The first 100 years of the ICES Journal of Marine Science

Introduction

With the 100th anniversary of the ICES Journal of Marine Science (henceforth Journal) to be celebrated in 2026, it is only fitting to take a retrospective look at what transpired with the Journal during those 100 years. The following account is an update and expansion of an article originally written by the author (Anderson 2012) for the ICES Insight magazine. The main focus is on the publishing history of the Journal, its physical changes, the various individuals who have served as editor or editor-in-chief, and the major changes and improvements made during their respective tenures.

From the unique vantage point of nearly half a century (1978–Present) of active participation in the work of ICES in a variety of capacities and having known and worked with the last five of the nine editors or editors-in-chief of the Journal, this writer is well positioned to author this overview of the evolution of the ICES Journal of Marine Science. His association with ICES began with fish stock assessment working group participation in the 1970s and early 1980s, followed by more than 8 years on the staff of the Secretariat in the 1980s and early 1990s, and, in later years, as an editor of the Journal. While a member of the Secretariat (1985–1993), and specifically while serving as General Secretary (1989–1993), he was able to interact closely with two of the Journal’s editors, Raymond Beverton and John Blaxter, and to participate in discussions of Journal matters during meetings of the ICES Publications Committee and the Council. He was also an active participant in the important improvements made to the Journal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which included name changes (from French to English) and new covers for the Journal and other ICES publications, the development of the ICES logo, coining the new name for the Journal (‘ICES Journal of Marine Science’), and the initial transition of the Journal to Academic Press. His interactions with Niels Daan, subsequently the seventh editor, which began in the early 1980s, pertained primarily to matters dealing with fish stock assessments and management advice. Lastly, beginning in 2007, several years following his retirement from US government employment, he served on the ICES Publications Committee and began a 14-year stint as an editor of the Journal (2008–2021). In that capacity, he had the privilege of working closely with the eighth (Andrew Payne) and ninth (Howard Browman) editors-in-chief, with whom he established strong personal relationships and lasting friendships, and experienced first-hand, and participated in, many of the recent innovations noted earlier for the Journal.

Arthur Went, in his history of ICES (Went 1972), pointed out that the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, from its establishment in 1902, recognized the need to publish the results of scientific research carried out under its auspices. There has, subsequently, been an extensive series of ICES publications devoted to this aim, some short-lived and others continuing longer, even to this day. The forerunner of today’s Journal was the Publication de Circonstance, a series first issued in 1903, with each issue containing a single paper on a biological or hydrographical topic, and concluding with issue 91 in June 1926.

In September 1925, at its 18th annual meeting, the Council (principal decision- and policy-making body of ICES, consisting of a president and two delegates appointed by each member country) adopted a reorganization scheme for the conduct of its work, including its publications (ICES 1925). Five categories of publication were specified, including the Journal du Conseil. The Journal would contain (i) abstracts and reviews of current publications of scientific investigations carried out by or in connection with the Council or in the area covered by the Council’s work, (ii) scientific papers that would previously have been published in Publications de Circonstance, and (iii) such other matter as the editor may deem suitable.

In February 1926, the first issue of Volume 1 of a new marine science journal was published in Copenhagen under the name Journal du Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer (ICES 1926). As of May 2024, 98 years later, Volume 81 of that series, which over the years morphed into the ICES Journal of Marine Science, is underway (ICES 2024). Over this span of time, the Journal grew in size, all the while serving as a principal means of publishing the results of scientific inquiry carried out in the North Atlantic and other seas (also sometimes freshwaters). In recent years, it has expanded to become a preferred publication outlet both for researchers in the ICES area and for scientists in non-ICES countries in other parts of the world and for an ever-broadening spectrum of marine science topics.

History of the Journal

From its start, the purpose of the Journal, as stated in a note on the inside of the cover of the first issue (ICES 1926), was to ‘include in addition to general articles, reviews, and bibliography, the special papers hitherto issued in the series of Publications de Circonstance’. Notes for authors in later issues (e.g. the 1970s) indicated that the Journal published original papers, notes, letters to the editors, and reviews within the broad field of marine and fisheries science, with particular reference to living resources and their environment.

