Jeff

A Scientific Neighborhood

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At some point, very early in our meteorological education, we learn that the atmosphere, the oceans—and thus weather and climate everywhere—are inextricably linked across the globe. Your weather is my weather, no matter where you live and where I live.
Weather makes us all neighbors—partners in science across vast distances. The idea is indelibly etched in our science. It was alive as early as Benjamin Franklin, writing to his brother hundreds of miles away to ask if the weather in Boston bore any relation to the weather in Philadelphia. It pervades the insights of Edward Lorenz, who taught that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil might be the trigger for a tornado in Texas.
The neighbor principle of weather drives discovery and propels the dramatic improvement in forecasting and understanding we continue to witness. We see this ethos in the free exchange of data and sharing of resources to build our Global Observing System. We see it when Europeans and Japanese move their satellites to help us cover gaps in our observing, and when Americans do the same for them. In science and saving lives, we are neighbors, across thousands of miles of ocean.
The good neighbor spirit was alive and well at an AMS Annual Meeting Town Hall on U.S.-International Partnerships this month. The panel featured representatives from AMS, the World Meteorological Organization, and the meteorological societies of China, Japan, South Korea—people who traveled half a world from their families to be with us. They came together to tout the value of close international collaborations. At the Town Hall, it was clear why scientists seek opportunities to confer with each other, across borders. “We need to learn from each other,” the panelists agreed.
Last week the AMS joined 170 other professional, academic, and scientific organizations in signing a letter to President Trump. The letter warned that the Executive Order issued on January 27 regarding visas and immigration has “profound implications for diplomatic, humanitarian, and national security interests, in part because of the negative impact on U.S. science and engineering capacity.”
The letter points out that

In order to remain the world leader in advancing scientific knowledge and innovations, the U.S. science and technology enterprise must continue to capitalize on the international and multi-cultural environment within which it operates.

AMS has been doing more and more to recognize the reality of that international and multi-cultural environment in our disciplines. This reality has a long history. Franklin’s ideas on lightning were quickly celebrated in Europe, for example. And the founder of modern weather services in our country, Cleveland Abbe, encouraged translations of seminal European papers in the pages of Monthly Weather Review, a journal he founded in 1872 to make domestic meteorologists aware of relevant scientific innovations. Throughout the early 20th century revolution of scientific weather forecasting, major advances came through exchanges of scientists traveling to Europe, and from Europeans scientists who came to the United States. Nearly every American in the AMS can trace their personal scientific “lineage” to trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific exchanges of this kind.
Today, AMS continues this neighborliness of science—through cooperative agreements with societies in Canada, China, Europe, and India and elsewhere, through the programming of its meetings, and through the pages of its widely read journals. Take the latest Annual Meeting: more than 500 attendees came from outside the United States. Look at the latest issue of AMS’s Journal of Climate: fully half of the 50 authors listed there are affiliated with institutions of other countries. A large number of the other half were educated, at least in part, in overseas institutions. Scientific talent, innovative ideas, professional heritage—all flow across the globe as necessarily as wind and water.
This international environment is the scientific neighborhood in which we live. It is one critical reason that AMS and its cosigners offered the President their assistance in “crafting an immigration and visa policy that ensures strong borders while staying true to foundational American principles as a nation of immigrants.”
 
 
 

AMS Editors Discuss Peer Review

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Fundamentally, peer review is critical to the proper functioning of science, and yet there can be surprising variations in the subtle variations of what editors are looking for and how they select reviewers and make decisions.
Today at the Publications Workshop of the Annual Meeting, several AMS journal editors will gather in a panel (Room 604, 12:15 PM) to answer your questions about the how’s and why’s of the peer review process.
The editors exploring their common views and differences are: Tony Broccoli, of the Journal of Climate; Walt Robinson, of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences; Carolyn Reynolds and Yvette Richardson of Monthly Weather Review; and Jeff Rosenfeld, of BAMS.
Snacks will be provided, and there will be discount coupons of MWR Chief Editor Dave Schultz’s book, Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker, & Atmospheric Scientist for those attending. The book can be purchased at the Resource Center.
To get a head start on some of themes the panel will address, the AMS recorded two interviews–one with Schultz and Weather, Climate, and Society Chief Editor Amanda Lynch–about the role of peer review for two contrasting journals:
Interview with David Schultz:

 
Interview with Amanda Lynch:

The Paths to Observing Are Paved with Innovation

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Every journey begins somewhere—sometimes all you need to do is start heading down a path.
blog_logo_final_all_caps_updateThis year AMS Past-President Fed Carr has given our Annual Meeting a destination: a comprehensive consideration of our observing needs. He’s also given us a place to embark on our journey: the Presidential Forum this morning (9 AM, Ballroom 6ABC) in which moderator Vanda Grubišić and her distinguished panel take us on a guided tour of our community’s capabilities and a glimpse of the multidisciplinary realms just beyond our reach.
He’s given us everything but the actual path. That choice is yours.
One option that beckons right from the Forum is the path of innovative platforms and systems that continually expand the ways we observe. It’s a path that travels across land, through air and water. It requires vehicles of all kinds and sizes, and takes your quest through every byway of modeling, theory, services, products, and yes, even observations, in search of our observational needs for the future .
Let’s look at a few of the milestones along the path of alternative observing, if you choose to take it.
Roadways themselves are paths, of course, and the Annual Meeting will showcase the new ways roads are a vital part of observing. On Tuesday (9:15 AM), Jeremy Paul Duensing of Schneider Electric will examine the success of Alberta Transportation’s road weather sensor network. One of the largest intelligent road observing systems in North America, this network features sensors taking 100 readings per second directly on vehicles.
Also on Tuesday, at 9:30 AM, Amanda Anderson of NCAR will review the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s project to collect weather (and other) data from internet-connected vehicles traveling on the state’s portion of I-80, which is prone to all sorts of hazardous conditions from blizzards to wildfires.
Meanwhile, the Oklahoma DOT combines a roadside weather information system with modeling and GIS visualization software to monitor road icing hazards. Benjamin Toms of the University of Oklahoma will discuss this system on Tuesday at 11:15 AM.
Our emerging technologies pathway extends skyward, too. On Wednesday at 9:45 AM, learn more from Djamal Khelif of the University of California, Irvine, about the Controlled Towed Vehicle (CTV), which utilizes improved towed-drone technology to measure spatial and temporal variability of sea surface temperatures, wind, temperature, and humidity, as well as turbulent air-sea fluxes from observations made as low as eight meters.
Range into space as well—you no longer need big, complicated satellites to get there. On Wednesday at 8:45 AM, as William Blackwell of MIT Lincoln Laboratory explores the capabilities of CubeSats in microwave high-resolution atmospheric remote sensing. James Clemmons of The Aerospace Corporation will investigate the potential uses of CubeSats in space weather research on Monday at 4:30 PM .
The path even extends onto and into the water. On Monday at 4 PM, Maricarmen Guerra Paris of the University of Washington will review a project that utilizes ferries equipped with Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers to provide full-depth profiles of currents and distinguish tidal currents adjacent to Puget Sound.
The Annual Meeting is full of such unconventional paths—paths of invention paving the way to observation. It’s time to make the choice and your journey.

We Want Your Thoughts on Observational Needs

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by Fred Carr, AMS Past President
Dear Paper and Poster Presenters at the AMS Annual Meeting,
As you know, the theme of the 2017 AMS Annual Meeting is “Observations Lead the Way.” Even though there are several conferences, symposia and sessions dedicated to identifying the greatest observational needs in many disciplines within the weather, water and climate community, we want the advice of all presenters in the 42 conferences and symposia comprising this year’s Annual Meeting.
blog_logo_final_all_caps_updateThe intent is to obtain a community consensus on what observations we need to advance our research, applications, products and services. This information, hopefully from you and the 2000 other presenters at this meeting, will be organized and summarized

  • to write an article for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society on our community’s consensus on the greatest observational needs across the weather, water, and climate enterprise;
  • to create a document using the same data that would be presented to Federal and State agencies that support environmental measurements, platforms, and networks; and
  • to create a similar document tailored for policy makers, especially for Congress and their staff, to give them the community consensus they are often looking for.

To help us in this effort, we are asking you to create one slide or set of bullets near the end of your talk or poster that includes

  • observations (or networks) that are needed to benefit your future research, application or product development;
  • recommended instruments that are needed to make these observations;
  • your view on the greatest observational needs for your discipline in general.

