Space Weather Journal and Quarterly

^{This is a temporary page for use by the Editorial Board of the Space Weather Journal and Space Weather Quarterly.  See Dan Baker and Barbara Giles for further information.}

• Values/directions voiced as wanting to preserve? (feel free to add/edit the list)
  • further establish SWJ/SWQ as the premier policy magazine for the space weather-related research disciplines
  • continually increase the number and citation rate of high quality research papers in the journal
  • continually increase visibility inside and outside the research community
  • printed version of quarterly to funding/policy stakeholders
  • broad circulation of quarterly in some form as communication tool

• Current Editorial Focus:
  • Q4 2013 SW Quarterly - Editor and AGU currently working on this
  • special section, nearly completed, devoted to the CRATeR mission and the radiation environment around the Moon
  • Updates to the "about" text on the web site for the Space Weather Journal - in final editing and approval.
  • 10th (or 11th) year anniversary

• Initiatives suggested through the flurry of emails (feel free to add/edit the list):
  • Overall:
    • work w/ AGU and SPA leadership to institutionalize SWJ/SWQ as a flagship science policy publication for AGU
    • increase visibility of journal and quarterly beyond its current readership
    • explore what a partnership with AMS and/or other societies would mean, what aspects would be enhanced or diluted.
    • renewed visibility on ISIS website
    • engage AGU's new director of public affairs, Lexi Shultz, in our discussions for the purpose of advising what will be most beneficial to agency/government stakeholders, among other topics. Her long experience as a gov't liason and legal advisor for UCS will be beneficial to the discussions.

• Near-term publication issues to address:
  • Establish distribution priorities for Quarterly (print vs electronic), update distribution list.
  • Prototype layout of Quarterly via standard/custom Wiley Special Section templates.
  • Proposal to NSF and NASA re distribution of Quarterly and Writer Support.
  • Form Editorial Search Committee, write Terms of Reference for Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board

• Mid-term issues:
  • Access/Citation Rate:
    • increase the number of reviews among the journal papers
    • continue/expand the Editor's Choice column
    • series of articles on the operational models
    • work with other editors to encourage redirection of appropriate research papers to SWJ
    • work with other editors for greater cross-referencing of relevant papers via new WWW site capabilities
  • Formulate plan for broader electronic access of journal/quarterly.
  • Capture history of the journal and quarterly in accessible place.
  • carefully assess the government-mandated open access journal model, the responses to that mandate across the relevant publishers, and the potential benefit/liability to the range of journal and quarterly business cases that could be suggested.

• Longer-term issues:
  • Explore/expand partnerships: AMS, AIAA, etc.
  • How to assess the full "impact" of the journal, when the access/citation stats don't tell the full story.
  • What is the desired balance between pursue "sponsored" support for the journal or quarterly or both?

• Value to Community as identified in emails/telecon notes:
  • important policy magazine for the Union and for a broad segment of membership
  • premier journal for space weather
  • the journal is the only society sponsored publication for operational space weather research
  • quarterly is key for communicating ideas to people with limited science background

• Primary Challenges as identified in emails/telecon notes:
  • access statistics appear low; one of least accessed AGU journals
  • cost, including the quarterly, is high relative to other journals

• Contributing Challenges identified in emails/telecon notes:
  • scientists in the field perhaps either do not have the time to publish the applications of their research or it's not a priority?
  • the quarterly somewhat over-shadows the journal? a casual poll reveals that some scientists aren't aware there are two distinct, but linked publications
  • increasing the visibility of the journal can result in increased subscriptions to the Quarterly, which increases costs.
  • authors of non-technical articles may not continue to write for the journal/quarterly if their writings will no longer reach the decision makers and policy folks that the quarterly has reached in the past.

• AGU/Wiley assets about to be in place that can be leveraged:
  • iPad App soon available for SWJ.  Once synced with institutional account, downloads and reading can happen anywhere for 3 months. The app provides an HTML view of the content and can be organized by special section.  One can browse by issue or by just released articles. Note that the quarterly is currently produced in a manner which limits the ability to participate in this rollout of journal aps.
  • Wiley is working on redesign for journal WWW sites including flexible "widgets" that can be used to increase cross-referencing between journals and/or special collections.  One new feature will be a "special collections" feature than can pull and organize content across journals and include options for a cover, TOC, and introduction.  These can have guest editors and should be able to be released as individual aps or ebooks.  These can also be printed on-demand.