Contributions submitted to the Journal were initially acceptable if written in English, French, German, or Spanish, as stated in the notes for authors on the inside of the cover of Journal issues, but articles in German or Spanish had to be accompanied by a synopsis in English or French; in addition, all figure and table captions and legends had to be in either English or French. This policy continued through 1972, after which the notes for authors were silent as to the language in which manuscripts were to be submitted, except that a synopsis or abstract in English must be provided. The assumption is that most submissions were in English, although at the meeting of the 1976 Publications Committee (ICES 1977), the Journal editor indicated that the number of submissions in the French language was increasing. Overall, however, few papers were ever published in a language other than English, although abstracts occasionally appeared in English and French.

When the Journal was first published in 1926, the stated intent was that it would appear quarterly and that each volume would contain four issues. Volume 1 in 1926 included four issues totalling 383 pages, but subsequent volumes from 2 through 48 (in 1991) generally contained only three issues each and maintained about the same average number of pages per volume (387). Between 1947 and 1986, although the number of issues per volume remained constant at three, the number of issues per year was erratic, varying from one to three and averaging 2.2. In eight different years, only one issue was published. Because of this and also because no issues were published during World War II, there are fewer volumes of the Journal than the number of years in which the Journal has been publishing.

Production in subsequent decades improved steadily in terms of the number of issues published yearly. Four issues were published each year from 1990 to 1994 and 6 per year from 1995 to 1999. During 2000–2009, production increased from 6 issues per year to a high of 10 in 2009. Subsequently, up to and including 2023, the number of issues per year varied between 7 and 10, while averaging nine per year.

All of the metrics used to assess the competitive position of the Journal have been strong in recent decades. The impact factor for the Journal in 2000 was the highest since 1990 and rose from 1.661 in 2008 to 2.277 in 2012 and to 3.3 in 2022, currently placing it among the top 20% of journals in all three of the Web of Science categories in which the Journal is indexed (fisheries, oceanography, and marine/freshwater biology). This improvement is a clear reflection of the high relevance and quality of the manuscripts published in the Journal.

The Journal’s publishers

Publication and sales of the Journal starting in 1926, were handled exclusively by Danish publishing and book sales firms. These firms, four different publishers and two different publishers/bookstores, were the sole printers and sellers of Journal issues until 1990 (Table 1).

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At the 1969 meeting of the Editorial Committee (ICES 1969), there was considerable discussion about the possible transfer of the Journal to a commercial publisher. The Journal editor had, in fact, been approached by a commercial publisher who had expressed some interest. However, since it had been felt that doing so would result in only marginal savings on the Council’s budgets, and that there was no urgency, the committee deferred the matter to the following year. The Council’s Bureau (executive committee of the Council) eventually agreed that there would be no appreciable savings by engaging a commercial publisher. It was not until ∼10 years later that the question of a commercial publisher was revived (see below).

From 1926 to the present, there were 11 different cover designs for the Journal (Fig. 1). In 1987, a new cover design was approved for the Journal du Conseil, incorporating the English subtitle ‘The ICES Journal of Marine Science’ (Fig. 1f). In 1990, the Journal du Conseil was renamed the ICES Journal of Marine Science, with ‘Journal du Conseil’ retained as a subtitle (Fig. 1g). At that point in time, five of the Council’s six publications had French titles. Therefore, the decision to change all titles to English, while retaining French subtitles, was made to adapt to the predominance of English as the language of published research, to have the titles correspond better with the identity of the contents, and to enhance sales of all publications.

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In 1990 and for part of 1991, printing transitioned to Page Bros. Ltd., a publishing firm in Norwich, UK (Table 1). Also in 1990, following several years of discussion by both the ICES Publications Committee and the Council about transferring the complete handling of the Journal to a major publishing firm that could handle all aspects of publishing and sales, the Council approved a plan whereby Academic Press would assume total financial responsibility for publication of the Journal beginning in 1991 (Table 1). Academic Press would also assume any losses until the accumulated deficit had been recovered and the Council could begin receiving 50% of the net profits. At that time, it was predicted that the Journal would become commercially profitable in 1994. During all the years prior to the transition of the Journal to Academic Press, income to ICES derived from the sale of subscriptions never exceeded the overall cost of publishing.

Academic Press remained the publisher through 2001 until its parent company, Harcourt Publishers, was sold to Elsevier Science Ltd. In 2007, Oxford University Press succeeded Elsevier as publisher of the Journal following a competitive bidding process for the contract. ICES also felt that it would be beneficial to be published by a prestige university press and not a large commercial publisher. Early on, the Journal operated at a loss, more recently generating a modest surplus, which ICES uses to support its mission, as does the publisher.

