Guidelines for Authors, Editors, and Reviewers

This statement was adopted by the Council of the American Meteorological Society on 22 September 2010. It was largely derived from guidelines that were published by the American Chemical Society and were also adopted by the American Geophysical Union. Publications Commissioner David Jorgensen deserves a lot of credit for bringing these guidelines to the Council. […]

Who wrote the first abstract in a scientific journal article?

I have often wondered how we came to the modern scientific article. One question that I had that I researched, but was unable to turn up anything on was who started the boldface and italics in the reference format for journal volume number and journal name (varies by discipline and by journal). One question that […]

History of the Scientific Article

I just finished reading a fascinating book, if you are interested in the history of how scientific literature came to be. It’s called Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present by Gross, Harmon, and Reidy. As the book describes, previous studies of the literature have focused on specific periods, regions, […]

Where to publish case studies in meteorology

Dr. Alexander Keul of Salzburg University asked me whether any journals were publishing case studies in meteorology. What was interesting was that I had received another question or two along these lines recently. Seemed like an opportunity to blog. I would argue that there are two extremes of what one might call “case studies.” On […]

Publishing the Same Work in Two Languages

In one of the workshops I was teaching, I was asked whether it was acceptable to publish the same article twice in two different languages. I was a bit stumped as to what to say. Keith Seitter, the Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society, was able to provide a great answer to this question. […]

Should reviews be anonymous?

Probably ever since peer review started, authors have complained about it. If the process were started today, would it take on the same form? Probably not, but what form would it take? Would reviewers continue to be anonymous? As my career has developed, a greater percentage of my reviews over time have been nonanonymous, but […]

Should I Write Multiple-Part Papers?

As editor and reviewer, I am often confronted by authors writing multiple-part manuscripts—linked manuscripts that have the titles something like this: “The Springfield Blizzard on 12 November 1978. Part 1: Observations” “The Springfield Blizzard on 12 November 1978. Part 2: Modeling.” These types of manuscripts rarely review well.  Reviewers typically offer suggestions on where bloated […]

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