As we enter the second year of our tenure as Editors-in-Chief of Society & Natural Resources, we'd like to briefly take stock of the last twelve months and share plans for the coming year. In our first year, we worked to advance our vision of SNR as a unique, interdisciplinary, international journal that contributes to the development of an important global community of scholars, policymakers and practitioners interested in understanding relationships between social and natural worlds and building on those understandings towards a more sustainable planet. As an editorial team, we have made important progress toward our goals of maintaining, building and extending the high quality of the journal's content, strengthening its international coverage and contributions, addressing key environmental and natural resource issues of our time, and bringing the journal further into the high-impact world of online publishing, discussion and debate.
With strong support from our publisher, Taylor & Francis, and Colorado State University, we've established a new editorial office at CSU's Sociology department in Fort Collins, CO, and hired a talented new Assistant Editor, Stacia Ryder—a Ph.D. student working on natural resource extraction and environmental justice, and the sociology of disaster. As Editors-in-Chief, we benefit from Stacia's organizational and editing experience as we embrace the challenge of managing more than 350 and growing new submissions per year, and better than 400 manuscripts including revised papers.
We have continued efforts to strengthen and streamline SNR's peer review process, making significant progress toward our goal of timely, online publication of manuscripts within 6–8 weeks of acceptance. Beginning with Vol. 29 (2016), Taylor & Francis is increasing the number of pages in each issue of SNR—in part to further expedite publication of articles in print.
Building on the transition to a robust, active Editorial Board, introduced by our predecessors Jill Belsky and Daniel Williams, we rely greatly on the contributions of SNR's Associate Editors. They manage new and revised submissions, select reviewers and track their reports, develop editorial recommendations in support of publication decisions, and help develop editorial policy initiatives in periodic virtual and face-to-face board meetings. We thank SNR's Associate Editors for their hard work and sustained dedication. With the current issue, we are delighted to acknowledge those Associate Editors who are continuing as members of the Editorial Board for another three year term, and to welcome several outstanding scholars from around the world who are joining SNR's Editorial Board as new Associate Editors.
As editors of Society & Natural Resources, we work closely with the International Association for the Study of Natural Resources (IASNR), official organizational sponsor of the journal. Cooperative efforts during the past year include two jointly sponsored sessions at the 2015 International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM) in Charleston, South Carolina, which ultimately will result in a special issue on “Global Water Crises, Institutions, and Governance.” Please plan on participating in the 2016 ISSRM, in Houghton, Michigan, June 22–26, under the theme, “Transitioning: Toward Sustainable Relationships in a Different World.” For further information, see <http://www.iasnr.org>.
Over the past year, we made good progress in expanding and diversifying SNR's online presence, with improvements to webpages via both IASNR and Taylor & Francis; creation of an active LinkedIn interest group; and improved use of Facebook and Twitter to disseminate information about key, journal-related publications, calls for submissions, and other activities. Working with SNR's Editorial Board and Taylor & Francis, in the coming year we hope to develop guidelines and procedures to enable SNR to accept supplemental online materials for review for publication, alongside conventional scholarly manuscripts.
Beginning with Vol. 29, SNR is undertaking a new, expanded approach to soliciting and reviewing book reviews, review essays, and other reviews. Book Review Editor Dave White is spearheading these changes, with the aim of broadening the range of books, films, and other media reviewed in the pages of SNR. See the journal's website(s) for new book review guidelines. Also this year, SNR will inaugurate a new, annual “Rabel Burdge and Donald Field Society & Natural Resources Best Article Award”; recipients will receive a $500 cash prize underwritten by Taylor & Francis. The first recipient(s) will be for an article published in Vol. 28 (2015). Look for more information about this award on the journal's webpages. Additional editorial aims for this year include further strengthening and expediting the manuscript peer review process; publication of two new special issues on water governance, one on cultural analysis of water relations, and another on global water crises and institutions; and the launching of one or two new special issue initiatives.
We have enjoyed and learned much over the last year from working with the SNR community. The journal's work, publishing high-quality, rigorous interdisciplinary research in 12 issues per year, is made possible by a large, almost entirely voluntary international community of authors, editors, reviewers, and, of course, readers – from the realms of academia, policymaking, practice, and civil society. Many thanks for your support of SNR and our sponsoring organization, the IASNR. We look forward to continuing to serve and work with you in this, our second year as Editors-in-Chief of Society & Natural Resources.
Peter Leigh Taylor
David A. Sonnenfeld
Editors-in-Chief