ICES-sponsored symposia proceedings had originally been published in the ICES Marine Science Symposia series (previously the Rapports et Procès-Verbaux des Réunions du Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer series). In 1993, the Council agreed to begin publishing, starting in 1995, its symposia proceedings as extra issues of the Journal, in order to give them a higher profile and more credibility, but making use of guest editors, not Journal editors. For some years, individual Journal editors were assigned to oversee the guest editors, but in 2012, the use of guest editors was discontinued, and symposia were subsequently handled totally by Journal editors so that all manuscripts submitted to the Journal, symposium or otherwise, would be subjected to exactly the same editorial handling and criteria. Subsequently, 2–4 such proceedings have typically been included in each Journal volume. There were a few instances when symposia proceedings had to be published as ICES-funded supplements when insufficient Journal issues were available from the publisher because of prior page-limit commitments. Approved symposia were granted 250 pages per proceeding gratis, with any page overruns paid for by the symposium organizers.

Although web-based electronic submission and review of manuscripts had been in place in some journals for several years and had been trialled by the Journal while still under the Elsevier flag, an electronic manuscript-submission system (ScholarOne Manuscript Central, later referred to simply as ScholarOne) began to be used formally in 2009 by authors, editors, and reviewers for the complete handling of manuscripts from start to finish. Initially, while this new process was becoming adapted to, symposium manuscripts did not use ScholarOne. But by 2011, the last symposium proceedings were handled outside that system with guest editors, and all subsequent symposia manuscripts since 2012 have been handled by Journal editors, as mentioned above. Up to the present, all manuscript submissions, peer reviews, and editorial corrections and finalizations continue to be handled within the ScholarOne system.

The subscription price of the Journal in 1926 was 15 Danish kroner (DKK) per volume, with the expectation of four issues per volume, but was dropped beginning in 1927 to DKK12 and three issues per volume. This price remained constant until it was raised to DKK16 in 1947 (there were no issues published during the years 1940–1946 because of World War II). From 1947 until 1991, when publishing and sales were taken over by Academic Press, subscription prices per volume (three numbers each) rose steadily, attributable mainly to increasing publishing costs, to a high of DKK300. With Academic Press, subscriptions were, for the first time, divided into personal and institutional rates, the former being £25 or US$49.50 and the latter £50 or US$90 in 1991. With gradually increasing publishing costs, subscription rates also underwent steady increases in subsequent years.

In 2007, with the Journal being handled for the first time by Oxford University Press, online access to published papers became possible for individuals or institutions with subscriptions. In that year, the rates for print and online access were given in £, US$, and € for both personal and institutional subscriptions.

Starting with Volume 77, Issue 4, which was published July–August 2020, print copies of the Journal were discontinued and subscriptions became available only by online access.

Effective 1 January 2023, the Journal switched to fully open access (OA), with no subscription rates, and all issues published previously became free to access online. Before this transition, personal subscription rates had risen as high as £259, US$492, and €389 per volume (10 issues) and institutional rates as high as £1380, US$2621, and €2069. With the switch from a subscription-based to an OA publishing model, revenue previously obtained from subscriptions was replaced by an article-processing charge (APC) for all manuscripts accepted for publication. The Journal’s publisher, Oxford University Press, now has Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia, which provide funding for OA publication. Under such agreements, authors from participating institutions can publish OA, and the institution pays the APC. The Journal website states that ‘OUP and ICES wish to assure our authors and readers that no one will be excluded from publishing in the [Journal] because of a financial barrier. Nor will there be a bureaucratic or lengthy waiver application process’.

Editors/Editors-in-Chief

A total of nine individuals have served as editor or editor-in-chief of the Journal throughout its 100-year history (Table 2). Brief overviews of their respective terms, including major changes they helped institute, are presented below.

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Edward S. Russell (Fig. 2) from the UK was appointed the first editor and served from 1925 to 1938. Russell was director of the Lowestoft Fisheries Laboratory from 1921 to 1946, and was the first of five Journal editors with Lowestoft affiliation (and of six based in the UK).

