New Editors for JGR Space Physics

The editor search for JGR Space Physics is done and the search committee has selected two new editors for the journal: Natalia Ganushkina and Viviane Pierrard. These two are highly qualified for the role and the final decision was quite difficult. We think that they will serve the space physics research community very well. With my amazing photo-editing powers, I have added them to our group picture:

            Remember that AGU is rapidly approaching its 100-year birthday in 2019, and there are many plans for celebrating this existence milestone. I have appointed one of the JGR Space Physics editors as the coordinator of our Centennial activities – Larry Kepko. So, he has been pulling back from “normal” editing assignments in order to arrange our Grand Challenge paper set and organize a collection of historic perspectives from and about the pioneers of space physics. I think that Dr. Ganushkina will be picking up a lot of this workload of manuscripts on the outer magnetosphere and tail, storm physics, and substorms.

We also receive many submissions on inner magnetospheric topics, especially the radiation belts. Dr. Balikhin and I handle most of these manuscripts, but the volume is large. Because we also cover papers in other disciplines within the journal scope, this is heavy load. In addition, I would like to do more of my editor-in chief duties that sometimes get the short end of my attention, like long-range strategic planning, publications policy discussions, and communication (like paper publicity and this blog). Plus, I am now an editor liaison on the AGU Meetings Committee, which is a very interesting position but takes additional time. I think that Dr. Pierrard will be picking up a lot of the rebalanced workload of inner magnetospheric manuscripts. She will also help us better connect with the solar physics community.

The biggest selection criteria applied by the search committee were expertise in their research field, demonstrated reviewing excellence or editorial experience, and an editorial philosophy that blends well with the existing team. The search committee also took into account geographical, disciplinary, gender, and racial diversity/breadth in their decision. In fact, AGU is making a concerted effort to increase representation of women on its journal editorial boards, and JGR Space Physics was one of only two AGU journals with an all-male editor crew. The search committee happily included this criterion in its deliberations.

Note that these two new editors are being appointed for 4 years, so they will continue to serve after I rotate off late next year, when my term as EiC ends along with the terms of the 4 other editors. This timing is intentional in order to ensure some editorial continuity between EiC terms.

We had many excellent candidates and, I would like to reiterate, it was a very difficult decision to select only two. AGU does not limit the size of our board but the search committee made the downselect to the originally-advertised two positions so that the next EiC has some flexibility in selecting new editors for their team. There are definitely some in the candidate pool that I will be encouraging to apply for the EiC or Editor positions that will open up in a year or so.