlife Society

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Publishing peer-reviewed research in journals like the Journal of Wildlife Management shapes the wildlife profession every day, but where did it start and why does it continue?   

The Wildlife Society’s Journal Manager, Anna Knipps, and Content Editor, Allison Cox, shed light on the scientific publishing industry and the role TWS journals play.  

They share tips for first-time authors, discuss the importance of peer review, the benefits of choosing a non-profit journal and the challenges of working in a shifting publishing landscape. 

Learn more: 

About TWS Publications: https://wildlife.org/publications/

Submit to TWS Journals: https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/


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SPEAKER_00:

Today we're here with Allison and Anna from our journals team, and we're gonna get into the secrets behind publishing, scientific journals, and all that good stuff. So, Allison, why don't you go ahead and introduce us and your background first?

SPEAKER_02:

I am Alison Cox. I'm the content editor for the Journal of Wildlife Management and Wildlife Monographs. I have a master's degree in wildlife science. I focused on avian ecology. Got this job and fell in love with it. So I'm still here.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. What about you, Anna? I started with the Wildlife Society in 2006. At first, I was editorial assistant for just the Journal of Wildlife Management and Wildlife Monographs. And then a few years ago, I came on with the Wildlife Society Bulletin as well. Sweet. So tell us about TWS journals. The main journal, I think, is the Journal of Wildlife Management, which started pretty much the same time as the Wildlife Society in 1937. And Monographs is more of an in-depth kind of journal. And that's one issue for one topic. And the Wildlife Society Bulletin is more management-focused, um practitioner-based kind of journal.

SPEAKER_00:

So for someone who's never written a scientific paper before, like where do you start? Walk me through the whole process of it from collecting your research and doing all of your analysis, writing your paper to when it actually gets published.

SPEAKER_02:

I I guess you know the first steps are figuring out your question and experimental design. Those are the critical steps that will determine if your paper is publishable at the end of the road or not. Once all those details get worked out to run a rigorous study and everything is completed and you are ready to sit down writing, I think the very first important step is to write an outline, a detailed outline. Just start with the MRAT outline of intro, methods, results, and discussion, and then break each of those down into smaller and smaller components. Like for methods, you go into field methods, lab methods, statistical analysis, and then maybe you break that field methods down into capture and tagging, monitoring, vegetation measurements, and just keep going as detailed as you can in that outline until you've almost written the paper. And I find that that like it it helps keep you organized so that at the end it will make sense to a naive reader. And also for me, it provides like a nice checklist so you can feel accomplished after you do each section. And then you're well on your way.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. So once you've written your paper and you're getting ready to submit, how do you decide what kind of journal is the right journal for your research? And can y'all talk maybe a little bit about for-profit journals and nonprofit journals like ours?

SPEAKER_01:

I was just looking at the Wiley site. They have over 1,700 journals that they publish, and that's our publisher. And almost 40 of them are somehow related to ecology. So there's a lot of choices, and that's just Wiley. There are tons of other publishers. And so I think that people look at things like impact factors, time to publication, the reputation of the journal, and definitely the focus of the journal. If you're not talking about something that is going to influence management, then why, you know, don't choose Journal of Wildlife Management. I don't know much about the for-profit journals. Allison probably knows more about that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I agree. The main thing is the scope. Does your scope match the scope of the journal? Because if it doesn't, it's gonna come right back to you the very next day. And then after that, you think about your target audience. Um that didn't used to be as much of a concern before, or it it might not seem like a big concern now because everything's online. Google will take you to lots of different things, but you still might want to consider it because there are table contents alerts that go out to specific communities. So think about the community that you want to read your research and where they might be looking to get to look for papers. Then you also have to consider whoever you're submitting to, they will promote your work. So what communities are they promoting to and does it match with your target audience? As Anna said, turnaround time is important. Um a survey of authors has shown that six weeks is optimal for them. And if it gets too long, then authors will be upset that there's a delay in their research getting out there. If it's too short, you start thinking, was this a rigorous peer review? And that leads to the ethics of the journal, which Anna talked about. Will this journal be trusted by the community I'm trying to communicate with? Is it a predatory journal? So these are all complicated things to think about that we often have. And then more recently, now we have to think about who's going to benefit from your publication and from your publication costs. Traditionally, most scientific journals were run by scientific societies, and so it wasn't something that we thought about. But relatively recently, when you think about the whole history of publications, uh there's just now there's for-profit journals. So you have to think um, who do I want to benefit from my publication costs? Who do I want to support with that? I think it was similar to like when you're a consumer, you're thinking about do I want to shop local, do I want to shop small business? And so this is a similar question of who do I want to benefit? And so with a society, you know that your money is going to the programs that society supports and the community that you support with it. I guess that leads to another question that authors might have when they decide who to submit to. And that's whether or not you want to make sure it's open access. So does that journal have an open access option, uh, which means it would be free for everyone to read.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. And why is open access growing more popular and increasingly more important in the publishing space?