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In 1930, John R. Lumby (Fig. 3), a hydrographer at the Lowestoft Laboratory, was appointed assistant editor to Russell and served in that capacity until 1938, when he succeeded Russell as editor. Lumby served as editor until 1957 and had the distinction of managing the Journal during World War II, when publication was disrupted; no issues were published between December 1939 and July 1947.

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Árni Friðriksson (Fig. 4) from Iceland, who was the Council’s General Secretary from 1954 to 1965, briefly took on the editorship of the Journal for part of 1957 and 1958, and he was assisted during those two years by Frederick ‘Roy’ Harden Jones, another scientist based at the Lowestoft Fisheries Laboratory.

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In 1958, Jones (Fig. 5) assumed the editorship and served unassisted in that capacity until 1983, at which point he had become the longest-serving editor (parts of 25 years). As stated in the obituary to Harden Jones (Arnold 2011), Roy ‘was a dedicated and grammatically astute editor, and the Journal’s reputation developed along with its size while he held its reins. Roy succeeded Árni Friðriksson and preceded Ray Beverton as editor of the Journal, and he was known for putting huge effort into improving the publications of authors for whom English was not their native language. Regrettably, however, he was less tolerant of those whom he expected by birth to have a better command of written scientific English, and whose submissions to the Journal often languished on his overcrowded office floor for long periods. Piled in haphazard heaps, they were a serious fire hazard, once nearly realized when sunlight focussed by a large lens set his office carpet in Lowestoft smouldering’.

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At his last meeting with the ICES Publications Committee in 1982 as outgoing Journal editor (ICES 1983), Harden Jones noted that the main causes of delay in publishing manuscripts had been faulty manuscripts, and particularly poor illustrations. Only 28 manuscripts had been submitted in 1983 (Ramster et al. 2003), and the rejection rate at that time was 37%.

Raymond J. H. Beverton (Fig. 6) from the UK (and who also had worked at the Lowestoft Fisheries Laboratory) succeeded Roy Harden Jones as editor in 1983 and set about improving the Journal in many respects. Ray asked John W. Ramster from the Lowestoft Laboratory to serve as his assistant editor. At the 1984 meeting of the ICES Publications Committee (ICES 1985), Beverton, as pointed out above, had been critical of the fact that the majority of papers hitherto published had been unrepresentative of the total spectrum of ICES activities and that the vast majority of them had been from only two of the ICES member countries. He proposed that a major element of future editorial policy for the Journal should be to reduce these imbalances by inviting contributions on a wide range of topics relevant to overall ICES activities, and from more countries. He also advocated actively soliciting contributions from authors of documents submitted to ICES Annual Meetings, including theme sessions, mini-symposia, and committee meetings. The quality of manuscripts submitted during the first several years of Beverton’s editorship was, however, regrettably poor, resulting in a rejection rate of >70% in 1984, although that rate declined to 50% in 1985. An improved flow of higher-quality manuscripts soon led to a steady three issues per volume and year in 1987–1989.

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Ray Beverton stepped down as editor in 1991 after having been arguably the most instrumental of all the Journal’s editors until then in improving the quality and status of the publication. By 1991, the rejection rate for submitted manuscripts had dropped to 25%, but with quality steadily improving.

Ray Beverton was replaced by John H. S. Blaxter (Fig. 7) from the Oban Laboratory in Scotland, UK, who first served one year as an assistant editor before taking over the reins of the Journal late in 1991. With a new name, an improved reputation, and being published by Academic Press, the ‘new’ ICES Journal of Marine Science was on its way to a brighter future. The number of issues per volume and year increased to four in 1992 and remained at that level through 1994. The number of pages per volume averaged 497 pages in those 3 years.

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In the first several years of Blaxter’s tenure as editor, the rejection rate of manuscripts dropped to ∼13%, with overall quality viewed as generally very good. The number of submissions had increased from just 28 in 1983, when Beverton had taken over as editor, to 88 in 1993, a few years into Blaxter’s tenure (Ramster et al. 2003). The number of issues per volume expanded to 6 in 1995–2001, each volume averaging 1273 pages.

Niels Daan (Fig. 8) from the Netherlands succeeded John Blaxter as editor in 1997. From that point on, the editor’s title became ‘editor-in-chief’, and any assistant editors became ‘editors’. The scope of the Journal also continued to broaden and included topics in the social sciences, resource management, habitat conservation, and interdisciplinary subjects, and papers from a broader geographic coverage than just the ICES area were being accepted as long as they were of sufficient quality and relevance. Submission and publication of manuscripts steadily increased each year, requiring the appointment of additional editors.

