—Thorne 2007.

The universe of scholarly publishing includes more than 30,000 peer-reviewed journals in the sciences and humanities (Ware and Mabe 2015), approximately 250 of which cover the aquatic sciences. Establishing a new journal within this large universe poses considerable challenges and risks, but also provides valuable opportunities for scientific societies. The leaders of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology & Oceanography (ASLO) took a risk in 2014 by founding a new journal, Limnology & Oceanography Letters (L&O Letters). The first article was published in 2016, and, as of 2020, early signs indicate that this risk is paying off—the journal's debut impact factor was 5.2 (Fig. 1), ranking #1 in Limnology and #2 in Oceanography in 2019. Other indicators of early success include trends of increasing article downloads and citations (Fig. 2), articles receiving exceptional Altmetric Attention Scores (e.g., a score of 968 for Hotaling 2020), and many early-career researchers embracing the journal as both authors and reviewers.

Many new journals fail, so how was L&O Letters conceived and what were the keys to its early success? We address these questions with two purposes, first to share personal retrospectives on the journal's early history, including its conception and launch, from ASLO Executive Director Teresa Curto, past ASLO President John Downing, and Founding Editor-in-Chief Pat Soranno. Second, we use the early L&O Letters story to highlight ingredients that appear essential for the successful launch of a new journal.

——索恩 2007 年。

学术出版领域包括 30,000 多种科学和人文科学领域的同行评审期刊（Ware and Mabe  2015），其中大约 250 种涵盖水生科学。在这个大宇宙中建立新期刊会带来相当大的挑战和风险，但也为科学团体提供了宝贵的机会。湖沼学与海洋学协会 (ASLO) 的领导者在 2014 年冒险创办了新期刊《湖沼学与海洋学快报》 ( L&O Letters)）。第一篇文章发表于 2016 年，到 2020 年，早期迹象表明这种风险正在得到回报——该期刊的首次影响因子为 5.2（图 1），在 2019 年在湖沼学中排名第一，在海洋学中排名第二。早期成功的其他指标包括文章下载量和引用次数增加的趋势（图 2）、获得卓越 Altmetric 注意力得分的文章（例如，Hotaling 2020的得分为 968  ），以及许多早期职业研究人员将该期刊作为作者和审稿人。

许多新期刊都失败了，那么L&O Letters是如何构思的，其早期成功的关键是什么？我们有两个目的来解决这些问题，首先是分享对期刊早期历史的个人回顾，包括其概念和发行，来自 ASLO 执行董事 Teresa Curto、前 ASLO 总裁 John Downing 和创始主编 Pat Soranno。其次，我们使用早期的L&O Letters故事来强调对成功推出新期刊至关重要的成分。