<i>Weed Research</i> – our aims and editorial policies

One of the aims of the Editorial Board of Weed Research is to help authors with publishing the best weed science. Towards the end of 2014, the Author Guidelines for Weed Research that are hosted online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291365-3180/homepage/ForAuthors.html and are printed in each issue of the journal were revised. Most of the changes were minor, but discussions within the Editorial Board and correspondence with authors indicate that an explanation of journal policies would be helpful and timely. The aim of this editorial is therefore to present the aims of the journal and the expectations the Editorial Board have in regard to papers the journal should be publishing. This should help authors, particularly in assessing the reasons why papers are not accepted for publication. A number of passages in this editorial are taken directly from the Author Guidelines and are given in italics. In 2014, the journal received the highest number of submissions ever, and whilst submission rates in 2015 have dropped back, it is clear that a significant number of papers are rejected without external review. We explore the reasons for this, in terms of journal policies, with the aim of helping potential authors. The Editor-in-Chief (EiC) and the Editorial Board have two critical roles. First, they must uphold the quality and scientific and ethical integrity of this international journal. Secondly, they seek to help authors to communicate the best science. Balancing these roles is not easy, but if successful, it will ensure that the journal will continue to be the leading weed science journal across the globe. In addition to providing comments on submissions to authors, editors will strive to handle papers as quickly as possible, whilst conducting peer review rigorously. The average time to first decision was 67 days for papers submitted in 2014 and the board will be aiming to reduce this time, so authors can progress their scripts quickly. The aim of the journal is to publish the best weed science from around the globe and to be the journal of choice for weed science researchers. This sentence captures exactly our aims of attracting and publishing the best weed science research. So, we seek new work, innovative research and critically we expect papers to be sufficiently robust that the results can be generalised beyond the experimental conditions used. The factors that are taken into account in accepting a manuscript are summarised as follows: originality, relevance, scientific rigour and the clarity of presentation. Aspects of these factors are discussed further below, but it may be useful to outline the four different types of manuscript that Weed Research now publishes. The journal publishes Original Research papers, Reviews, Methods and Insights. We will also publish Priority papers, where the review and editing process has been expedited, to bring important work with time-sensitive results into the public domain. This could apply to any of the four types of paper. Most submissions are Original Research papers and the comments within this editorial are particularly addressed at such manuscripts. However, there are particular requirements for the other three types of paper. We encourage the submission of review papers, but these need to be more than a simple gathering of information on a topic. Review papers should critically evaluate the subject area and identify new conclusions and gaps in knowledge, rather than simply presenting summaries of previous work. Papers may be longer than research articles at the discretion of the editors. To go further, a review should have explicit aims and objectives against which the conclusions can be evaluated. For example, this could be to critically evaluate breakthroughs in a topic area or to identify gaps in research. Methods papers should be prepared as original research articles. These should evaluate new techniques against existing methods, where possible, so that any advantages or disadvantages are clear. A new method may be interesting, but if it is not compared with existing approaches or at least carefully put in to context, its relevance may be too low for Weed Research. Insights papers have been published in the journal for eight years, but they are not straight forward. Whilst many authors think these are short communications, that is with small pieces of research, this is not the aim the Editorial Board has for such articles. These articles were introduced to increase the immediacy impact rating of the journal. Our Guidelines state The journal will accept short Insights articles up to 2500 words in total covering personal views, new methods and breaking news in weed science. These articles may cover scientific opinions, new methods or proof-of-concepts, as well as important and topical pieces of research that require further validation. Key criteria are that the content is of wide interest to weed scientists, is novel and is likely to significantly advance weed science. Thus, short pieces of work may be suitable, but only if it can be demonstrated that the work is of wide interest and likely to lead to significant scientific advances. A small study of limited interest will not succeed. Opinion pieces with good scientific evidence and argument and that elicit reactions amongst reviewers are more likely to be published. We suggest that authors considering reviews or Insights papers contact the Editor-in-Chief with a summary of the paper for comment. ‘Original and innovative research papers relevant to weed biology, ecology and management are sought. There should be sufficient material presented so that the information is of wider interest than just for local conditions’. What does original and innovative mean? Most journals demand ‘novelty’, meaning