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The number of manuscript submissions almost doubled from 88 in 1993 to 155 in 2002 (excluding symposium proceedings; Ramster et al. 2003). By 2002, 21% of the papers published by the Journal were by authors from non-ICES countries and 50% were from university-based (as opposed to government-funded laboratories) researchers. This was an important shift as, historically, ICES was supported by member country research institutes and less so by universities.

Andrew I. L. Payne (Fig. 9) from the Lowestoft Laboratory, who had, until 2000, worked for 30 years at the South African Sea Fisheries Research Institute, was appointed in 2003 to replace Niels Daan as editor-in-chief. Andy had served since 2000 as a Journal editor and had guest-edited earlier issues dedicated to output from ICES symposia. In 2004, the number of manuscripts submitted surged again to 222, with a rejection rate of ∼40%. With manuscript submissions continuing to increase year on year (from 262 in 2008 to 313 in 2009), the fairly constant manuscript rejection rate of about 50% was also forced up to >60% in 2010 and 2011 to avoid overshooting the publisher-allotted number of pages per volume (which was set the previous year).

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Payne retired as editor-in-chief of the Journal at the end of 2011 by which time he had accumulated nearly 40 years of editorial experience, editing several other journals too, and he continued the notable improvements achieved by each of his recent predecessors. His personal strong trait was the insistence on improving the grammatical standard of the papers being published. The number of issues per volume increased to eight in 2004 and 2005, averaging 1584 pages per volume; then, from 2006 through 2011, the number of issues per volume varied between nine and ten, averaging 2000 pages per volume.

Howard I. Browman (Fig. 10) assumed the position of editor-in-chief of the Journal in January 2012. A Canadian working at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway since 1998, Browman brought to the table extensive previous experience with journal editing and management. In the first few months after he took office, numerous changes were implemented, including faster handling times for manuscripts so as to improve the Journal’s competitiveness, and a stated goal of offering authors an industry-leading standard of turn-around times, presentation, and accessibility (Browman 2012).

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In his first year, Browman introduced and/or made more frequent use of themed article groupings and article categories such as Editorials, ‘Food for Thought’ essays (preferably provocative/controversial), ‘hot-topics’, ‘Quo Vadimus’ (describing the future of a topic or discipline), and Editor’s Choice (outstanding articles of broad interest). He also updated the mission statement, tried to implement more consistency in editorial policy, increased the Journal's presence on social media, and introduced cartoons to promote symposium and theme collections. By his second year, manuscript submissions had increased and more articles in the above-mentioned categories had been received and published. In 2014, introspective/retrospective ‘Food for Thought—Luminaries’ essays from prominent to recently retired fisheries/marine scientists began to be solicited and by 2023, almost 50 such essays had been published. Launched in 2020, another series entitled ‘Stories from the Front Lines’ for substantive accounts of challenges, wins, and losses on any aspect of ocean and coastal sustainability, written as narratives and drawing at least partly on the author(s) experience, had eight articles published as of 2024. In 2023, a new series in the ‘Food for Thought’ category was launched, ‘Food for Thought—Rising Tides’, authored by early career scientists, that presents their perspectives on the future of marine science. In 2021, the Journal launched an Editorial Mentorship Programme to train early career researchers in scientific publishing and journal editing.

Manuscript submissions have fluctuated during Browman’s time as editor-in-chief for a variety of reasons, including COVID, ranged from a low of 37 per month in 2012 to a high of 61 in 2020, and were 46 per month in 2023. The overall acceptance rate for submissions was 62% in 2012, but steadily declined in subsequent years to 37% in 2023. By 2023, the average time for reviewers to submit their comments had declined to ∼21 days and overall manuscript handling time to first decision had improved steadily to ∼50 days.