SPEAKER_02:

Mostly because most of us as scientists, we want our work to get out to the most people where we'll do the most good. Uh we want policymakers to be able to use it when they're making decisions. We want the public to use it when they're making opinions about how they feel about the world. Uh, we want other researchers to be able to use it. Um so that's that's the movement, the open science movement is the way we are going, and I think in a good way. It's just it's difficult to turn a ship around that's been going one direction for so long. So we're having to figure out ways to make that happen. For example, a lot of agreements with publishers now that they'll cover open access to make sure this is getting out, because libraries aren't, you know, buying as many books or things like that. They can use it for other purposes, such as supporting open access for people that work for their universities.

SPEAKER_00:

And what's the history of research not being open access from the beginning? How did we get started on this kind of lockdown access?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm guessing traditionally it was just a paper copy that societies would mail to their members. So it was just out there, and then libraries would buy these paper journals. And, you know, paper hasn't been gone that long when you consider the 300 or over 200 year history of scientific publications.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And, you know, previously with the subscription-based model, libraries would pay for the subscription to whatever journal, and they would have all of them in the library that the people that go to the library or the school or whichever would have access to those articles. And if you wanted access to an article that you didn't have, you would have to pay someone to get that article. And so that's called a firewall, and people are moving away from that.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll be right back after this short message. When you publish your research, where it goes matters. With TWS journals, your science does more than get read, it gives back. Your work supports wildlife professionals, advances science and policy, and strengthens our community. Support Society Journals, submit to the Wildlife Society's publications today. Learn more about our journals at wildlife.org slash publications. Going back towards the process of submitting your paper for publication, on your side, you guys are seeing all of that. So can you kind of tell us a little bit about what happens at submission, what makes a good paper stand out, and then what are the steps that the paper then goes through to get to final publication?

SPEAKER_01:

So authors will submit their manuscripts and I will see them all and do a quality check. Papers that stand out will have proper formatting for the journal. They'll have a good study design, decent sample size, you know, applicable to other d's or other, you know, taxa that never working with. And if a if a paper's not in scope of the journal, then we will just desk reject it. Or if it's in really bad shape. Or if the English is poor, sometimes we'll try to work with authors if there are things like that that we can fix. But for the most part, most of the manuscripts go through assignment for an I associate editor who is we have between the three journals we have eighty-five associate editors. And so they each have their own specialty. And so I assign manuscripts accordingly. And then for most of those associate editors, they want me to assign reviewers. Some of them do it themselves because they know the field better than I do. Um and then it goes through review. We have two reviewers for each paper, and then the reviews go to the associate editor. The associate editor puts those together along with their ideas of how the manuscript is, and then all of that information goes to the editor-in-chief who makes a decision. So if it's if they are requesting revisions, almost no papers are accepted immediately. If the editor is requesting revisions, then the author goes back and incorporates all those comments into the paper and hopefully it's better after that.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool. And these associate editor positions, how do people get involved with that? Is that a volunteer position? Is that something you apply for?

SPEAKER_01:

You don't have to apply for it. In fact, we have an open call for associate editors. People can express interest and based on their areas of expertise, we can take them in if we have an opening or you know, tell them we can contact you later if somebody drops out. It's entirely voluntary, but I think a lot of people like to do it because it looks good on their resume.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Are there other benefits of being an associate editor? Like, do you feel like people walk away with a greater understanding of the scientific process or things like that?

SPEAKER_01:

I do. And I've heard associate editors say that it helps them be better writers because they, you know, they see how to improve what's there. And yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It's also a way to give back to your community to help mentor maybe early career professionals or student writers that would really benefit from someone that's looking out for them to help them get their paper from A to B.