If you have co-authors, please seek their opinions on these questions as well. We have signed up 100 student volunteers who will attend your sessions and help “harvest” and organize all of your recommendations in a form we can use for the aforementioned publications. I also encourage all poster presenters to upload an image of their poster to the Presenter’s Corner.
I hope you decide to assist us in this very important effort to improve our nation’s observing capacity. Thank you!
Fred Carr
President, American Meteorological Society
 

Good Enough for Ethics

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At his blog, Living on the Real World, AMS Associate Executive Director William Hooke makes a compelling prediction for the next four years: Ethics will matter more than ever.
He’s not talking about politicians, necessarily. He’s talking about our ethics, as members of the atmospheric sciences community. His reasoning? Our capabilities in making predictions are getting that good:

In this high-stakes environment where the products and services we provide are the basis for action, ethics matter. When can and should a NWS field forecaster begin to act when numerical guidance appears to diverge from on-the-ground reality? What observations, products and services should be considered public goods? What can and should be privatized? What’s at stake with warn-on-forecast? To list these few examples doesn’t do justice to the dozens of ethical dimensions to the daily work of everyone in every corner of today’s Earth observations, science, and services community.

At the AMS Annual Meeting on Sunday, Tom Ackerman (meteorologist/climatologist) and Steve Gardiner (philosopher/ethicist) of the University of Washington will moderate a panel session on ethics (1:30 to 3:30 p.m.; Room 613).
Gardiner is the author of the book, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, in which he describes the way this environmental hazard combines many of the classic types of ethical dilemmas found separately in other threats to civil society. The challenges include incomplete knowledge and the uneven distribution of exposures to risk, incentives for action, and burdens of cost—across geography as well as economic classes and generations.
To get a taste of the discussions this week, try this lecture in which Gardiner shows how 200 years ago Jane Austen anticipated the perfect storm of ethical challenges of climate change.

Then follow up Sunday’s sessions by attending “Shades of Gray: Panel Discussion on Ethics, Law, and Uncertainty in the Weather, Water, and Climate Community,” on Wednesday (8:30 a.m., Room 613):

Though our Enterprise is indeed motivated by altruistic interests, ethical gray zones emerge. How confident are we in that climate model, and what should we disclose? Should we attempt to create a forecast beyond 7-14 days? What is the proper balance between providing information and urging action? The presentation of scientific uncertainty can be fraught with misinterpretation and resistance, particularly from non-scientists.

 

For Climate Science, Transitions Continue

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The Inauguration of Donald Trump yesterday marked the end of the Transition. Yet, the end of the Transition with a big “T” marks the beginning of small “t” transitions for everyone else—political winners and losers alike.
According to Reed College historian Joshua Howe, climate science is particularly affected by such changes, absorbing and adapting to shifts in political winds for many decades. The continually transitioning relationship climate science has forged with politics—especially environmental politics—is chronicled in Howe’s book, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming (Univ. of Washington Press, 2014).
As a past recipient of the AMS Graduate Fellowship in the History of Science, Howe presented the basics of his book at the 2009 AMS Annual Meeting. His dissertation was expanded into the book. In a recent interview at New Books Network (listen here), Howe explains how climate scientists have had to reinvent their approach to environmental advocacy. In Howe’s view, the approach politically active scientists took to triggering action on climate change simply didn’t work well, making the field ripe for further transition.
It was clear early on that climate change, as an environmental concern, was unprecedented in scale and complexity. Following on the debate in the 1970s over the nation’s Supersonic Transport program, atmospheric science had won a place at the environmental table. But environmentalists were used to dealing with local pollution and wilderness access—clear quality of life issues that resonated with their middle class constituency, Howe says. They were interested in concrete, simple, nontechnical issues they could rally around—and climate change was too complex to fit those parameters. Climate change wasn’t a low-hanging fruit ripe for political victories.
Meanwhile, the issue of nuclear winter provided a further, politically loaded impetus to the climate community, Howe said. But the result was a split, with some scientists becoming more politically outspoken within the environmental movement, while others became more entrenched within a conservative physical science community. As a result, the relationship of government funding to climate science became politically fraught.
Scientists initially reached out on climate change through the government agencies in the 1970s. Howe points out that “working within government bureaucracies left scientists vulnerable to political change.” The Carter administration shifted directions; Reagan then arrived with budget cuts and curtailed access to bureaucracy.
In response, many climate scientists sought a technical consensus that might force political action by the shear power of knowledge. The scientists attacking the problem in the 1970s onward had, as Howe puts it, a “naïve” attitude.
“Better knowledge, climate scientists believed, would lead to better policy,” Howe said in his 2009 AMS presentation. “Perhaps it is time for scientists to drop the false veil of political neutrality and begin discussing science and politics as two sides of the same coin.”
The AMS Annual Meeting in Seattle is an ideal opportunity to ponder the future of the atmospheric sciences during the next four years. Check out the Monday Town Hall on “Climate Change – How can we make this a national priority?” (12:15 p.m., Room 613). Then attend the panel session on priorities of the Trump Administration and Congress later that day (4 p.m., same room). The panelists include Ray Ban, Fern Gibbons, and Barry Lee Myers.

