Two years ago, the majority of SMM members voted during the annual April ballot in favor of switching to an electronic-only journal and eliminating the printed version. There was an announcement of this on the Society’s website for several months, but it is possible you missed it if you do not periodically check the site and/or did not attend the annual member’s meeting at the biennial conference. It took some time to plan for the transition, and now it has become a reality.
At present, SMM members will not automatically receive e-mail notices when a new issue of the journal is out, although we are looking into whether we might get this changed. Regardless, Marine Mammal Science will continue to be published quarterly (January, April, July and October), and if you sign up for e-mail alerts (http://tinyurl.com/smm-email-alerts), Wiley will automatically e-mail you when a new issue is released. If you used the online version of the journal in the past, you will already know that you must go to Marine Mammal Science through the Society?s website while logged in as a member (http://www.marinemammalscience.org/members). This will give you full access to the journal as part of your Society of Marine Mammalogy membership benefits. If you try to log in to Marine Mammal Science directly through wileyonline.com, you will not succeed in obtaining access to articles by using your SMM member ID and password. Of course, you can also gain access to the journal through an institutional membership if your institution has paid to have access.
Benefits to having an entirely electronic journal:
1) We now publish a greater number of pages without a change in membership fees (now 1600 pages per year, up from 1000)
2) Allows colored figures in papers without charge to authors (previously it cost $600 per printed color figure)
3) Eliminates charges for mailing copies of issues to members
4) Eliminates issues getting lost in the mail (as was a common occurrence in the past)
5) Contributes to conservation by saving trees and eliminating the carbon cost of shipping print copies all over the world
If you have questions about this change or about Marine Mammal Science in general, please e-mail Daryl Boness, Editor-in-Chief of Marine Mammal Science, at mmsci@megalink.net.
Published for the Society for Marine Mammalogy, Marine Mammal Science is a source of significant new findings on marine mammals resulting from original research on their form and function, evolution, systematics, physiology, biochemistry, behavior, population biology, life history, genetics, ecology and conservation. The journal features both original and review articles, notes, opinions and letters. It serves as a vital resource for anyone studying marine mammals