Our journal Invasive Plant Science and Management continues to serve as an important outlet for research focused on the many aspects of invasive plants across the world, including their biology, ecology, impact, and management. During this past year, you might have noticed that we now include accepted manuscripts that have not yet been typeset on our Invasive Plant Science and Management journal website as a means of disseminating research findings as quickly as possible to our readership. In each issue, we also select one article for which we develop a professional press release and blog so that the research can be highlighted and distributed as widely as possible. Press releases and blogs can be found on our journal home site as well as on the WSSA home page. The move to the predominant use of Latin binomials when referring to plants and other organisms mentioned in manuscripts has gone smoothly. Common names are now only listed at first mention in the text. We continue to encourage our authors to include color figures and photos in their submissions, as there is no extra cost for their use.
Despite a lower impact factor (IF) in 2018 (5-year IF stood at 1.03), we continue to work on building the reputation of Invasive Plant Science and Management as a high-quality journal for research and case studies not only on the biology and ecology of invasive plant species, but also on their impacts and management. In each article, we feature a “Management Implications” section that provides a succinct summary of the key management implications of the research that may be ready for adoption by land managers and other practitioners. We have received very positive feedback about this unique feature of our journal and will continue to promote this practical aspect of our journal. We would like to receive a greater number of submissions to our journal and thus encourage all of you and your colleagues to submit well-designed studies on all aspects of invasive plants from all regions of the world. Invited reviews on relevant and timely topics of interest to our readership are also welcome. In 2019, we published one sponsored invited article (in issue 2) titled: “Understanding the Nexus of Rising CO2, Climate Change, and Evolution in Weed Biology” by Lewis H. Ziska, Dana M. Blumenthal, and Steven J. Franks. The authors received a modest WSSA-sponsored stipend and had page charges waived. The paper was also made available as an “open access” article on the CUP core website. By the end of February 2020, the abstract of this article had been accessed more than 1,280 times and full text had been downloaded more than 630 times since publication in late June 2019. There are currently two sponsored invited articles in preparation, and it is expected that at least one of these articles will be published in 2020.
Of increasing importance to authors is the time frame from the original submission of a manuscript to a first editorial decision. We continue to be very competitive in this regard relative to other journals, averaging 39 days to first decision in 2019. We hope to continue to reduce this time period in the coming year.
Finally, I would like to thank the many reviewers as well as the editorial board of Invasive Plant Science and Management who gave of their precious time and expertise to assure the scientific rigor and accuracy of work published in our journal in 2019.
Editorial Board 2019
Edith B. Allen
Stephen F. Enloe
Catherine S. Jarnevich
James K. Leary
Rob J. Richardson
Jacob N. Barney
Songlin Fei
Marie Jasieniuk
Kelly G. Lyons
Steve S. Seefeldt
John Cardina
Guillaume Fried
Darren J. Kriticos
Jane M. Mangold
Ryan M. Wersal
Invasive Plant Science and Management Reviewers 2019
Scott Abella
José Ramón Arévalo
Daniel Z. Atwater
Cameron Barrows
Bernd Blossey
William Bruckart
Hailey Buel
John Dukes Byrd
Naomi Cappuccino
Jeffrey D. Corbin
Kirk W. Davies
Ek del-Val
Andrew W. Ezell
Zhaofei Fan
Jason Ferrell
Kathryn Flinn
Kim Franklin
Susan Galatowitsch
John F. Gaskin
David Gorchov
Arthur Gover
Greta Gramig
Sigurdur Greipsson
Donald Hagan
Timothy Brian Harrington
Robert G. Hartzler
Mia Howard
Cynthia Huebner
Gavin Hunter
Jeffrey T. Hutchinson
Terho Hyvonen
Kylie Ireland
Lea Johnson
Sara Kuebbing
Guy B. Kyser
Elizabeth LaRue
Claude Lavoie
Thomas D. Lee
Erik A. Lehnhoff
John D. Madsen
Jeffery Masters
Ryan W. McEwan
Brian A. Mealor
Mohsen B. Mesgaran
Lindsey Milbrath
Francisco Molina-Freaner
Patrick Moran
Riccardo Motti
Christopher Ray Mudge
Scott Jay Nissen
Stephen John Novak
Javier Guido Puntieri
Emily S. J. Rauschert
Mark J. Renz
Vikki L. Rodgers
Michael Schuster
Mark Schwarzlander
Andy Senesac
Benjamin Patrick Sperry
Daniel R. Tekiela
Joana Vicente
Jeffrey Stuart Ward
Sarah Ward
Dean Williams
Daniel Winkler
Nicholas Young
Stephen L. Young