that the work has not been done before and that is certainly the case with Weed Research. Generally, we expect to see new data with new or extended approaches. But what about old approaches on new species or new situations? This is an area of some subjectivity, but if one can say ‘this confirms someone else's results’ throughout a manuscript, it is unlikely to be novel findings and is likely to be rejected. Further than that, the journal is not looking to catalogue information and certainly does not aim to house all the information on every weed in every situation. As editors, we are looking for work that advances weed science, so using tried and tested approaches is unlikely to bring new insights. Ask the question: Why should this work be of interest to and important for weed scientists in other countries? We often ask that the end of the summary closes with sentences that capture the implications of the reported results (note that speculation is to be avoided) for (a) weed science theory and/or (b) practical weed management. If these can be clearly articulated, the sentences usually express why the paper is important for an international audience and confirm the originality of the work. Authors should aim to convince the editor of the importance of their work in a global context. This is a key area that seems to be a problem in many submissions to the journal. The aims and scope states there should be sufficient material presented so that the information is of wider interest than just for local conditions. Thus, single experiments are unlikely to be acceptable. Research should cover sufficient temporal and spatial variation to be able to make sound generalisations. For example, evaluation of herbicide efficacy should be over more than one year at more than one site or soil type. Editors will evaluate amounts of work on a case by case basis, checking that a design provides a robust test of the hypothesis in question. Appropriate replication is the key, so authors need to consider how temporal and/or spatial variation is addressed. A simple question to ask is ‘Would the same results occur if the work was repeated elsewhere (locally, regionally, nationally or globally), or repeated in a different season or year?’ If a paper cannot safely provide some insight into such considerations, we are unlikely to accept. For most laboratory and glasshouse studies, we expect experiments to be repeated and for there to be clarity (with evidence provided) in how the repeated data are analysed. Of course, there are many exceptions, for example where single experiments are used to generate parameters for modelling studies that form the main focus of a paper. A series of experiments that develop insights into a particular question also may not require replication. Thus, editors will evaluate manuscripts individually. The Editor-in-Chief makes a series of checks on a manuscript to see that it is of sufficient merit for further review. The paper needs to be novel, innovative and with sufficient material to provide evidence of robust results. The EiC cannot be an expert on every subject, so if they are uncertain, the paper will be allocated to a Subject Editor, who will carry out similar evaluations. All papers allocated to Subject Editors are checked using the iThenticate software for plagiarism. At this stage, papers may be returned to authors, most often if the paper is outside the scope of the journal, the manuscript has not been prepared in the journal style, there is insufficient material or the content is such that it does not merit the time and academic commitment provided by reviewers. The policies in regard to novelty and amounts of work in a manuscript are applied to all submissions. The Editorial Board has concerns over repeating particular approaches, which could be viewed as cataloguing. Examples include studies of germination conditions and dormancy, and three further examples are mentioned below and in the Aims and Scope of the journal, to illustrate the point. The journal will only take papers that investigate allelopathy under field-like conditions. The journal will now only take papers on allelopathy that advance the science into the real world. There have been many hundreds of studies and submissions describing the effects of plant extracts on seed germination in Petri dishes. So far as we are aware, not a single practical development in weed management has resulted from all this work, reflecting the fact that interactions in the rhizosphere are complex and bear little if any relation to conditions in Petri dishes. Thus, we expect work submitted to the journal to include studies in soil and also to consider mechanisms. Cases of herbicide resistance should be novel and demonstrate clear conceptual advances in the field of resistance research. Cataloguing cases of resistance in species with a known propensity for resistance evolution with resistance-prone herbicides, whilst important for informing local weed management decisions, is not sufficiently novel for publication. An Insights article published a few years ago (Neve, 2007) closed with a plea for testing new hypotheses, over cataloguing resistance in new species or locations. The journal policy echoes this by looking for new developments and new mechanisms, over simply reporting new cases of resistance. We accept that knowing resistance is developing is important for local weed management, but reporting new cases of existing resistance mechanisms is not usually sufficient for publication. There have been a series of papers in the journal reporting the likely distributions of species based on climate envelopes. These modelling approaches have provided some fascinating insight into potential weed distributions under changing climate conditions (e.g. Kriticos et al., 2011; McConnachie et al., 2011). The