Thanks for Sharing

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by Jeff Rosenfeld, Editor in Chief, BAMS
One of the great challenges of parenthood is teaching kids how to share. All too often the stigmatizing message spreads amongst parents at your toddler’s preschool: your little Izzie isn’t “sharing” with the other kids. Sharing is a difficult skill to teach at any age.
The problem is, of course, that we’re telling our children to share the things that matter most to them—sacred items like a toy car, a teddy bear, or a cupcake. To a two-year-old, the most innocuous possessions are precious and are not negotiable. Nor are adults setting an example by sharing precious possessions: we’re not sharing our home with our coworkers or handing the keys of our car to complete strangers. We don’t invite the people at the table next to us in the restaurant to sample our dessert.
Ultimately, some things we simply never learn to share. But you wouldn’t know it from looking over the program to our upcoming AMS Annual Meeting. Clearly, in atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic sciences you will find people who have learned to share. It’s a key characteristic of our community that we ought to share more with the rest of the world (for more on this, seek William Hooke’s book, Living on the Real World: How Thinking and Acting Like Meteorologists Will Help Save the Planet).
People in this community have no choice about sharing, actually. It’s the subject matter, above all. Water and air on this planet must be shared. We can’t live without sharing them. We certainly can’t study them without sharing, either.
Now, actually, science in general is good at sharing. Research can’t get anywhere if ideas and information aren’t shared. The shear number of people presenting at our meeting, however, is a very high percentage of our overall membership. Sharing is integral to science, and in particular to weather, water, and climate science.
Some presentations deal head-on with improving scientific sharing. For example, on Wednesday (Jan. 25, 8:45 a.m.), Kyle Tyle of SUNY is discussing the Big Weather Web initiative of NSF. The idea is to improve data management and access and minimize the work of creating visualizations. In the process Big Weather Web addresses the problem of reproducibility that bedevils a world in which everyone is creating tools and storage on their own.
Later the same day, at 5 p.m., Cecelia Deluca (CIRES, Univ. of Colorado) will talk about how the Earth System Prediction Suite initiative helps the major U.S. modeling centers strengthen their common efforts in subseasonal to seasonal scale prediction. “ESPS and its underlying standards begin to transform the S2S modeling community from one in which multiple modeling centers strive to understand each other’s efforts, to one in which each agency can leverage resources across the nation.” A lot of this, of course, is the sharing of codes and modules.
There are countless other examples of how scientists share techniques and data. Sharing gets more difficult—and the material benefits more elusive—when we talk about sharing at a personal level. The rewards are deep, however. This type of sharing is also fundamental to science. It governs how mentors, teachers, and leaders must interact with colleagues and students.
Melissa Burt and colleagues from Colorado State University published an illuminating article in BAMS in July about how sharing is the essence of solving a central dilemma of our science—how do we attract and keep talent from underrepresented groups in our field? Offering mentorships and field research opportunities are among the keys, but the bottom line in all of those recipes for recruitment and retention is the idea of sharing. Advisors, mentors, and colleagues need to show students that they will share their experiences and opportunities at every step in a student’s education.
At the root of effective sharing is the willingness to build and keep trust. Students ultimately will trust the atmospheric sciences with their futures if they realize the atmospheric sciences will entrust them with the responsibility to carry our work forward.
The trust-building example of the Earth Science Women’s Network (also featured in BAMS) has earned them the 2017 AMS Special Award at this upcoming Annual Meeting. It is inscribed “for inspirational commitment to broadening the participation of women in the Earth sciences, providing a supportive environment for peer mentoring and professional development.”
On this Martin Luther King Day, there’s a lesson in that for all of us—a lesson in supporting diversity through building trust and sharing. Science already models its relationship of trust, and not just by sharing data and tools with each other. Science models this relationship by asking for a measure of trust from the world. The fate of many, many species is, to a large degree, in the hands of those who seek understanding of climate, weather, and water. Surely a science entrusted with the global future can learn to hand over the keys to its intellectual future to eager, talented young people of all backgrounds.
(This post is adapted from the “Letter from the Editor” in the July 2016 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.)

