A quarter of a century after its launch, the European Journal of Mineralogy (EJM) is commencing a new era in its life. The general organisation remains unchanged (a journal owned by four learned societies which bear the financial risk, and published under the auspices of the European Mineralogical Union); however, the service offered to authors and readers has changed in many respects since January, 2014.
For the editorial handling of manuscripts from submission to acceptance, the EJM has moved to the Editorial Manager system, which offers more flexibility to authors and editors, and also the possibility to streamline the production of first proofs soon after acceptance. The new link to submit and track your papers is now http://www.editorialmanager.com/ejm/.
In addition, first proofs, corrected proofs and the unpaginated final versions of articles, which were so far posted on the Ingenta website of the journal, are now also available to the GeoScienceWorld community on the GSW website of the journal (Online First page). This decision thereby offers maximum and early exposure to your work.
The page-charge policy is also being reconsidered, so as not to affect only the longer papers. It is useful to recall here that the owner Societies are acting on a non-profit basis; they endeavour to publish as many good-quality articles as possible with the means at their disposal, and also to keep subscription prices low (compare this with commercial publishers’ journals!). This means that any author contribution to production costs, however modest it may be, is welcome in helping our Societies achieve their goals to the service of our community. In this spirit, it is planned to ask authors for a voluntary contribution beginning with the first printed page, of course on a lower per-page basis. Many authors will usually have grants explicitly for this purpose.
Authors are also reminded that EJM has an Open Access option; it is to be expected that in the future more and more emphasis will be placed by grant agencies on this type of publication.
The past year has seen the publication of several thematic or special issues covering major meetings, such as EMPG 14 held in Kiel, with guest editors Astrid Holzheid, Oliver Beermann and Philip Kegler, emc2012, the first and very successful European Mineralogical Conference held in Frankfurt/Main and convened by Heidi Höfer and Gerhard Brey, and Geo-Raman 10 held in Nancy, with guest editor Jean Dubessy. Forthcoming for 2014 will be an issue based on the session ‘Imaging techniques in the Earth Sciences’of the Goldschmidt Conference held in Florence, with guest editors Georges Calas and Giancarlo Della Ventura, as well as a thematic issue on ‘Biominerals and biomimetic materials’, with guest editors Wolfgang Schmahl and Alejandro Rodríguez Navarro. Suggestions for new thematic issues are very welcome.
Associate editors Ross Angel, Karim Benzerara, Frank Brenker, Lutz Nasdala, Dave Pattison, Fernando Rull, Wolfgang Schmahl and Francisco Velasco Roldan have arrived at the end of their term or have asked to be relieved of their duty, for some of them after a very long time of outstanding service. We thank all of them for their dedication and the time unselfishly offered to the community in maintaining the high scientific standards of the EJM. This is also the place to acknowledge the continued support of faithful subscribers and authors, as well as the financial support of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Our objective has always been that the EJM should be a journal run by scientists for scientists and dedicated to providing the best possible service to the scientific community at the most reasonable cost. It is in this spirit that we embark on our voyage for the next 25 years.
