Introduction

As we reach the fourth anniversary of PLOS Water, it’s a good moment to reflect on the birth, growth, and future of this journal. In doing so, we (Editors-in-Chief, Executive Editor) realized that many of the developmental milestones of four-year-olds are recognizable in our journal: we have a growing sense of identity, our communication skills are improving, our ability to make friends is developing, and our curiosity to explore new interests persists. And, like many four-year-olds, our fascination with water is unabated.

We’ve matured considerably since parturition. We have published more than 400 articles, are included in key abstracting and indexing databases, and have a growing international reputation, all in support of fulfilling our founding mission (https://journals.plos.org/water/s/journal-information). On the other hand, we still have a lot of growing up and learning to do, and many potential next stage possibilities and directions to take.

In this Editorial, we lean into the developmental milestones analogy to take stock of where we are at PLOS Water, starting with our origin story.

Birth

As an organization, PLOS, initially known as”The Public Library of Science”, has a long-held purpose (https://plos.org/about/) of enabling a more equitable and accessible future for research, rooted in innovation, transparency, inclusion, and open science. It was in this spirit that PLOS Water was founded in 2021, joining the then 7 existing members in the PLOS family of journals. This was part of an organizational expansion, with PLOS’ Chief Scientific Officer Veronique Kiermer explaining “Overall, we want to further empower new communities to join us and inform us, working more tightly together towards ever more trust in science.” (https://theplosblog.plos.org/2021/04/launching-new-journals-2021/)

PLOS Water published its first papers in 2022 at the same time as PLOS Climate and PLOS Global Public Health; these were joined in 2024 by PLOS Mental Health. Together, these are a group of journals focused on global-scale challenges across environmental and health sciences. Modelled on the same inclusive publication criteria as the well-established and multidisciplinary PLOS One, these journals at PLOS focus on high quality research with an ethical, methodological and technical rigor. For the PLOS Water ethos, we added the importance of a vibrant community for cross-disciplinary water-related research and practice.

We also wanted to characterize our journal through emphasis on a robust and transparent review process, so that a sense of fairness and objectivity underpinned PLOS Water. With our editorial model, when a paper is first submitted to PLOS Water, it is assessed by a team of professional subject matter experts for suitability against our scope and adherence to PLOS policies. If it passes, this team then assigns the paper to one of our expert Academic Editors (https://journals.plos.org/water/static/editorial-board). Academic Editors are volunteer members of our Editorial Board tasked with leading the peer review process, handling the paper through to a final publication decision. Their publication recommendations and decisions are made against a set of objective publishing criteria (https://journals.plos.org/water/s/criteria-for-publication).

The other two types of roles in our Editorial Board structure are Section Editors and Editors-in-Chief. Section Editors, functioning as ambassadors and the “voices” of their respective subject sections, are tasked with bridging the journal and the communities we seek to represent through a variety of activities such as soliciting narrative-style “Front Matter” pieces, leading curated Collections of papers and promoting articles within their disciplines. Editors-in-Chief also contribute to these tasks, and meet regularly to define the direction and priorities of the journal, as well as provide broader strategic and policy insight to PLOS.

Going forward, we plan to retain and reinforce this structure, which has allowed us to avoid some of the pitfalls of more hierarchical editorial models, and provide a community-focused venue intended to be welcoming to all of those working within the water sector.

Sense of self

In the era that PLOS Water was born, a number of new water-focused journals were also being launched [1]. This growing number of water-focused journals is indicative of a broad realization of the centrality of water in social, economic and environmental considerations. PLOS Water can be regarded as both a child of, and a contributor to, this broader publishing trend.

As with all four-year-olds, we continue to be defined by our similarities to, and differences from, our peers. We are similar to a number of well-respected water journals, in that we offer open access and several options to help facilitate open science practices, such as the sharing of preprints, underlying study data and the peer review history of articles. We differ from many of these journals in that we are not a subscription journal, and do not belong to a for-profit publishing house, or a single scientific or professional society.

Where we hope to offer something unique is through the breadth of our scope crystallized here as “inland waters, fresh water; everything water”, operating with an inclusive and broad definition of ‘water’ and a deliberately unsiloed approach to the consideration of research. This scope, coupled with our underlying open science principles (https://plos.org/open-science/) and aforementioned commitment to rigor, is how we continue to envisage our place within, and our value to, the water community. Papers meeting these three criteria will continue to be given a “fair shot”, as exemplified by our comparatively low desk reject rate.

