Wednesday, August 13, 2014

We're the best!

Another year, another increase in Geoscientific Model Development's impact factor. Last year I reported that GMD was a whisker behind ACP in the EGU journals, and this year our impact factor has risen still further to over 6, which comfortably leapfrogs ACP and places GMD 6th in all geosciences journals (aside: who or what is Gondwana Research, and should I be embarassed at never having read it?). Of course, the future direction of the journal is no longer my (shared) responsibility, but I will keep an eye on how things progress...

Incidentally, page charges at GMD, and indeed all EGU journals, are rather more reasonable than the outrageous profiteering by the American Association for the Advancement of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAAAAS as it is henceforth to be known, with their new attempt at if you can't beat them, parasitise them publishing.

14 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

> with their new attempt at if you can't beat them, parasitise them publishing

Bitter but cryptic and interesting. Go on, spell out the puzzle for us outsiders.

jules said...

William:
That's what I asked. James replied, "Oh it's everywhere. All over the twittersphere". "I haven't seen it", says I. "Oh you don't follow the right people", he replies.

WTF. Since when did he go all twittery?

James Annan said...

More likely, I follow all the wrong people...

Anyway, to get to the point, the news isn't so much that AAAAAAAAAAAAAAS is setting up a new journal called "science advances" (you can google it, I won't dignify it with a link, it was announced months ago) but that it has recently been announced that it is headed up by someone notoriously and vindictively anti open access, and will have eye-wateringly high charges of about $3-6000 per paper.

It is amusing to see the old guard flail about in the face of OA, like when Nature offered to buy up the EGU journals a few years ago (we all LOLed).

Steve Bloom said...

Surprising that an EGU ubereditingfuhrer would be so far out of the loop. Heck, even I heard about it. :)

William M. Connolley said...

http://phylogenomics.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/aaas-and-snapchat-collaborate-to.html

C W Magee said...

Gondwana Research is a journal focusing on the tectonic evolution of the former continent Gondwanaland, and its various bits and pieces before and after assembly and subsequent rifting. Sort of the Southern Hemisphere (circa 240 MA) version of Precambrian Research. As much of southern Asia used to be Gondwanaland, there are a lot of Asia-assembly-related papers, as the journal tries harder than most not to discriminate against non-westerners.

Hank Roberts said...

Some interesting climate stuff in Gondwana Research

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X13002694

"The end-Permian mass extinction has been associated with severe global warming. Main stage volcanism of the Siberian Traps occurred at or near the extinction interval and has been proposed as a likely greenhouse catalyst. ... A new evaluation is made .... document tropical sea surface temperatures ... warming of SSTs to over 35 °C.... associated with an enhanced hydrological cycle involving increased tropical precipitation and monsoonal activity in the Tethys Sea. Global warming, intensification of the hydrological cycle and associated processes, vertical water column stratification, eutrophication and subsequent local anoxia may all have facilitated an extinction event."

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(As a reminder: nearly 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species died out. Wikipedia)

Hank Roberts said...

speaking of geosciences, a blogger worth a look: paleo, and R statistics, and policy, and good sense are themes:

http://downwithtime.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/domain-experts-are-key-in-the-age-of-big-data/

http://downwithtime.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/were-reading-the-same-paper-but-were-getting-different-messages/

PeteB said...

Any comments on the Curry 50:50 attribution arguments ?

I think her basic argument boils down to the claim* that the Chen and Tung paper suggests that their has been an extended natural warming period up to 2000 and this warming cycle accounts for half the warming observed during that period.

*I've no idea if the Chen and Tung paper really suggests that.

Steve Bloom said...

Doesn't Laurasia rate a journal?

James Annan said...

Chuck and Hank, thanks for the comments. Steve, it sounds very hemisphericist to me.

PeteB, Gavin covered (on RC) the reheated curry very well IMO. She has long since passed the point of no interest to me, just spouting ignorant blether that adds no value. I haven't read her for a long time. There are some problems with D&A but sadly she doesn't know enough about the subject to either comment intelligently or shut up and leave the debate to those who do.

Steve Bloom said...

Poor Laurasia. Similarly, I just now discovered that there's an ESM called JULES (doubtless her reward for being chief editor of that modeling journal). But whither JAMES? Must he found a competing journal just to regain parity?

BTW, I'm sure I join many other readers in wondering what impact its forthcoming binational status will have on Blue Skies Research.



Steve Bloom said...

Back on the post topic, it seems to me that as a non-profit without a bazillion pubs to support AAAS may be in a not-too-bad position to transition to the new model, albeit that they'll probably resist for as long as they can.

Nature seems like it might have a less surmountable problem.

crandles said...

http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2014/12/nature-publisher-hopes-end-dark-sharing-making-read-only-papers-free