The evolution of the editorial board

In the above accounts of the various editors or editors-in-chief, mention was made several times of individuals who served as assistant editors. The first such assistant editor was John Lumby, who served during 1930–1938 in that capacity for the first editor, Edward Russell, and later became the second editor. The third editor, Árni Friðriksson, was assisted in 1957–1958 by Frederick ‘Roy’ Harden Jones, who later became the fourth editor. During Jones’ tenure as editor, Robert (Bob) Dickson served as book review editor (1969–1983). Raymond Beverton, the fifth editor, chose John Ramster to serve as his assistant. Ramster also was an assistant editor or editor for John Blaxter, Niels Daan, and Andrew Payne and had the distinction of serving the longest (1983–2011) of any of the Journal’s assistant editors, a total of 29 years. John Blaxter also served as an assistant editor (1990–1991) under Raymond Beverton before becoming the sixth editor of the Journal. When Niels Daan took over as the seventh editor (henceforth called editor-in-chief) in 1997, the broadening scope of the Journal coupled with increased manuscript submission necessitated the appointment of additional assistant editors (henceforth called editors). Eight editors served under Daan. When he was succeeded in 2003 by Andrew Payne, the eighth editor-in-chief, 11 editors served, with a maximum of 10 at any one time. Howard Browman, the ninth editor-in-chief, further increased the size of the editorial board in order to substantially broaden the editorial expertise needed to cover the many topics addressed in the increasing number of submitted manuscripts. Each editor-in-chief triages all submissions, sending only some for handling by subject editors. Browman instituted a practice of empowering subject editors to make the decision on accepting or rejecting manuscripts. The current number of editors on the Journal’s editorial board is 79, representing 23 countries, ensuring coverage of the full range of marine science disciplines covered by the Journal.

Editorial assistants in the ICES Secretariat

The commentary above focusses on the editors or editors-in-chief of the Journal and briefly mentions, by name, a few individuals who served as assistant editors (or editors since 1998). In addition, there have been individuals employed in the ICES Secretariat who have also been instrumental in the growth and evolution of the Journal.

Since the establishment of ICES in 1902, some members of the Secretariat staff have, as part of their work responsibilities, been involved in some aspect of the Council’s various publications, such as the Journal, Rapport et Procès-Verbaux des Réunions, Publication de Circonstance, Bulletin Statistique des Pêches Maritimes, Bulletin Hydrographique, and others. Staff members were involved in typing, editing, and proofreading for the Journal and, at times, were listed according to various departments such as publications and information hydrographical, statistical, and administration. However, not until 1947 were the names of Secretariat staff included in the various annual reports and according to various departments such as publications and information hydrographical, statistical, and administration. However, the names of Secretariat staff were not included in the various annual reports, and according to the department in which they worked, until 1947. The practice of listing staff members according to department continued only through 1967. Based on information contained in the various annual reports pertaining to publications, it is unclear which staff members actually assisted with the Journal or other publications. For the years in which staff members were identified as employed in publications (1947–1967), the following individuals were named: H. Harder, M. Larvig, I. Andersen, H. Harris, M. Hänschell, M. Rehder, Ulf Kjær Hansen, F. Mongaya Høgsholm, L. Sode-Mogensen, and Dario Cappai-Revelli. Some of these were mentioned as staff members in subsequent years as well. The 1969 report of the Editorial Committee (ICES 1969) mentioned the need for a new staff position of Assistant Secretary (Publications) to assist with Journal matters. In the 1970 meeting of the Committee (ICES 1970), M. Blanchard was introduced as the new Assistant Secretary (Publications), a position she held through 1973.

This writer’s recollection of Secretariat staff members who assisted with the work of the Journal only goes back as far as 1985. During his time on the Secretariat staff (1985–1993), there were two staff members who worked on publications, specifically the Journal: Lena Klos and Judith Rosenmeier. Lena was a staff member from 1974 until 1987 and assisted Judith with copyediting and proofreading. Judith, who served for 27 years (1977–2004) as Senior Technical Editor, had oversight for a range of publications, but focussed most of her attention on the Journal, for which she handled some copyediting and proofreading, designed new covers and the ICES logo, is credited with coining the new name for the Journal (‘ICES Journal of Marine Science’), and played an important role in the initial transition of the Journal to Academic Press.

Judith was succeeded by William A. Anthony, who held the title of ICES Executive Editor for 2004–2012, ably handled all formal, administrative interactions between ICES and the publisher, and was heavily involved with the then editor-in-chief in the competitive selection process through which Oxford University Press was selected as publisher. Søren Lund, a long-time Secretariat staff member took on the task of handling the manuscript processing system in 2002 and steered it through the initial ScholarOne years (up to 2011) with the title of ICES Technical Editor. He continued working on publications until his retirement in 2020.