SPEAKER_00:

So if someone listening wants to become an associate editor for us, who should they contact? Journals at wildlife.org. Right. Cool. So let's talk about peer review. What break that down and why is that so important in the process of scientific publishing?

SPEAKER_01:

So peer review has been around for a very long time, almost as long as the literature. Um it's just a way for unrelated folks in the same field to kind of vet the paper in question. You know, theoretically, the reviewer is not at the same institution. They're, you know, not uh doing research with the authors. Every now and then they are, but they are uh claiming un you know, not they're not biased. Uh so the two peer reviewers provide their assessment based on the study design. They comment on the methods, on the results, if the results and discussion are directly resulting from their actual study. And just making sure that it's in good shape. Because a lot of times, especially with new authors, they aren't necessarily familiar with the best way to go through and you know the scientific writing process. They have mentors, they're advisors or whatever, but it's important because primary literature, by definition, is peer-reviewed. If there's no peer review, to me, I don't think it's a quality paper that I want to cite in my paper.

SPEAKER_00:

So, what can publishing in a scientific journal do for a researcher's career and especially early career scientists? Why is this so important in the building of wildlife professionals?

SPEAKER_02:

For many jobs, it's a requirement to get that job. And for some jobs, it'll be what sets you apart from a very competitive field. Even if writing publications is not part of the job description, the employer will really be happy to know that you have that in your skill set. And I think it's important to acknowledge why we should be publishing as scientists anyway. Uh, aside from resume building, there's a lot of money and time, blood, sweat, and tears from field work that's gone into the research project. And wildlife projects, a lot of times animals are handled or otherwise stressed just by being included in the study. So I think we can respect these animals, the funders, our mentors, and ourselves by making sure it gets into the peer-reviewed literature where it can benefit wildlife. And like Anna said, that once it's peer-reviewed, then it's more likely to be used when making wildlife policy, when making management recommendations or plans like from state agencies. Because they know that if there is pushback from governments or from uh the public, that they have something stronger to stand on when they use peer-reviewed literature that has been vetted by other scientists.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that I think that's so important of just the big impact that peer-reviewed research really has on our profession.

SPEAKER_01:

I like that quote, the stand on the shoulders of giants. You know, you're looking at what everybody has done before you to come up with your question and then do your own research and then publish your research for future uh researchers to use.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Awesome. So, how do you measure impact and how does that set other journals apart?

SPEAKER_02:

There's lots of ways to measure impact. Personally, I measure it on how it benefits wildlife for our journals or the profession. But that's hard to put a number on. So um traditionally, academia has often used impact factors. Um, but there is a movement to reduce the reliance on that number because it's a system that can be gamed by journals. It's not always the most appropriate for every field. For example, in ours, if you're studying an animal with a range, a worldwide range, it's probably going to be cited more than if you're studying a critically endangered species that lives on one atoll in the Pacific. Um, but that research is very important to that one animal in that community that lives there. So there is a movement called the Declaration of Research Assessment, DORA, and it's kind of taking on to improve the ways that we analyze scholarly research and evaluate it. Um, and our publisher is signatory on this. So, ways that we are trying to move the needle is by presenting different metrics of impact of these things. And so a lot of journals are moving toward this and using metrics that consider policy documents or other ways that has improved the world, or listing full text views to see, you know, how many people are reading it, uh, or inclusion of news articles to see the impact on the public. Um so there's several different ways of looking at it. Uh, I wish there was a way to communicate easier that this research really did benefit the wildlife, but the reality is there's some metrics that some that your boss you know might feel important. So then you have to consider it as important as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think with the new model of open access, it's harder to use just the citations and whatever impact factor uses. Yeah, you know. Uh because it's all on the computer, you know who's downloading, you know who's reading, and it makes it a lot easier to uh to get a feel of of how important the article is.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you guys have any resources or advice for first-time authors that don't have a lot of mentorship around them? Is there anywhere that they can go to learn more about the process of publishing a scientific paper and getting help for that?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah, there are all kinds of scientific writing courses. I know Wiley has in their author services, they have a series of webinars about the best way to go about your scientific writing. And I would think that most people that have been in the university, have degrees, have written lots of scientific papers, whether it was their research or not.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's talk about AI and where you see that impacting. Does AI have a place in scientific publishing, or is that something that we should be very wary of? And what experiences do you have with authors that have maybe started to use it? Like where are the boundaries around AI?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it can be useful. Um, like Anna was talking about, it it allows us to um come up with more metrics for the journals. It allows us to take a look at papers and see if they could have possibly been generated by AI. It allows us to quickly look at the metadata of papers and see if there's any trends that's showing it's coming from a um like uh an AI generated or paper, like a paper mill.

