Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.
Planetary Sciences holds a special place at AGU. The discipline covers every one of AGU’s scientific topics, specifying only that it should be applicable to planets besides the Earth. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets serves the community of the Planetary Sciences Section of AGU and needs to cover that immense breadth. We published papers that examine the plasma of the Earth-Moon system, the atmosphere of Jupiter, the geobiology of ancient Mars, the cryosphere of Mars, surface processes on Titan, geodesy of the Moon, the health of future astronauts exposed to surface radiation on Mars, the geomagnetism of Mercury, global environmental changes and habitability of Venus, the hydrology of Mars, the mineral and rock physics of exoplanets, natural hazards on the Moon’s surface, near-surface geophysics conducted at lunar landing site analogs, the oceanography of Europa, the paleoclimate of Mars, the seismology of the Moon, the ionosphere of Mars, the deep interior of Venus, the tectonophysics of Mercury, the volcanology or Io and petrology of meteorites. For those keeping count, this means that planetary science papers have expanded the scope of at least twenty sections of AGU. The journal’s focus on new “knowledge about processes that affect Solar System objects” makes it harder to link to more societal or method-focused sections of AGU. Still, the reach of what is often considered a “specialized” journal is exceptionally broad.
5 Years of Growth
When I stepped in as Editor-in-Chief of JGR: Planets in early 2019, this breadth of discipline was certainly daunting. I felt confident that the journal adequately served topics covering the interior of planets, historically the basis of the JGR: Planets readership, inherited from our origin as a discipline within the journal then known as “JGR – Solid Earth and Planets”, but I felt we could reach out better to other segments of our community. Fortunately, I was able to recruit on the editorial board scientists who specialize in planetary atmospheres, meteorites, and small body topics. Special collections further broadened the range of topics in the journals.
Even in an increasingly competitive publication landscape, planetary scientists still see JGR: Planets as a choice publication and entrust us with their best work.
Nearly 2,000 submissions later, I am proud to have witnessed an increase in the number of submissions, the number of published papers, the range of topics routinely represented in the paper, and, significantly, journal metrics such as impact factor. This shows that, even in an increasingly competitive publication landscape, planetary scientists still see JGR: Planets as a choice publication and entrust us with their best work. JGR: Planets is published by AGU, a non-profit, community-driven society. It is heart-warming to see the planetary science community supporting publications of this nature.
The position of Editor-in-Chief is exceptional in the way that we interact not only with the scientific community that we support but also with the publishing world, which has its own set of priorities and policies. Over the almost five years I have been at the helm of JGR: Planets, I have witnessed the growth and increasing recognition of open science and its value for society. While JGR: Planets remains a hybrid journal, all manuscripts can be immediately shared by the authors – at last in a non-formatted form – and are openly available after two years. I have seen the number of articles published in open access increase dramatically, thanks in no small amount to open access policies dictated by several funding agencies and the transformative agreements that many research and education institutions have entered with publishing companies. Publishing open access, while increasing the reach and impact of articles, can be costly to researchers who depend on limited funds. I am fortunate to work at an institution that entered into a transformative agreement with Wiley, the publisher of AGU journals. As a hybrid journal, JGR: Planets can answer the needs of scientists who are required to publish open access and those who are not. This enables us to serve the full spectrum of circumstances, and I hope we can retain this characteristic for a long time.
Open Science is Not Just Open Access
As soon as I started interacting with AGU’s publishing team, I realized that making data and software openly available would be the biggest challenge of my tenure at the journal. This topic was especially important to me, as, like many of us, I remember contacting scientists to gain access to their published results, only to be told the data was long gone following computer upgrades. I remember seeing data tapes from the 1960s destined for the trash as no one had the means to read them anymore. I have long considered such issues a waste of research capacity and was determined to minimize them.
I made it a priority to guide our authors on the best way to share data.
AGU has had an open data policy for many years but started to enforce it just as I started at JGR: Planets. I made it a priority to guide our authors on the best way to share data. As I learned more and more about the subtleties of open data and discovered new ways to achieve its objectives, I checked data availability statements for every single submission. More often than not, I wrote a few sentences explaining the difference between a data repository and a paper describing a dataset, pointed out resources for sharing data – including the derived data that result from the analysis presented, and described the proper way to cite data repository.