Space-Based Environmental Intelligence Community Celebrates

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by Ron Birk, Northrop Grumman
Over 150 stakeholders in our Space-based Environmental Intelligence community came together December 1 at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., for a special event co-hosted by the American Astronautical Society and the American Meteorological Society. Key stakeholders from NOAA, NASA, USGS, Congress, the Administration, the European Union, the private sector and academia celebrated accomplishments including the successful launch and deployment of the NOAA GOES R geostationary weather satellite.
There was a buzz throughout the networking event about advancing societal benefits into the future. Dr. Bill Hooke, Associate Executive Director of AMS and author of Living on the Real World, brought his compelling perspective on the value of science for society. Dr. Piers Sellers, acclaimed astronaut and Earth scientist, shared his findings from over 30 years of research and space travel on the value of monitoring our Earth from space in an excerpt from the recently released National Geographic Before the Flood movie.
The audience enjoyed an impressive video prepared by the space-based environmental community (watch for the video to be posted here soon). Major aerospace players, including Ball Aerospace, Harris Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, provided impressive accomplishments linked together to form the value chain from environmental sensors processed into information products to inform emergency responders in saving lives and protecting property for a Weather Ready Nation. The Society of Satellite Professionals International and the European Commission Copernicus program enhanced the video highlighting benefits and capabilities that span the environmental intelligence value chain. The Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Sustainable earth Observation Systems (SeOS), and the Aerospace Corporation joined in sponsoring the event.
The Honorable Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee, arrived just as Tom Fahy announced the Senate passed the Weather Research and Forecasting Act S.1561. Congressman Bridenstine enthusiastically called for the space-based environmental community video to be shared with congressional committees. He emphasized the value of environmental information for severe weather warnings, especially tornados and floods, key to people of Oklahoma and across the nation. He described steadfast support for NOAA operational polar and geostationary weather missions, Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES R), and heralded the value of Earth science to monitor the vital signs of our planet with benefits for our economy, protection of life and property, and national security. The Congressman also emphasized progress and plans an increasingly robust Earth observations system, including benefits of being augmented by commercial weather data. A key area identified as a challenge for the community is space situational awareness, recognizing that low Earth orbit is increasingly congested and contested.
Tremendous recognition is due to everyone in the community coming together to make this important enterprise successful and vibrant as we continue into the future. Thanks to all for bringing so much talent and energy to the event.  Our challenge and opportunity is to continue to reach out and expand our community, recognizing that everyone across the U.S. and around the world benefits from quality space-based environmental intelligence.

AMS Journals—Better than Ever

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by Keith Seitter, AMS Executive Director, and Michael Friedman, AMS Journals Production Manager
It is interesting how quickly bad news travels, isn’t it? Conversely, good news seems to barely propagate at all if left to its own devices. Changing long-held impressions is even harder, and in some cases, even overwhelming evidence can barely make a dent. As an example, let’s turn to the terrific news coming out of the AMS Publications Commission meeting last May that seems to be taking a long time to filter effectively into the community.
The news at the meeting was universally positive and record setting on nearly every front—from the 3,436 manuscript submissions received in 2015, to the 65-day average time to first decision for those submissions, to the time to publication of accepted manuscripts, which has gone from an all-time low of 95 days in 2015 to the 2016 average (so far) of just 74 days. This is a huge improvement (~72%) from the dark days of 2008, when that metric was well over 200 days.
The dramatic recent drop in time to publication is due in large part to the 2016 transition to a continuous publication model in which each individual article is published online when it reaches final form, instead of waiting until there is a whole issue’s worth of material. The AMS Publications staff tries to take advantage of every potential efficiency improvement it can to drive the time to publication even lower.
These records are just the latest data points mapping a trajectory of continued growth and improvement on all fronts over the past several years, thanks to the efforts of many dedicated volunteers and professional staff, along with effective implementation of technological advances. Meanwhile, AMS publications have maintained the very high quality that has always been their hallmark.  AMS journals continue to rank among the best in the world in our subject areas, and their impact also increased as measured by several objective metrics.
We are doing our best to let the author community know about the excellent performance of the AMS journals on all fronts so that they will not avoid publishing their work with AMS due to concerns based on incorrect impressions. As noted above, however, this can be a frustratingly slow process, and overriding long-held impressions is not easy (we still hear from authors who complain about color charges even though those were eliminated three years ago).
Help us spread the good news. If it has been awhile since you have published in AMS journals, you will be pleased with the improved work flow and speed to publication that we currently provide. If you are considering doing so for the first time, know that along with the prestige and quality that have always been associated with AMS publications, we are able to offer a path to publication much faster than ever before.
(A version of this post appeared in AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter’s 45 Beacon column in the August 2016 BAMS)
 