SPEAKER_01:

Paper mill.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. And so that there's there's tools that AI can bring to us that are helpful. Um, it can help authors hone their writing skills. I I guess the biggest concern would be to not release the power to AI. Don't generate content with AI. With our journals, we have a policy AI cannot be an author, so you cannot allow it to write content. But certainly it it's gonna be helpful in a lot of ways for for research and for publishing. I've heard a lot of good things about it checking our code and looking for errors if if there's issues there. Um so yeah, as probably with most things with AI, it it just needs guidance to ensure it doesn't get out of control and create nonsense. Like we had one issue where a WSB article was cited in another journal, and that WSB article did not exist. And it turned out is because that person was just using AI to try to format their research or their literature cited, and it just went off on its own and started creating its own journal articles in the literature cited. Um so authors just need to be careful that if they are using AI tools to double check it and make sure it's not inventing things.

SPEAKER_01:

We had a submission for a cover image for WSB and it was AI generated and all of the people looked the same, and one guy had six fingers. No, something like that. I mean, yeah, we're not gonna we're not gonna accommodate that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And so is that something that's like if someone does something like that, they're kind of on the on the no fly list anymore, or no what?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh you know, we would probably just contact that author and say, can you give us a real picture of actual people doing doing science?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. So you talked about uh paper mill. Can you just like explain what that is? Because I've never heard of that before.

SPEAKER_02:

There are companies that will write papers for researchers because a lot of researchers need to add to their CV for promotion or to get a job that they have papers. And so there's companies that will write papers and then sell them to authors. So a lot of that is based on made-up data. And so if these papers get into the publication record, that could be a big issue. And so one way that they can kind of get past a rigorous peer review is to go to a predatory journal which is just looking for to make money. They're not concerned about the rigor of the science. And so you'll see sometimes with a you know decision turnaround time of four days, because they're just like, yep, it's a paper. Next, it's accepted, the end, and then they put it out there. So these are things as authors we need to think about when we're choosing who to submit to. Also as readers, when we're reading the literature, is this from a trusted source? And as a reviewer or an associate editor, when you're choosing who to donate your time to, are you um reviewing for a journal that is predatory or are you reviewing for a journal that you believe in their mission?

SPEAKER_00:

That's so interesting. I never would have imagined that that kind of stuff would fly. But what else can people look for besides, you know, like a quick turnaround time? Like, are there any other telltale signs that, like, whoa, I should stay clear from this journal reading or writing for it?

SPEAKER_02:

There are certain ethics agreements, like there's one called COPE. I don't remember the initials right now, but there are certain uh signatures that the journal will advertise, like, oh, we follow these ethics rules. There's also some lists out there that will tell you which ones they believe are predatory or um unethical in some other manner, but then a lot of that gets pushed back because you're tanking someone's business, right? And so you have to be really sure about that. So basically it just takes research on the user's part to try to figure out whether or not they believe that that journal is ethical or not.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. I think where a lot of journals are going is expects data. So data is made available to a reader and they can see, you know, specifically what the researcher collected, you know, if the data comes out in the paper like it should. And I think a paper mill would not have that a paper mill paper.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha. So if someone is interested in publishing in TWS journals, you know, what's the information that they they would need to know?

SPEAKER_01:

Just real quick, um as far as impact factors, ours are not very high. And part of that, I think, is because a lot of people that read our articles, especially in Wildlife Society bulletins, which has a very low impact factor, they're not publishing. So we don't have a lot of citations um for papers, even though they might be really well read. And that's that's where what I was talking about before, the downloads and and reads are important.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, one thing that makes us a little different is that we have in-house staff handling our journals. And so Anna and I are handling every single paper. We both are wildlife biologists, so we understand the field and we are dedicated to the authors to make sure they have the best experience. Um, we're gonna reply the very next business day, if not right away. So we're we're very uh interested in making sure that we uphold the um the reputation of our journals and of the wildlife society. And um we welcome everybody to submit to us that has research that they think can benefit the wildlife community or wildlife populations.

