Workflows: The latest way to publish your methods

With this issue, we introduce Workflows—papers that describe the design, testing and analysis of novel workflows that are applicable to a broad class of problems, types of datasets or a range of experimental designs. Workflows adds to the existing paper types published in Methods: Research Articles that describe, test and validate new methods that are applicable to a wide range of taxa or systems; commissioned and unsolicited Reviews that synthesize and set benchmarks for widely used methods while offering new directions for their future development; and short Applications and Practical Tools papers that describe, respectively, new open-source software packages that advance computational methodology, and new field techniques, hardware or laboratory protocols with broad applicability. To encourage and stimulate scientific debate, the journal also publishes short Perspectives that identify knowledge gaps and suggest productive directions for future research, and even shorter Forum papers that critique or otherwise constructively respond to material that has been published recently in the journal. We are particularly interested in two types of Workflow contributions: (1) papers that describe, test and analyse novel and broadly useful assemblages of new or existing software or informatic tools into pipelines that would be useful for the analysis of complex, Big datasets of demonstrable importance to ecology and evolution; and (2) papers that describe, test and analyse empirical or experimental procedures that are or could be used to generate Big datasets such as eDNA, omics, metabarcodes or varKodes, and products of continental- or larger-scale remotely sensed observations (including those collected not only by satellites but also by passive acoustic monitoring systems, telemetry and camera traps). Complete guidelines for authors and the required Checklist to accompany Workflow submissions are on the Methods website. A Workflow manuscript will be reviewed only if it represents a substantial and quantifiable improvement over existing workflows and related methodology, and includes two other components: (1) detailed and well-commented open-source code for computational workflows, or detailed instructions for empirical/experimental workflows; and (2) a thorough analysis of error propagation illustrating how the sequential application of multiple functions or procedures in the workflow contributes to (and ideally reduces) overall uncertainty. Manuscripts describing computational workflows must also include extensive sensitivity analysis (including ablation analysis or the like for workflows that use machine- or deep-learning routines) with simulated or benchmark data and testing of the workflow on either an existing benchmarked dataset or a new Big dataset that is likely to become a benchmark dataset. As with all the other types of papers published in the journal, Workflows that apply only to a single taxon, ecosystem or narrow problem or that lack any or all of the above components will not be reviewed. We also will not consider ‘frameworks’ that suggest workflows (or any other method) but do not actually describe, test and analyze them. Workflow manuscripts, like all other manuscripts submitted to Methods, will first be evaluated by one of our four Senior Editors, who will determine whether the manuscript is sufficiently novel, timely and within the scope of the journal. If it is (and >50% of submissions do not make it beyond this initial evaluation), it will then be evaluated further by one of our Associate Editors (AEs). The AEs are experts in one or more specific research areas and are best able to provide an initial evaluation of the scientific and technical content of the manuscript. If the AE does not identify significant or fatal flaws in the manuscript, it is sent out for external peer review. Once the reviews are returned, the AE synthesizes them and makes a recommendation about the manuscript's acceptability to a Senior Editor, who makes the final decision on the manuscript. As this process makes clear, the AEs are the essential backbone of the journal. Their thoughtful and careful work ensures that the papers we publish represent the state-of-the-art of methods being developed and used in ecology and evolution. With the addition of Workflows to the types of papers that we publish, and with a continuous increase in the number of submissions, Methods, along with the other six journals published by the Society, is recruiting new AEs this year through an open call. We encourage anyone interested in helping Methods fulfil its mission to publish and disseminate the newest methods in ecology and evolution, including Workflows, to apply to this open call. The author declares no conflicts of interest. No funding was available or used for this article. The peer review history for this article is available at https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1111/2041-210x.70207. No data needed or used in this editorial.