Faculty members Mary Ann Moran and Aron Stubbins are first authors of publications that were recognized as top-cited papers in the Limnology and Oceanography 60th Anniversary Special Collection issue. Stubbin’s paper was published in the decade of the 2010s (Illuminated darkness: Molecular signatures of Congo River dissolved organic matter and its photochemical alteration as revealed by ultrahigh precision mass spectrometry) and Moran’s in the decade of the 2000s (Carbon loss and optical property changes during long‐term photochemical and biological degradation of estuarine dissolved organic matter) with Marine Sciences Department co-author Wade Sheldon. The papers are open access at http://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/issue/10.1002/(ISSN)1939-5590.LO60/