A Peer Review Conversation

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by Jeff Rosenfeld, BAMS Editor in Chief, and Bob Rauber, AMS Publications Commissioner

Since this week has been declared Peer Review Week, the publishing blog, “Scholarly Kitchen,” is devoting a series of posts about the manuscript evaluation process that you might dread or love, depending on where you sit as an author, editor, or reviewer. They kicked off discussions with a round table on the future of peer review. You’ll find in that blog the usual gamut of projections about peer review—from business as usual to wholesale revolution. Given the many innovations in publishing lately, nobody seems to know what will happen next in this centuries-old tradition in science.

One thing the participants all seemed to agree on, however: in one form or another, peer review is here to stay. As Alice Meadows, director of communications for ORCID, the researcher identification consortium, puts it, “It is hard to imagine scholarly communication without some form of peer review.”

Those of us who have served as AMS editors will not be surprised by that sentiment, and not just because we rely so heavily on reviewers to provide their input into the publishing process. We know how valuable peer review is because the authors tell us.

It is not unusual to see an author’s final revisions arrive accompanied by a note to the editor saying ““Please thank the reviewers.” And it is not unusual to find “anonymous reviewers” thanked in the acknowledgements of published papers.

This happens even though not all of these authors have been entirely happy throughout the review process. Reviews usually mean authors spend additional time on a paper they thought was fine when they first submitted it. Despite that, the authors know their reviewers deserve thanks, and the authors freely give it.

They do this because they find that peer review is not just “essential to the communication of science.”  Peer review is, itself, scientific communication of the best kind.

We often picture peer review as criticism. One set of anonymous experts tells another expert how to write their article, what to say, and what not to say.

That’s hardly a model for scientists communicating with other scientists. It sounds downright regressive, actually—an intrusive but necessary form of telling authors what the standards are and where to throw out the junk. Thumbs up, or thumbs down.

But actually, more often than not, the thumb wiggles and points the way to success. Editors notice that when the review process is going well, the reviewers are not simply dictating terms for acceptance for the authors. What happens instead is conversation. It is often an even more intimate and honest exchange than one can get from colleagues down the hall. And like any good conversation, it involves iterations. Reviews go to authors, and the authors who take them seriously often reply unexpectedly, forcing reviewers to think again. In the best cases, reviewers and authors—and the editors who facilitate their two-way exchange—learn from each other and adapt.

The evidence of this conversation is in those citations AMS gives when naming the recipients of our Editor’s Awards each year. Sift through the Annual Meeting banquet programs and you’ll find many words of praise for an iterative communication. For example, the 2016 Journal of Hydrometeorology Editor’s Award went to W. Justin Baisden for “a series of rigorous and detailed reviews … resulting in a substantially improved paper.” Similarly, both Andrew Stewart (for the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology) and Matthew Kumjian (for Monthly Weather Review and Weather and Forecasting) were cited for how “constructive” their reviews were. And the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology singled out Tanya Spero Otte for “thought provoking reviews that led to significant manuscript improvements.”

Clearly this is what editors want, and this is what makes peer review a conversation. The manuscripts improve, and both sides learn. People often ask why scientists devote so much effort and time—often unpaid and at extremely inconvenient moments—to formulating reviews and considering authors’ responses. Like any scientific communication, it’s because reviewers, authors, editors, and ultimately readers are all headed for the same goal: learning something new from each other. That’s what makes these conversations so lively, so intense, and so rewarding.

It is striking how frequently the review process in AMS journals becomes a conversation.  It happens so often that it’s the norm, and we sometimes don’t stop to think how extraordinary it is that busy people volunteer their time to contribute so fundamentally to the work of others. Thumbs up, then, for Peer Review Week, for peer review itself, and in particular for the thousands of volunteers who answer the call from editors, day in, day out, to review for AMS journals!