It is one year since we began our official roles as editors-in-chief of Society & Natural Resources. Over this period our editorial team has learned and accomplished much regarding producing SNR, and we are excited about implementing new initiatives to make the process and product even better. These include making progress on reducing the backlog of accepted manuscripts by getting them online within 6–8 weeks of acceptance thanks to the “iFirst” program, and within 12–15 months into print. We've also shortened the time from submission to final decision. This has been accomplished while also processing more manuscripts than in previous years. In addition we have updated many of our formats for communicating with authors and reviewers; we think they are now clearer and more specific. Our publisher, Taylor & Francis, also generously agreed to slightly increase the journal's budget which will help in the future to improve training of new editorial teams and provide additional support for the assistant editor.
As is probably the case with all new editorial teams, our major challenge over the first year was becoming familiar with the entire process of editing SNR. All three of us were new to the job as there was a complete turnover in editors-in-chief as well as assistant editor. This made the learning curve a little steeper but not too difficult to negotiate thanks in large part because of our incredibly wise selection of Maureen Bookwalter as our assistant editor over the last year. Mo began a new job in November with the Montana Department of Natural Resource and Conservation's Forestry Division. Mo learned the ins and outs of her work with SNR with amazing speed and grace, and we cannot thank her enough for a stellar year with us as assistant editor. Beginning in November we welcomed a new assistant editor to our team, Brianna Ewert, who has background in editing, environmental writing, and social science research, and in local food and agro-ecosystems. The other important member of our editorial team, Dave White, continues as our excellent book review editor, managing reviews of new and worthy books; he also solicits reviews of other types of innovative media including meetings, videos, films, and bulletins. He can be contacted at [email protected] by anyone who wishes to participate in one of these review formats.
To continue to improve the editing process we have a few ideas we plan to implement over the next year. The most dramatic involves a transition to subject area editors, a common practice among many scientific journals. That is, instead of only the two editors-in-chief selecting and inviting reviewers, we are making plans for shifting from the current practice of associate editors serving largely as frequent or “super-reviewers” to one where they take responsibility for selecting and inviting reviewers too. The breadth of topics as well as increasing volume of submissions makes it increasingly difficult for two editors-in-chief to manage all the reviews on their own. Most importantly we think this way of doing things will strengthen and shorten the review process. Along with these restructuring plans we will be asking reviewers in our data base to update their profiles from an enlarged and updated list of keywords and subject areas, as well as providing an accessible venue for expanding our data base of names and email addresses of qualified reviewers. Stay tuned for more details.
Beginning with this issue, we are thrilled to be more proactive about the content of SNR, engaging topics of particular interest to the SNR readership. In this inaugural issue of 2013 we feature a general research article by Fikret Berkes and Helen Ross entitled “Community Resilience: Toward an Integrated Approach.” In this article, the authors explore opportunities for an integrated approach in community resilience that they suggest inform new research directions and practice, using approaches from complex social-ecological systems research and from psychology of development and mental health. We invited Debra J. Davidson to write a response. She is the author of “The Applicability of the Concept of Resilience to Social Systems: Some Sources of Optimism and Nagging Doubts,” which was published in SNR in 2010 (Vol. 23, pp. 1135–1149) and is one of the most cited articles published in SNR over the last two years. We include a rejoinder from authors Ross and Berkes. Their exchange brings to the fore different emphases in the nature and activation of agency and self-organizing collective action viewed within a concern for complex adaptive systems thinking, power and equity, and the challenges of prediction and planning in highly uncertain contexts.
We are also planning for a special issue on “The Institutional Dimension of Market-based Instruments for Enhancing the Provision of Ecosystem Services.” Articles in this special issue will provide critical analyses about the institutional dimension of these tools and on empirical evidence about how this type of policy tools are configured and implemented. The special issue draws on research presented in recent conferences on the topic but which hold contrasting visions and implications on the role of market-based instruments. This collection scrutinizes various institutional practices and policies from a multiplicity of perspectives and concerns. While our ability to publish special issues is limited we encourage proposals on cutting-edge and potentially transformative topics and approaches.
We also want to call your attention to two additional special tribute issues of SNR to be published in 2013 and dedicated to the legacy of two long-time supporters and contributors to the field and journal. The first honors Donald R. Field, a former Senior Scientist (Sociology) with the National Park Service, and more recently Associate Dean and Professor of Rural Sociology and Forest Ecology and Management at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Don was also a highly valued co-founding editor-in-chief of this journal. This collection of nine original essays, research reports, and personal reflections provides strong testament to an early and important voice for integrating social scientific perspectives in the understanding and management of natural resources. The second is a collection of six new research articles which build on the intellectual legacy of environmental sociologist William R. Freudenburg who died in 2010. Bill was a professor of Rural Sociology at Washington State University and the University of Wisconsin, and he most recently served as Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His decades of scholarship focused on resource dependent communities, the social impacts of environmental and technological change, risk assessment, regulatory structures and the actions of industry. Freudenburg's contributions to sociology and rural sociology are broad and deep and the diversity of his intellectual contributions is reflected in the special issue. He is particularly well known for his books about oil exploration and production with the last one published in 2010, Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America (Cambridge MIT Press); it places the BP blowout in historical and policy perspective.
We close with a big thank you for all the manuscripts you submitted, reviews you conducted, books you identified to be reviewed, and support for the International Association for Society and Natural Resources. As before, we encourage you to write us with your thoughts, responses, and/or suggestions for SNR over the next two years of our editorship.