models that have been used, such as CLIMEX and MAXENT, could be applied to every weed, where there is sufficient data. However, we are at the stage when such studies are becoming a cataloguing exercise, so we now require that predictions of the effect of climate change on species distributions should go beyond output from simple models. There are other factors that affect occurrence that need to take the science forward. These three areas should be taken as examples of where the Editorial Board deem that the science is moving into a cataloguing stage and that the journal should take care that its papers move the science forward. There are a number of other areas where the board may reject on the grounds of lack of novelty, repetition and lack of scientific interest. As the journal of the European Weed Research Society, it should be understood that the majority of editors and authors have English, the language of the journal, as a second or third language. The board and the EiC are mindful that writing in a second language is difficult and perhaps the greatest challenge to the majority of scientists. However, clarity of the writing is essential. The object of publishing a paper is to communicate accurately the work that has been done, not to obscure the work with complicated expression. The policy of the board and the EiC is guided by the strength of the science within a submission. If the writing is poor, but the science is strong, then editors will try to help authors during the review process. However, if the writing is poor and the science is not very exciting, then papers are unlikely to be sent for external review and will be rejected. There are many editing services available, both free and commercial, that can help with editing. However, we often recommend that authors ask a native English speaker, preferably a weed scientist, to help with editing a paper prior to submission. A further aspect of presentation is the journal style. Each journal has a particular style, including how references are presented. Whilst submitting in the correct style may seem a minor issue, please consider that if the paper is accepted, the EiC could spend hours making final adjustments for style. If you can put the manuscript in the correct style at the outset, using the Word template file provided online with the Author Guidelines and bibliographic software for references, such as EndNote, then the editors are more likely to not make an initial rejection of the paper! The journal has a team of Statistical Consultants who provide support for the Editorial Board. The consultants are truly international, thus having a range of languages and their contact details can be found via the EiC. The Statistical Consultants can advise authors on statistical issues, but cannot analyse their data. The expectations in regard to the use and presentation of statistics in the journal have been published (Onofri et al., 2010). The paper is available as a free download from the journal homepage, and we recommend that it should be consulted by all authors. Please take care to present appropriate measures of error with data in tables and figures, so that readers can apply their own tests of significance. In general, we are unlikely to publish percentage data without the raw data analysed alongside and editors will look for appropriate replication to support general conclusions. The journal is seeking to publish the best weed science research that will become highly cited and maintain the impact of Weed Research. This editorial aims to highlight what editors are looking for in manuscripts, in terms of novelty, amount of work, clarity of writing and presentation, which will satisfy our aims. Published work needs to be new, and there needs to be enough to make at least some safe generalisation of the results. Are the results relevant beyond the experimental conditions? Work that is adding to a catalogue of results is unlikely to succeed. If you are unsure about scope or content, do email the EiC with a summary of the paper for comment. In preparing a paper, get the paper checked and edited by colleagues before submission. Use the correct journal style, so that you do not waste the time of the editors during revision. In return, the board will strive to handle papers quickly and to provide a sound peer review service. If authors require clarification or comment prior to submission, feel free to contact the Editor-in-Chief. Harald Albrecht, TUM, Germany Karen Bailey, Canada Lammert Bastiaans, WUR, The Netherlands Diego Batlla, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina Christian Bohren, Agroscope, Switzerland Graeme Bourdôt, AgResearch, New Zealand David Clements, Trinity Western University, Canada Henri Darmency, INRA, France Adam Davis, USDA-ARS, USA Christophe Délye, INRA, France Rob Freckleton, Sheffield, UK Guillaume Fried, Anses, France Claudio Ghersa, IFEVA UBA-CONICET, Argentina José Gonzalez-Andujar, CSIC, Spain Paul Hatcher, Reading, UK Pietro Iannetta, James Hutton Institute, UK Corné Kempenaar, WUR, The Netherlands Do-Soon Kim, Seoul, Korea Per Kudsk, Aarhus University, Denmark Matt Liebman, Iowa, USA Bert Lotz, WUR, The Netherlands Anna-Camilla Moonen, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa, Italy Paul Neve, Rothamsted Research, UK Stephen Novak, Boise, USA Lisa Rew, Montana, USA Brian Schutte, New Mexico State, Las Cruces, USA Richard Smith, University of New Hampshire, USA Jonathan Storkey, Rothamsted Research, UK Clarence Swanton, Guelph, Canada Francesco Tei, Perugia, Italy Maurizio Vurro, CNR Bari, Italy Paula Westerman, Rostock, Germany Peter Zwerger, JKI, Germany Raúl Macchiavelli (UPRM, Puerto Rico) Martin Mortimer (Liverpool, UK) Andrea Onofri (Perugia, Italy) Hans-Peter Piepho (Hohenheim, Germany)

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