Going forward, we plan to further leverage our breadth. To this end, we see an opportunity to offer a home for research which may not otherwise have one, embracing newer and emerging fields, often where different ways of knowing are involved. See for example Bawaka Country et al. 2022 [2], an article we commissioned in our first year on the many meanings of water, its knowledge and Law, the respect it demands, and co-becoming of people and water. We will also continue our commitments to transparency in science and research.

Communicating

By the age of four, children have much they would like to say. So too do we. Communicating across disciplines has always been one of our biggest priorities. In our first editorial, we emphasized being an active voice for a broad community of interests in water, specifically valuing “inclusion and interdisciplinarity while managing the practicalities of academic publishing” [3].

The structure of the journal reflects our commitment to multidisciplinarity. The “Sections” in PLOS Water are a way of recognizing the different disciplines that make up the water sectors, while housing them under one roof (Box 1). Sections, of which there are 14, are each led by 2–3 Section Editors (https://journals.plos.org/water/s/section-editors). This allows authors to affiliate their submissions within a familiar discipline, and is operationally useful for ensuring we have the necessary subject expertise coverage through our handling Academic Editors.

In preparation for this editorial, we reviewed the number of publications by Section. In so doing, it became clear that in our first four years we have been successful in achieving the multidisciplinary objective; all Sections have seen publications, with some more than others. It is less clear whether we have done enough to earn our cross-disciplinary badges; this is worth dwelling on a little further.

Our Section Editors themselves recognize the importance of positioning the journal as a progressive cross-disciplinary venue. To do so requires mechanisms for authors to identify their work as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary, and for the journal to judge them accordingly. Herein lies a series of opportunities to improve our communication.

Going forward, we are considering creating more spaces in the journal to encourage interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. One manifestation of this is our invited series of curated thematic Collections, on topics such as Watersheds and Health (https://collections.plos.org/collection/watersheds-health/), Safe and Sustainable Water in Cities (https://collections.plos.org/collection/safe-and-sustainable-water-in-cities/), and Urbanization and Stream Ecology (forthcoming). We will provide guidance for PLOS editorial teams, peer reviewers and handling Academic Editors on how to recognize and judge rigor when different disciplines are necessary to understand an emergent topic. We could, for treatments of water-related problems, adopt a “spectrum” covering degrees of disciplinarity, from the disciplinary (and multidisciplinary) for established and distinct fields; to the consideration of the systems in which those problems exist as interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary as the coordination of different ways of knowing under a single unifying vision [see 4].

Building friendships

Children begin to develop true friendships circa 4 years of age. So too have we; we have built up a community at PLOS Water, through our Section Editors, Academic Editors, reviewers, authors, and readers. Mobilizing these groups - and walking with them - is key to developing a journal which is truly responsive to the needs of water professionals and practitioners.

We’re now working much more closely with organizations who share our goals of immediate open sharing of knowledge in order to take evidence-based action. These include several water-community-focused initiatives, such as our ongoing partnership with two conferences, the UNC Water and Health conference (https://collections.plos.org/collection/unc-water-health-conference-collection/) and Stockholm World Water Week [5].

We plan to increase our friend groups. This will necessitate improving our author experience by maintaining high quality peer review, and continuing to diversify our Editorial Board. It will also mean giving back – recognizing, acknowledging and continuing to support our volunteer community of Editors and reviewers.

Increasing the visibility and impact of published research will also increase those collegial feelings. Going forward, we will be working to draw attention to where research has made an impact in a policy world, and where practices have changed, or should change. Our narrative reviews and special collections of papers have an important role to play in this regard, synthesizing knowledge in an ever-increasingly complex world. We also plan to “up” our policy relevance. And using social media better to promote our authors and their products, essential contemporary activities, will be a priority.

In closing—we thank you, our readers, our supporters, our authors, reviewers, and Editors, for helping us to get to the ripe old age of four. It’s difficult to know what our next four years will bring, but we promise we will continue to do our best to bring breadth to the water publishing sector, promoting dynamic research on water that leaves lasting impact.