Alexandra Schneider
Alex Schneider is a fisheries ecologist broadly interested in the impacts of anthropogenic activities on the life history and population dynamics of fish and invertebrates. Her research focuses on how species respond and adapt to increasing temperatures and fishing pressure to inform climate-ready fisheries management. Prior to her current position, Alex was a Biologist in the United States Department of the Interior at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, where she worked on understanding, monitoring, and mitigating the impact of offshore wind development on fish, fisheries, and benthic habitat and made meaningful contributions to the advancement of clean energy in the United States. She values research that informs policy and management decisions and is committed to science communication and public engagement. Across her positions, Alex has engaged with fisheries management groups, stakeholders, and the public, disseminating research and listening to local concerns. Alex joined the editorial board of the ICES Journal of Marine Science through the Early Career Scientist Mentorship Program. Alex received her PhD in Marine Science, with a concentration in Fisheries Science, from William & Mary at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and her B.S. in Environmental Science from Villanova University.
Trust, transparency, and technology: the future of ICES Journal of Marine Science
From technological advances to the climate crisis, each new decade brings rapid change, including new capabilities and new problems. While we cannot predict the future with certainty, we can study the past, collect data, look at trends, and forecast the probable paths the future might take. This future perspective on the ICES Journal of Marine Science will consider how we can use the events, choices, and information of the past and the conditions of the present to guide the marine science community into the future that we desire.
Technology and the pursuit of a more equitable, accountable, and diverse future has resulted in positive changes and innovations to the landscape of marine science and scientific communications. Research topics, authorship, and reviewers are more diverse and interdisciplinary. Journal policies requiring disclosures of author-contributions, author's use of AI, and funding sources improve research accountability and transparency. Web and open access journal formats make research more-readily available to scientists and the public, alike. At the same time, we face mounting challenges: a lack of trust in science, increased misinformation, reduced research funding, generative AI enabling the mass production and dissemination of faux and inaccurate research, difficulty finding peer-reviewers, and publishers that prioritize profit over the pursuit of scrupulous and rigorous research. These challenges increase the noise in our world, limiting our understanding of marine systems and our ability to communicate.
We are fortunate to be celebrating the centenary of the ICES Journal of Marine Science. A journal that strives to “efficiently and promptly publish rigorous, accessible, and entertaining material that will help marine scientists in their daily work, lifelong learning, and career development, in so doing, strive to publish only articles that are signals in an ever-increasing sea of noise." The ICES Journal of Marine Science remains committed to serving the fisheries and marine science community. In addition to publishing the highest quality research, the Journal is training the next generation of scientists; recruiting diverse authors, reviewers, and editors; and publishing unique articles, such as opinion pieces (“Food for Thought") and visions of the future (“Quo Vadimus") that provide a deeper perspective into the status of marine science disciplines and the experience of researchers. As a journal and as a scientific community, we must continue to work together to define the challenges of the future and pursue solutions that serve us, our research, and the pursuit of knowledge. This talk will focus on the challenges and opportunities of the future and the way we might overcome the ever-increasing sea of noise, together.
