Request for Feedback
Potential New Publication in Cryospheric Sciences
European Geosciences Union
For further information, please contact:
Jonathan Bamber
E-mail: j.bamber [at] bristol.ac.uk
Dear Colleague,
Over the last two years we have been discussing, within the European
Geosciences Union (EGU) cryospheric community, the possibility of
launching a new EGU journal in cryospheric sciences (CS). There has
been, in general, considerable enthusiasm for the concept but I wanted
to gauge the mood amongst a broader cross section of the community.
EGU currently publishes around 12 journals
(http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/publication_overview.html), all of which
are open access: i.e., there are no subscription charges and access to
papers is free to all. We strongly believe that this is the future of
scientific publishing and that if you want your paper to be widely read
and cited then this is a good way to achieve it. Many, many scholarly
organisations and funding agencies (e.g., UKRC) have committed to the
Berlin Declaration on open access (see
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html),
including providing funds to support open access publishing. One of the
newish EGU journals, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, has achieved an
impact factor of 2.67 for 2004 (comparable to the Journal of Geophysical
Research) in just four years. If you want to know more about the EGU
publications policy you can find details at:
http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/publication/mission_statement_for_publica…
Currently CS papers appear in some dozen journals published by various
publishers, some commercial and some not. In the new CS EGU journal, we
propose covering all aspects of research related to the cryosphere
including all its physical states (snow, sea ice, lake and river ice,
permafrost, glaciers and ice sheets, and planetary ice), observations
from remote sensing, in-situ or laboratory based studies, numerical
modelling, climatology (including past ice reconstructions, ice core
studies, and predictions of future states of the cryosphere), and so on.
The main advantages of an EGU publication on CS include:
1) immediate open access;
2) very fast publication rate (for other EGU journals, 8-10 weeks is
quite common for submission to publication time);
3) low page charges (approximately 90 Euro/page) with no additional cost
for color, and hardcopy reprints or library copies available at a low
cost; and
4) a single journal for all aspects of cryospheric sciences.
I am circulating this e-mail to canvas opinion from the broad community
on the merits of this proposal. I welcome comments on any aspect of the
above but would particularly like to know:
1) whether you would publish in this journal (even if it was not ISI
listed in its first year, for example). The first 1,000 pages will be
free of charge as an incentive;
2) whether you believe there is a need for such a journal; and
3) whether you feel the scope is appropriate.
Regards,
Jonathan Bamber, EGU CS President
Bristol Glaciology Centre
University of Bristol
University Road
Bristol BS8 1SS UK
E-mail: j.bamber [at] bristol.ac.uk
Phone: 44 (0) 117 928 8102/9000