• Questions (summarized from emails and meeting notes):
  • What should the business model for the Space Weather Journal be?  Should move to open access with author fee? How can the commentary pieces be supported under that model? 
  • Is there a need for editorial scope change?  How can we better enforce the distinctions to the science research journals such as Radio Science and JGR Space Physics?
  • How should the Quarterly evolve? Should the content expand to highlight related content published in other journals?
  • Is a separate composition/production stream necessary for the Quarterly?  Can we use the production stream created for the new virtual journals to streamline production and enable electronic access? 
  • How to best balance the business model for the quarterly?  What should be the proportion of print versus electronic access?  Should we renew sponsored development and printing?  How do the necessary writing professionals get their support?
  • During this time of transition, how can we best support a continuous stream of the highest quality space weather research papers AND the important news that our stakeholders need to have presented to them? Can we put some attention on the journal/quarterly to better aid the editors in meeting the current production schedule and to smoothly transition into a new production environment?

Space Weather Journal:

Proposed update for the website:  Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications is an online publication devoted to the field of space weather and its impact on the design and operations of technical and engineered systems, including telecommunications, electric power, and satellite navigation. The journal’s readers include engineers, system operators, systems designers, space weather forecasters, space weather modelers, as well as the research community.  

Since the era of development of the initial electrical telegraph systems in the early 19th century, the solar-terrestrial environment has influenced the design and operations of ever-increasing and sophisticated technical systems. James Van Allen reported in 1958 that the space environment around the Earth was not benign, but rather composed of high-intensity radiation. Engineers and scientists immediately recognized from this discovery that technical systems such as the communications satellites envisioned by Arthur Clark and John Pierce would require design and operations procedures (and therefore costs) that had not been otherwise anticipated. Space Weather addresses these and all engineered systems that are affected by solar-produced processes, from ground currents in electrical grids, communication cables, and pipelines, to GPS navigation to HF radio propagation.

Space Weather is a research resource that also provides news and information for space weather professionals. Space Weather publishes:

• peer-reviewed articles presenting the latest engineering and science research in the field, including studies of the response of technical systems to specific space weather events, predictions of detrimental space weather impacts, and effects of natural radiation on aerospace systems;

• feature articles that describe specialized topics in space weather, from history to new developments to national activities to interviews with space weather professionals. Feature Articles are 2000 words in length and can contain three figures;

• news articles and book reviews. News articles provide up-to-date coverage of government agency initiatives worldwide and space weather activities of the commercial sector. These articles can be 500 to 1000 words and can contain one figure;

• letters and opinion articles offering an exchange of ideas; these articles are 500 words or less;

• editorial comments on current issues facing the community.

From the First Issue: The primary goal of Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications is to promote communication among scientists, engineers, technicians, science administrators, and space weather policy makers in a way that leads to continuous improvement in the nation's ability to mitigate space environment hazards to technical systems on the ground and in space.

Currently on the website: Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications is an online publication devoted to the emerging field of space weather and its impact on technical systems, including telecommunications, electric power, and satellite navigation.
Space Weather is a research resource that also provides news and information for space weather professionals. Space Weather publishes:

• peer-reviewed articles presenting the latest engineering and science research in the field, including studies of the response of technical systems to specific space weather events,predictions of detrimental space weather impacts, and effects of natural radiation on aerospace systems;
• news and feature articles providing up-to-date coverage of government agency initiatives worldwide and space weather activities of the commercial sector;
• letters and opinion articles offering an exchange of ideas; and
• editorial comments on current issues facing the community. 

Space Weather is published by the American Geophysical Union and is co-sponsored by the International Space Environment Service (ISES). A digest of the online publication, Space Weather Quarterly (ISSN 1539-4964), is distributed four times a year free of charge.

Space Weather Quarterly:

From the first Issue:  Space Weather Quarterly is a digest of selected articles published online in Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications. 

A copy (or derivative) of the original press release (can't find the original).

Currently on the website: Space Weather Quarterly is a free, subscription-based print publication devoted to the impacts of space weather on technical systems, including telecommunications, electric power, radiation effects on space electronics, and satellite navigation. Space Weather Quarterly is a digest published by the American Geophysical Union that supports the journal, Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications, which addresses the applications of space research findings and results to practical problems that face numerous government and industry entities that design and operate technical systems that are known to be influenced and affected by processes in the solar-terrestrial environment. Space Weather also publishes models of various solar system processes, as well as more integrated models, that are addressed to predictions and forecasts of solar and geomagnetic disturbances that impact technical systems.

The Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate (SWSC) is an international multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open access journal which publishes papers on all aspects of space weather and space climate from a broad range of scientific and technical fields including solar physics, space plasma physics, aeronomy, planetology, radio science, geophysics, biology, medicine, astronautics, aeronautics, electrical engineering, meteorology, climatology, mathematics, economy, informatics.  An online, open access electronic journal published by EDP Sciences, Les Ulis Cedex, France.  Five paper and an editorial were published in 2011; 22 papers were published in 2012; and 30 papers and an editorial have been published thus far in 2013.

One person suggested that if the Space Weather Journal was no longer available or combined so as to diffuse its identity, then JSWSC would become their journal of choice for operational space weather articles.