SPEAKER_00:

So is there any part? Admittedly, obviously, I've never published a paper. I've tried to write an abstract before, but that's about it. Is there any part of the process or other things that we should talk about and shed light on that you think would benefit this episode of people who are watching this? If I have to uh guess they're soon to be first-time publishers, any kind of information that would help them through this process a little more.

SPEAKER_02:

We'll say that when you sit down to write, that don't put so much pressure on yourself to make it look like a scientific paper when you first start writing. Just get the stuff on the paper, write it like you're talking to your friend, because it's much easier to go back and edit something than to create. And you know all this, you know what you need to write. You've lived it for several years, probably. Um, so just throw it on the paper. Um, if you're not feeling very creative that day, do something easy like methods, because that's just regurgitating what you did, and you should know what you did. Um and if you're really not feeling like it, um, someone once told me when I was writing, just write a page a day, just get it out, and then move on. And before you know it, it'll be done. Another important step that I think maybe some people miss is before you submit to send it to a friendly reviewer. And that could be um some, you know, a good friend, you know, it doesn't have to be someone that's not biased, um, someone that understands the field, but maybe doesn't know everything about your project. Because a lot of times you've spent so many years thinking about this project that when you're writing, you leave things out that are obvious to you, but not to everyone else. So a friendly reviewer can catch things and be like, oh, well, how often did you monitor or, you know, things that that they're be wondering that you forgot to put in because you didn't think about it because it's always just obvious to you. The friendly reviewer process and someone that you can feel comfortable sharing your early work with, that'll make it even better when it gets to the submission process. And then for reviewers, just try to remember that these are your peers, your community members, that other reviewers have helped you out to get your work the best it is, and now someone is relying on you to do the same. And when you're writing your comments to keep them friendly and encouraging, and instead of saying this is wrong, go with I think this would be better as like give them ideas of what direction to go to. And as a community, we can make everyone's papers better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Is there any lingo that you feel the need to that you think you can explain? Because I know the first time that I saw et al. I was so confused. I was like, who is et al. And why is he on every paper I've read?

SPEAKER_02:

It just means randos.

SPEAKER_01:

Lead author and other randos. We don't allow people to list every single author if there are like 30 authors. You know, you have I'm I'm talking about in the references, you know, you can list the first 10 authors and then et al is everybody else. But as far as the actual citation in the paper, it's the lead author et al if there are more than two authors. So it's it's Latin for and more, I think, and other randos. Yeah, randos.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. I've been dying to figure that out.

SPEAKER_02:

So other lingos. Yeah, because that seems obvious to us, but it won't be so obvious to other people. So it's hard to think about what is weird. Yeah. You know, one thing that surprises a lot of first-time publishers is the fact that there are often costs with publishing, because they often think of it like if you were writing a book, then you would get royalties from that book. It seems very confusing. Like, why am I paying someone to publish my work? Um, and the reasons for that is because it costs money to get it out there to the public. And also uh for societies, most societies are using a portion of the profits to fund other missions and programs that don't bring in money. For example, like continuing education or policy initiatives, things like that are important to the wildlife community or whoever the society is representing. You can't really rely on just membership dues to fund all these programs. So it and it is expensive to get all the papers indexed so that they'll be noticed by people to get them typeset so they look presentable, to edit them, run them through the review process. There's just a lot of costs that go into that. We also need to partner with people that understand publication laws so we don't have to have a publication lawyer on staff. Things like that just add up to make it somewhat expensive to get research out there to the public.

SPEAKER_01:

Also, I just wanted to say I like working for these journals because I get to see all of the research that people are doing that submit to us in the entire world. And every now and then I learn of a new animal that I'd never heard of before. You know, just to see what people are working on is it's really fascinating. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

Sweet. Well, Alice and Anna, thank you so much for joining me today and for pulling the curtain back on what the publishing process is like and you know, teaching us some things I know that I didn't know beforehand. But yeah, thanks for joining the podcast today. You're welcome. Thank you for having us for having us. Hey, it's Katie. Thanks so much for listening to the Our Wild Lives Podcast. If you're loving what you're hearing, could you help us out? Leaving us a review, rating our show, or sharing it with a friend will help us continue to grow the Our Wild Lives podcast. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next week.