Marine Pollution Bulletin annual prize

摘要

The publishers of Marine Pollution Bulletin, Elsevier Science, intend to offer an annual prize of $1000 for a paper published in this journal. The selection of recipient will be made initially by the editor, with input and advice from the full editorial board of the journal. Starting immediately, the time frame will thus be from June to June each year, with selections to be made towards the end of each year. There has been much thought about the nature of the papers which are likely to be successful. Firstly, the choice will not be dependent on easily measurable factors such as numbers of downloads or numbers of citations. This is partly because such variables are heavily dependent on the time of year that any particular paper is published, but in addition, many people have reservations about the importance of such indices anyway. Impact Factors in particular sometimes seem not to be geared towards environmental sciences, or indeed any science which has a long cycle, including any which incorporates annual cycles. Further, some published studies in our fields have a long gestation, or a long 'burn time', with an importance recognised only after a few years (by which time its Impact Factor window has come and gone).