Craig Ramseyer wins Editor's Award from AMS
Assistant professor honored for work in reviewing articles
Craig Ramseyer in his office
Craig Ramseyer believes advancing the field of atmospheric science is important. To that end, he spends many hours helping other researchers with their work by reviewing their papers submitted to scientific journals.
Ramseyer, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography who specializes in climate modeling and artificial neural network applications in atmospheric science, was rewarded for his efforts with an Editor’s Award at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Denver in January.
The award is recognizes a reviewer for “outstanding service to the journals, the Glossary of Meteorology, and the Meteorological Monographs. The service generally takes the form of providing exceptional reviews in a timely fashion or providing reviews of difficult submissions.”
Essentially, Ramseyer is providing expert commentary on a topic that is above the purview of the journal editors. Through his advice and a critique of a research paper with an expert’s eye, the journal can offer researchers can improve their papers.
Reviewers need two characteristics – ability and willingness. Ramseyer has both in the area of machine learning and neural networks when creating climate models. As more research is done using machine learning, Ramseyer’s reviews are in demand.
“A lot of our journals want to turn around reviews to authors pretty quickly, but there are wait times of several months now. A lot of that is just editors trying to find enough willing reviewers who are also close enough to the subject area,” Ramseyer said.
The Editor’s Award was given for more than willingness to read. Ramseyer is conscientious about providing quality feedback that will help a researcher.
For 2022, Ramseyer worked almost exclusively with the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, preferring its reputation as a rigorous scientific journal. This year, he has accepted the occasional paper from other publications when the topic is in his wheelhouse.
“I think it’s really important to try to help the authors improve the manuscript because if you try to help the authors, they end up with a better manuscript, a better article. Then it’s more likely to be read and cited,” he said. “I think part of the reason I got the award is I try to write rigorous reviews that are also really helpful and supportive to what the authors are trying to do.”