Katie Rice Eriksen succeeded Anthony in 2012 with the title of Editor in Charge of Publications and served in that capacity until mid-2017. Alison Hill and Celine Byrne each served briefly between 2016 and 2018 before Ruth Anderson was appointed Publications Editor at the beginning of 2019, a position she has held to the present.

Various other staff members have, in the past 20 years, also assisted as members of the Secretariat’s Editorial Team, providing support as needed for the Journal and other ICES publications.

Management and promotion of the Journal

Shortly after the establishment of ICES in 1902, an Editorial Committee was created for the purpose of providing oversight and management for the various publications. This committee would meet in conjunction with the annual statutory meeting. With the birth of the Journal in 1926, the committee consisted of a ranking member of the Council, the editor of the Journal, the General Secretary, and usually several appointed or co-opted national delegates or experts, and would be chaired by the president, first vice president, or chairman of the Consultative Committee. With the Journal in its infancy, early discussions in the committee focussed on matters such as language, format, number of issues, publisher, contents, and the like.

In 1974, the Publications Committee replaced the former Editorial Committee, but the focus remained relatively the same and most discussions dealt with financial concerns of the Journal and not scientific content, as the committee generally expressed confidence in the editor at the time, thus respecting editorial independence. Membership included the chairman of the Consultative Committee, the Journal editor, three appointed national delegates, and the first vice president as chairman. In later years, the chairman, appointed by the Council president, varied among national delegates and experts, while the chairman of the Consultative Committee and the Journal editor still remained as members.

A perusal of reports of either the Editorial Committee or the Publication Committee suggests that, although there was always discussion of the Journal at the annual meetings, the major concern always seemed to be with the Rapports et Procès-Verbaux des Réunions du Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer series. Volumes of that series were viewed as very important for the prestige of the Council, and the holding of symposia and the publication of their results were considered one of the main tasks of the Council.

Although the Journal had long been considered, at least within ICES, as the Council’s prestige house journal and a well-respected publication in the world of marine science, it was also acknowledged that it was not well known or used outside the ICES community. For example, on the western side of the Atlantic, USA and Canadian authors were more likely to publish in two well-established journals: Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, established in 1872, and Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, established in 1901. At the 1980 meeting of the Publications Committee (ICES 1981), there was discussion, likely for the first time, about promoting the distribution of the Journal, triggered in large part by a noticeable gap between production costs and sales. Promotional suggestions included an advertising campaign in some of the more widely distributed journals, offering ‘package deals’, such as selling back-issues to new subscribers, and promoting and distributing in developing countries. In 1981 (ICES 1982), the committee agreed that probably the best means to increase sales would be to make the Journal, as well as volumes of the Rapports et Procès-Verbaux series, better known in scientific circles not normally in contact with ICES activities.

At the 1983 and 1984 meetings of the ICES Publications Committee (ICES 1984^, 1985), Raymond Beverton, the Journal’s fifth editor, drew attention to the uneven distribution of contributions to the Journal in recent prior years relative to subject areas covered (heavily weighted towards finfish populations or experimental research ashore and poorly represented in oceanography, shellfish, and environmental research) and relative to their institutes and countries of origin. In short, they had not been representative of the total spectrum of ICES activities. He proposed making greater use of Statutory Meeting documents and promised to explore ways of increasing the marine science community’s awareness of the Journal as a leading publication.

The Publications Committee arrangement begun in 1974 continued until 2001, when a new Publications Committee structure was approved by the Council. This had followed from major discussions within the old committee, the Consultative Committee, and the Council that had focussed on the shortcomings of the previous committee structure, its reporting linkage to the Council’s Bureau, and the need for the committee’s work to be better integrated into the core science functions of ICES via the Consultative Committee. The new membership appointed by the Council included a chair, a representative from the Management Committee for the Advisory Process, and three experts. In addition, ex officio members included the Journal’s editor-in-chief, several representatives of the publisher (Academic Press at the time), and senior editorial staff from the Secretariat.

