This past year has been another exciting year for Weed Science. The publishing industry, like many other areas of society, is undergoing rapid change. Through the changes and challenges, the journal remains strong because of authors, reviewers, and editorial board members. We appreciate the efforts of all to continue submitting and reviewing submissions. We are always appreciative of the efforts of reviewers and associate editors.
Weed Science continues to be one of the premier journals in the discipline and in the agronomic sciences. The editorial board and the staff strive to improve the efficiency of the publication process and improve the scope of the journal. Weed Science seeks to publish more reviews and symposium articles. For the coming year, we have should have a review lined up for every issue and hope to expand the 2015 special issue on research methods.
I want to highlight a couple of initiatives underway. First, we are still exploring the possibility of adding graphical abstracts to the journal. Second, I would like to point out to those who may not be aware that Weed Science like the other WSSA journals is a what we call a hybrid journal and does publish open access articles. There is a growing trend toward publishing in the open access format, and our data show articles published open access tend to have more downloads, social media mentions, and citations over time. In Weed Science, the number of articles published open access has grown substantially in the past year. In Volume 70, Issue 1, 6/15 articles were open access. Issue 4, which will be released soon after I write this, will have 15/16 articles published open access. This trend has been accelerated by Read and Publish agreements that Cambridge University Press has made with university and other research libraries around the world. If your university has a Read and Publish agreement with Cambridge University Press, the price to the author for publication is substantially reduced. To learn more and to see if your organization has a Read and Publish agreement, please check this site: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/open-access-policies/waivers-discounts.
For the 12 months preceding October 1, 2022, 179 manuscripts were submitted to Weed Science compared with 197 and 222 for 2021 and 2020, respectively. We are concerned about the drop in submissions and are actively searching for solutions. Of the manuscripts submitted, 69.8% were accepted compared with 68.2% the previous year. The time from submission to first decision was 40.7 days this past year compared with 38.5 days for the previous year.
The impact factor for Weed Science decreased slightly from 2.713 to 2.580 for this past year and the 5-year impact factor decreased from 2.868 to 2.818. Although down a bit, the journal is still near a record-high impact factor.
For the year preceding October 1, 2022, the journal depended on 233 unique reviewers. The excellent reputation of the journal would not be possible without the cutting-edge research submitted by authors and the diligent work of the editorial board and the hundreds of referred reviews that are submitted annually. I wish to thank the members of the editorial board and reviewers for 2022.
Editorial Board 2022
Muthukumar V. Bagavathiannan
Nicholas Basinger
Nathan Boyd
Caio Brunharo
Ian Burke
Carlene Chase
Bhagirath Chauhan
Sharon Clay
Timothy L. Grey
Erin Haramoto
Prashant Jha
Mithila Jugulam
Vipan Kumar
Ramon Leon
Gulshan Mahajan
Sara Martin
Chris Preston
Dean Riechers
Hilary Sandler
Debalin Sarangi
Patrick J. Tranel
Te-Ming Paul Tseng
Martin M. Williams II
Weed Science Reviewers 2022
Albert Adjesiwor
Sharif Ahmed
Alla Aleksanyan
Edith B. Allen
Vijaya Bhaskar Alwarnaidu Vijayarajan
Rouhollah Amini
Nicholas Arneson
Matt Anthony Bahm
Shawn Askew
James Baird
Ali Ahsan Bajwa
Mohamed Balah
Suma Basak
Carol Baskin
Pawan Basnet
Shawn C. Beam
Roger L. Becker
Mark Lee Bernards
Matthew Bertucci
Thierry E. Besançon
Mandy Danielle Bish
Lucas Kopecky Bobadilla
Louis Gregory Boddy
Christian Bohren
Melissa Brazier-Hicks
Simon Brooks
John Tyler Buol
Erin Burns
Manuel E. Camacho
Caio Antonio Carbonari
José Luiz Carvalho de Souza Dias
Andrea Cavalieri
Alexander R. Ceseski
Gurinderbir S. Chahal
Buddhika Sampath Chamara
Aman Chandi
Rakesh S. Chandran
Bruno Chauvel
Michael J. Christoffers
Jed B. Colquhoun
Nubia Maria Correia
Ivan Cuvaca
Caleb D. Dalley
Christos Damalas
Oleg Daugovish
Pratap Devkota
Katherine H. Diehl
Antonio DiTommaso
David Lee Dornbos Jr
Kayla Eason
Alyssa Essman
J. Connor Ferguson
Luiz Ferreira
Jason Ferrell
Michael L. Flessner
Karla Gage
Nalin Gama-Arachchige
Zahoor A. Ganie
Charles M. Geddes
Amar S. Godar
Rakesh Kumar Godara
Danica Goggin
Robin Gomez
Clebson G. Gonçalves
Greta Gramig
W. James Grichar
Dustin Haines
Devin Hammer
Steven C. Haring
Nick T. Harre
Howard Harrison
Marshall Hay
Gerald Matthew Henry
Jerri Lynn Henry
Erin C. Hill
Cynthia Huebner
Joseph T. Ikley
Lynn Ingegneri
Suphannika Intanon
Satoshi Iwakami
Katherine M. Jennings
Joe Johnson
Christine Kenter
Eshagh Keshtkar
Jin-Won Kim
Nicholas E. Korres
Martin Laforest
Christopher Allen Landau
Olivia Landau
Erik A. Lehnhoff
Meng Li
Steve Li
Matt Liebman
Ginger G. Light
John L. Lindquist
Rui Liu
Xiangying Liu
Carolyn J. Lowry
Drew Lyon
Rasool Mahdavi
Mohit Mahey
Mary Catherine Martin
Joseph H. Massey
Maor Matzrafi
Cara L. McCauley
Joseph Scott McElroy
Andrew G. McKenzie-Gopsill
Mohsen B. Mesgaran
Muhamad Shakirin Mispan
David Monks
Dawn Elise Mooney
Marcelo L. Moretti
Brent Murphy
Richard Napier
Paul Neve
Dennis Calvin Odero
Sara Ohadi
Maxwel Coura Oliveira
Nawaporn Onkokesung
A. Onofri
O. Adewale Osipitan
Eric Robert Page
Lang Pan
Balaji Pandian
Eric Patterson
Ronald Edward Peachey
Thomas Peters
Kristina Polziehn
Timothy S. Prather
Jamal R. Qasem
Emilie E. Regnier
Manuel Reigosa
Marzieh Rezaei
Leonardo F. Rocha
Jonne Rodenburg
Marvin E. Ruffner
Debalina Saha
Ravneet Kaur Sandhu
Bishwa Sapkota
Bradley Sartain
Margot Schulz
Lauren M. Schwartz-Lazaro
Shaun Michael Sharpe
David R. Shaw
Lovreet Singh Shergill
Chandrima Shyam
David Simpson
Mandeep Singh
Vijay Singh
Daniel H. Smith
Stephen Smith
Gayle J. Somerville
Yao-Bin Song
Lynn Sosnoskie
Benjamin Patrick Sperry
Kurt Spokas
Shandrea Stallworth
Tracy M. Sterling
Emily Stratford
Harry John Strek
Seth A. Strom
Nithya Subramanian
Hudson K. Takano
Mark Thorne
Olivia Todd
Ilias S. Travlos
Roman Boris Vercellino
John M. Wallace
Sarah Ward
Anna Westbrook
James H. Westwood
Scott Neil White
Alice Ann Wright
Dong-Hong Wu
Ramawatar Yadav
Inacio Yano
Carla Yerkes
Jialin Yu
Mauricio Zanovello Schuster