I witnessed community repositories and libraries change protocols to provide trackable identifiers, such as DOIs, to all repositories. I also saw many colleagues progressively learn the value of sharing their data openly, not the least of which being the possibility of getting credit for the data they produced in addition to the science they derived from these data. One of my proudest moments was learning that more than three-quarters of the papers published by JGR: Planets complied with AGU’s data policy, far outpacing the other AGU journals. I feel our efforts at the journal have helped our community prepare for the increasingly common and wide-ranging open data requirements of various funding agencies.
Thank You!
I have long held that the role of an editor is not to be a gatekeeper, but an educator helping authors to lift their manuscripts to the journal’s expectations.
I was joined in these efforts by an incredible team of dedicated scientists who donated their time and effort to ensure that the journal publish science of the highest quality. I have long held that the role of an editor is not to be a gatekeeper, preventing publication of certain papers, but an educator helping authors to lift their manuscripts to the journal’s expectations. I am proud of our editorial team, who shared these values.
Those who welcomed me to the journal: Editors David Baratoux, Steven Hauck, and Sabine Stanley; Associate Editors Gareth Collins, Wenzhe Fa, Caleb Fassett, Justin Filiberto, Tom Glotch, Jasper Halekas, Anni Määttänen, Claire Newman, Deanne Rogers, Yasuhito Sekine, and Zibi Turtle. Anni and Deanne became editors and, along with Brad Thomson, did an incredible job guiding so many papers to publication. We were joined by new Associate Editors: Adrian Brown, Jun Cui, Joel Davis, Leigh Fletcher, Matthias Grott, Ananya Mallik, Germán Martínez, Molly McCanta, Katarina Miljkovic, Naomi Murdoch, Ryan Park, Arianna Piccialli, Andrew Poppe, Beatríz Sanchez-Cano, Laura Schaefer, Mariek Schmidt, Kelsi Singer, Mike Sori, Sonia Tikoo, David Trang, and Zhiyong Xiao. What a team!
We benefit from the dedication of numerous guest associate editors who help organize special collections and evaluate the manuscripts submitted to them. Many of these collections were conducted jointly with other journals I list here only the guest editors of collections led by JGR: Planets and I apologize to anyone I might have missed – errare humanum est : Sarah Badman, Bruce Barnerdt, Kristen Bennett, Jacob Bleacher, Scott Bolton, Penny Boston, Gwénäel Caravaca, Barbara Cohen, James Connerney, Peter Delamere, Brett Denevi, Imke de Pater, Goran Ekström, Amy Fagan, Anna Fedorova, Abigail Freeman, François Forget, Thierry Fouchet, Domenico Giardini, Cesare Grava, Benjamin Greenhagen, Denis Grodent, Scott Guzewich, Heidi Hammel, Kevin Hand, Keyron Hickman-Lewis, Briony Horgan, Ross Irwin, Steve Jacobson, David Jewitt, Eliza Kempton, Laura Kerber, Scott King, Rachel Klima, Steven Levin, Yufeng Lin, Yang Liu, Philippe Lognonné, Germán Martínez, Francis McCubbin, Scott McLennan, Stefanie Millam, Doug Ming, Duck Mittlefehldt, Paul Morgan, Alessandro Mura, Naomi Murdoch, Mark Panning, Noah Petro, Charity Phillips-Lander, Arianna Picciali, Lucie Rolland, Barbara Romanowicz, Patrick Russell, Francesco Sauro, Laura Schaefer, Chip Shearer, David Shuster, Simone Silvestro, Steve Simon, Aymeric Spiga, Dawn Sumner, Vivian Sun, Håkan Svedhem, Timothy Titus, Allan Treiman, Jeroen Tromp, Cayman Unterborn, Diana Valencia, Catherine Wolner, Ryan Watkins, Yang Wei, Amy Williams, Colin Wilson, David Wray, Judson Wynne, and Zhonghua Yao. When you also consider the hundreds of reviewers who would help evaluate and improve submitted manuscripts, it becomes clear that scientific publishing is a community effort. The dedication of the planetary scientists to their community never ceases to amaze me.
I want to acknowledge the entire publication team at AGU and Wiley, especially Tanya Dzekon, Ethan Cantrell, and Corrine Gosling, who managed the journal during most of my tenure. Your professionalism and attention to detail made it that much easier to work on the journal.
In closing, I welcome new Editor-in-Chief, Amanda Hendrix, who took over the journal in January 2024. Amanda is well-known as an outstanding scientist, leader, and communicator. I look forward to seeing the directions in which she will take the journal.
—Laurent G. J. Montési (montesi@umd.edu, 
0000-0002-3519-1412), University of Maryland at College Park, USA
Learn more about the incoming Editor-in-Chief, Amanda Hendrix.