HOW GOOD THINGS HAPPEN: THE STORY OF THE L&O LETTERS EARLY CAREER PUBLICATION HONOR

Inequities abound in academia. Chief among these are differences in publishing resources, particularly for early career researchers (ECRs) and those from the Global South. To address this issue in limnology and oceanography, we created the L&O Letters Early Career Publication Honor. Initiated in 2019, the honor provides OA fee waivers for ECR-led publications based on need and potential impact of the research. The honor exists because of a unique opportunity that highlights the value of bringing multiple perspectives to the editorial table. Indeed, it stems from the Raelyn Cole Editorial Fellowship (RCEF), a program established in 2017 to integrate ECRs into publishing. RCEF fellows were invited to an annual strategy day with Wiley, the journal publisher and editors of the other ASLO journals. Attendees were tasked with brainstorming ways to better support ECRs in publishing. Through discussions with Jim Cloern—the Editor-in-Chief of Limnology and Oceanography Letters at that time—we conceived of the idea for an ECR publication honor that would waive OA fees for ECR-led studies. We then worked to bring the publication honor from idea to implementation. Since then, the publication honor has been stewarded by RCEF Fellows through three rounds of awarding (2020, 2022, 2024) and more than a dozen ECR-led studies have been published. This presentation will walk through the genesis of the publication honor and how it has grown into one of the most unique and impactful editorial programs in the world.

Presentation Preference: Standard Oral (12 Minutes)

Primary Presenter: Scott Hotaling, Utah State University (scott.hotaling@usu.edu)

Authors:

Scott Hotaling, Utah State University  (scott.hotaling@usu.edu)

Kelsey Poulson-Ellestad, Madison College  (Kpoulson3@madisoncollege.edu)

Jim Cloern, U.S. Geological Survey  (jimcloern@gmail.com)