This editor profile is the seventeenth in a series which will introduce you to a selection of our editors.
This week we have an interview with Daniel Schlenk, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Aquatic Toxicology.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a marine biologist because of my love of the ocean. It’s a passion that has permeated all areas of my life – my children for instance are called Marina and Noah.

Why did you choose aquatic toxicology as your field of study?
Growing up in Los Angeles you go to the harbor a lot and it’s intriguing to see how some animals are able to survive massive amounts of pollution and some aren’t - it made me want to figure out those mechanisms.

What’s new in the field? How will this work impact our daily lives?
From a publishing point of view, the advent of online publishing has been revolutionary for all fields of research. Being able to get information so quickly is just remarkable. Papers that would normally have waited a year and a half to be published are now out in no time! From a scientific point of view, the biggest development in my field has been in risk assessment of water contaminants. Being able to accurately analyze emerging pollutants has been crucial to providing guidance to regulators and ensuring the safety of the world’s oceans and waterways.

Can you describe how it feels when you come across a groundbreaking paper?
You just want to get it processed as quickly as possible! You want to do your best as an editor to turn things over quickly because you know that you are competing against other journals and because there is nothing more frustrating than a paper being rejected after an editor has sat on it for a long time.

What aspect of being an editor do you find most rewarding?
I really enjoy the peer review process. I like the challenge of working with investigators and reviewers to publish important research.

What advice would you give to a new editor?
Know your editorial board and make sure that the papers you send out to review are enjoyable to those editors. Try to understand who is going to read the papers.

What would you change about your role as editor or the scientific journal publishing industry if you could?
As an editor I get an increasing number of submissions from underdeveloped countries, and I can’t help but notice that often the research lacks key historical data. We need to make historical data available and affordable to researchers in those countries. I would also like to see more reviewers being added to our databases so we can deal with the increasing number of papers being submitted.

How do you envision the role of the editor being different in year 2020?
No matter how much the profession changes, every editor should have certain key attributes, such as fairness and positivism.

What is your favorite quote?
``I failed my way to success.’’ It is a quote from Thomas Edison. You have to look at failure as a building process rather than a destructive mechanism. Science is like the sport baseball, if you fail 7 out of 10 times you’re in the hall of fame. That’s why they call it re-search. So much of science is serendipitous; you are finding something that was there all along. I once met a Nobel laureate, who said that his best ideas were in his graduate student’s rubbish bin. We should see failure as an opportunity.

What is your biggest achievement?
My biggest achievement in life is my family and maintaining a marriage for more than 20 years. I have a wonderful family.

What are you currently reading? Would you recommend it? If so, why?
Currently, I am reading “Thirteen Moons” by Charles Frazier. I would, however recommend John Steinbeck’s ``The Log from the Sea of Cortez.’’ It’s a hodgepodge of different ideas based on a collecting trip in Baja California. It’s part philosophy of life and part scientific observation.

Who or what is your biggest inspiration?
I would have to say, my faith and my family.

What would you like your legacy to be?
I would love people to remember me as a fair mentor. I am lucky enough to get a captive audience every once in a while and I enjoy the interaction with students. I am very fortunate to have had some really good students.

What keeps you awake at night?
Things that keep me awake at night are things I cannot control, like a troubled student or injustice in the world.

What do you like to do for fun?
I love to surf. In fact, I don’t like to travel anymore because I prefer to go surfing and spend time with my family. My daughter loves to go tide pooling - she’s very observational - and I love to go with her. My son loves to beat me at 1-1 basketball.