Szymon Smoliński
Szymon Smoliński is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fisheries Resources at the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Gdynia, Poland. His research focuses on fish ecology, particularly employing otoliths as ecological indicators, spatial modeling of fish distribution, population dynamics, and the impacts of climate change on growth patterns and habitat utilization. Recently, his work has concentrated on pelagic species in the Baltic Sea, investigating fundamental ecological processes as well as building biological foundations for sustainable fisheries management. He is also an enthusiast of bibliometric analyses, applying quantitative methods to explore trends, networks, and impact within scientific literature. Szymon Smoliński is a recipient of the Polish Minister of Science scholarship and has been honored as a Baltic Fellow by the Björn Carlsons Foundation, a recognition conferred on researchers focused on the Baltic Sea. As an active member of the ICES community, he contributes to working groups on fish biology and resource assessment and serves as a member of the ICES Scientific Committee, including the Science Impact and Publications Group, and as an editor of the ICES Journal of Marine Science.
Reading the past to shape the future: Insights from 100 years of ICES Journal of Marine Science
Over its 100-year history, the ICES Journal of Marine Science (ICES JMS) has reflected the evolving priorities of marine research. I will present the results of an analysis of the journal's content, exploring what it reveals about the current state of marine science. Our centennial analysis shows a substantial broadening of thematic scope in recent decades. Ecosystem-based management, food webs, spatial modeling, benthic impacts, marine policy, and fisheries socioeconomics now occupy a central place in the journal's landscape. Topic diversity has increased significantly, both across the journal as a whole and within individual articles. This diversification remains evident even after accounting for growth in the number of published documents, indicating a genuine increase in topical diversity rather than a simple scaling effect. Our analysis shows that articles characterized by higher topical diversity, as well as those positioned in more peripheral areas of the journal's topical landscape, tend to achieve stronger citation impact, suggesting an advantage associated with greater novelty and multidisciplinary integration. Indeed, research today is more integrative, more systems-oriented, and more closely connected to policy and societal challenges. Large interdisciplinary programs and funding priorities have shaped the questions being asked and the approaches taken. The present moment, therefore, appears as a state of interesting tension between disciplinary depth and integrative breadth, between tradition and innovation, and between established publication models and emerging technological possibilities. This is not a story of radical transformation. ICES JMS remains, in many respects, a traditional scientific journal. Its peer-review model, article structure, and publication practices continue to follow established scholarly norms. Rather than moving to the experimental forefront of new dissemination formats or alternative review systems, the journal has evolved incrementally, expanding its thematic scope while maintaining structural continuity. Maybe this coexistence of continuity and diversification reflects the current condition of marine science itself?