By the time this writer became an ex officio member of the new Publications Committee in 2007, appointed as a national member from the USA, the committee’s composition included a few other national members as well as the editors of each of the ICES publications (Journal, Cooperative Research Reports, Identification Leaflets for Plankton, Identification Leaflets for Diseases, and Parasites of Fish and Shellfish, Techniques in Marine Environmental Sciences), editorial representatives from the Secretariat, and a representative from the Journal’s publisher (Oxford University Press at the time). Over the subsequent several years, the committee’s name was changed to Publications and Communications Committee (PUBCOM) to reflect the growing use of additional modes of communication (e.g. social media, websites) of ICES scientific programmes and research. It should be pointed out that the Council, through the Bureau, was always ultimately responsible for the Journal and its oversight, and that the editor-in-chief was engaged by the Council through the Bureau. Under the PUBCOM arrangement, the Journal reported to PUBCOM, PUBCOM reported to the ICES Scientific Committee (SCICOM) about Journal matters, and SCICOM reported to the Bureau also about Journal matters. This three-step process was inefficient with respect to information transfer, and in 2017, PUBCOM was disbanded as a stand-alone committee. Instead, a publications and communications subgroup was created within SCICOM to handle all non-Journal matters. All matters pertaining to the Journal would henceforth be handled directly by the Bureau. This reporting arrangement continues to this day.

In summary, management and promotion of the Journal by the Editorial or Publications Committees were minimal during its early years. The various ICES publications, including the Journal, were considered important for disseminating the results of scientific research conducted under its auspices, but based on the various annual reports of the Committee and the Council, the Rapports et Procès-Verbaux des Réunions du Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer series seemed to command more discussion, and more of the scientific research, as presented in symposia and special meetings, was being published in that series than in the Journal. National delegates, the Council, as well as the Secretariat perhaps gave more attention to other matters and viewed the Journal as being in good hands with the various editors and assumed that, in time, it would become more widely known. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that the Publications Committee began to talk about the need to implement ways to better promote the Journal outside of ICES circles. The transfer of publishing to prestige publishers beginning in the early 1990s brought with it the advertising power of those publishers who attended scientific conferences throughout the world and were thus in a strong position to obtain increased subscriptions. As noted earlier, the publication of ICES-sponsored symposium papers in the Journal, previously published in the ICES Marine Science Symposia series (formerly the Rapports et Procès-Verbaux series), became an additional attraction for the Journal as now more scientific research findings conducted under the ICES umbrella were being published in one series, the Journal. The participation of publisher representatives at Publications Committee meetings, coupled with innovative initiatives by recent Journal editors, greatly assisted in enhancing its reputation.

Epilogue

On the occasion of the centenary of the ICES Journal of Marine Science in 2026, it is fair to say that the Journal has progressed over a long and illustrious journey, providing access to the published results of scientific studies by countless researchers, including many, more recently, from countries not full members of ICES. Indeed, the list of authors whose papers have been published in the Journal includes a veritable who’s who of eminent scientists from the broad discipline of marine science, both within ICES member countries and in the world at large. Over the past 10 years, manuscript submissions have been received from 87 countries, generally from ∼50 countries per year. In 2023, papers were accepted for publication from 26 different countries.

It is evident that the ICES Journal of Marine Science enjoys a rich heritage as well as its present high status in the world of marine science journals. From its early beginnings in 1926 to the present, the Journal has progressed from being a publication focussing mainly on fisheries science in the northeast Atlantic (ICES area) and being relatively obscure outside of the northern European marine science community to becoming a well-known, respected, world-class journal ranking near the top of marine science publications. As a result, it has earned a coveted reputation throughout the world as a sought-after journal in which to publish articles spanning the full spectrum of marine science, not just fisheries.

The current high standing of the ICES Journal of Marine among marine science journals worldwide is due to many factors. Changes over the years have required the strong support of the Council, but the efforts and diligence of the nine editors or editors-in-chief who invested thought, time, and effort over the past 100 years into devising, promoting, and implementing the many improvements made to the Journal to cope with and adapt to a changing world have to be viewed as key to the successes that have been achieved. All others who participated in the work of the Journal over the past century, including editors, authors, peer-reviewers, and staff members of the ICES Secretariat and the various publishers, can also be proud of their respective roles and share in the pride of a job clearly well done.

No one can foresee what lies ahead for the Journal in subsequent years and decades. However, if the same diligence rendered by those responsible for advancing the Journal during the past century to its current high level of respect will be carried forward by future editorial leaders in coming generations, then the future of the ICES Journal of Marine Science should indeed remain bright.