From the Fortschritte der Mineralogie to the European Journal of Mineralogy: a case history

During the second half of the twentieth century, English more and more became the lingua franca in natural sciences, including the earth sciences, eventually replacing other languages of the civilized world at international congresses and in scientific publications of general relevance. Natural scientists, including geoscientists, had to accept that, in contrast to subjects in the arts, publishing in English had become an indispensible prerequisite for the international acceptance of scientific results, even at the cost of a loss in linguistic sophistication. As a consequence, most journals that appear in non-English-speaking countries switched to English as their language of publication and, in some cases, even the original journal title was changed drastically, e.g. the well-known Geologische Rundschau became the International Journal of Earth Sciences (Dullo, 1999). In other cases traditional European journals were discontinued as individuals, but merged with others to form new international journals.

The European Journal of Mineralogy (EJM), first published 20 years ago in 1989, was originally established as a merger of the three European society journals, the Bulletin de la Société française de Minéralogie, founded in 1878, and renamed Bulletin de Minéralogie in 1978, the Fortschritte der Mineralogie, published since 1911 by the Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft DMG, and the Rendiconti della Societá Italiana di Mineralogia e Petrologia, founded in 1941 (Kornprobst, 1989; Lagache, 1989; Okrusch, 1989; Omenetto, 1989). Subsequently, in 2004, the Sociedad Española de Mineralogía (SEM) joined in editing the EJM, discontinuing their Boletin de la SEM. Although the European Journal of Mineralogy soon became well established and is now accepted worldwide as a high-rank international scientific periodical, its foundation was a long-lasting process with many drawbacks and disappointments which, to a certain extent, mirror the problems experienced during the process of the political and economic unification of Europe. In the following we will portray the winding, rocky road that led towards the EJM, admittedly, as seen from the German point of view. Before doing so, the history and scientific significance of one of its parent journals, the Fortschritte der Mineralogie, will be briefly depicted.

More than 100 years ago, on September 22, 1908, the Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft (DMG) was founded in the city of Cologne. The inaugural meeting took place during the Jahresversammlung der deutschen Naturforscher und Ärzte (Annual Meeting of German Natural Scientists and Physicians) and was attended by 38 German-speaking mineralogists. Three years later, in 1911, the first volume of the Fortschritte der Mineralogie appeared (Fig. 1¹).

At this time, the British Mineralogical Magazine and the Bulletin de la Société française de Minéralogie had been on the market since 1876 and 1878, respectively. In the central European countries, moreover, three high rank, internationally respected periodicals in the field of mineralogy were already available. The venerable Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie und Geologie was founded as early as 1807 under the name of Taschenbuch für die gesammte Mineralogie, while the Tschermaks Mineralogische Mitteilungen and the Zeitschrift für Kristallographie had been published since 1872 and 1877, respectively. The founders of the Fortschritte did not intend to compete with these journals in publishing original research papers. By contrast, the focus was on articles reviewing the most recent developments in the various fields of mineralogy and related sciences. These progress reports gave a specific distinction to the new journal and got it accepted in the international community (e.g., Okrusch, 1989; Maresch, 1994). With some interruptions caused by the two World Wars, 66 volumes of the Fortschritte appeared between 1911 and 1988.¹ Thumbing through these volumes, the reader gets an impression of the diversity and wealth of mineralogical research, literally, the Progress in Mineralogy. This will be illustrated by referring to a few highlight papers on widely diverse subjects, mainly from older issues:

In the first volume of the Fortschritte, the famous Viennese mineralogist Friedrich Becke (1855–1931) published an important progress report on metamorphism in 1911, hereby stressing the urgent need for experimental investigations on the stability limits of metamorphic minerals (Fig. 2²).

Three years later, in 1914, Arthur L. Day (1869–1960) gave an overview on melting point determinations on minerals and reported on the fundamental high-temperature experiments carried out in the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, e.g. on the famous plagioclase melting diagram (Bowen, 1913). This overview paper was written in English and translated into German.

In the same volume, the German physicist and Nobel prize laureate Max von Laue (1879–1960) gave a detailed account on his geometric theory of X-ray diffraction on crystals (Fig. 3³) based on the epoch-making experiments of his coworkers Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping (Friedrich et al., 1912). Within one decade, single crystal diffraction methods became well established as detailed in a review paper by Ernst Schiebold (1927). The close relationships between mineralogy and physics are reflected in the overview article Atomzerfall und Atombau (Nuclear decay and nuclear constitution) published by Walter Gerlach (1922). Further, classical crystal optics finds its direct application as a fundamental method in mineralogical research as highlighted by the reviews of the mineralogist Max Berek (1886–1949) on circular polarization in 1914 and on quantitative methods in polarized reflected light in 1937 (Fig. 4⁴). (Incidentally, Berek calculated the first famous Leica objective!)

The mineralogist and father of modern geochemistry Victor Moritz Goldschmidt (1888–1947) published two benchmark papers in the Fortschritte, mainly based on the results of his productive and innovative working group at Göttingen, highlighting the close interaction between crystal chemistry (1931) and geochemistry (1933; Fig. 5⁵). It was a tragic disaster that, due to the shameful racial mania during the Nazi period, Goldschmidt was no longer able to stay in Göttingen. After racist hostilities in the university, he was forced to leave Germany in 1935 and to emigrate to Norway and Great Britain.

Within two decades after N.L. Bowen and his group had started their high-temperature experiments, phase relations in a considerable number of two-, three- and multi-component systems of petrological significance had been established. These were summarized in a comprehensive review paper by Ernst Jänecke (1933), Mineralogie und Phasenlehre. By contrast, in his overview article on progress in economic geology, the German “Erzvater” (an ambiguous expression meaning patriarch as well as father of the ores) Paul Ramdohr (1937) reports on a wealth of careful field and microscopic observations on ore deposits worldwide, whereas experimental data pertaining to ore genesis were hardly available during the 1930s. From the review papers published in the post-war volumes of the Fortschritte only two will be mentioned: Heinz Jagodzinski (1951) presented a foresighted overview on order-disorder transitions in crystals that opened a wide horizon for future research on this interesting subject. On the other hand, Karl Richard Mehnert’s (1959) overview on the present state of the granite problem summarizes the controversial theories of granite genesis, hotly debated between “magmatists” and “transformists” for many decades. In fact, the paper can be regarded as the swan song for the classical transformistic ideas.

More than in other countries, in Germany the science of mineralogy is positioned between the realms of geosciences and materials sciences. This polarization, that has developed over the years, is endured and accepted by German mineralogists as a fundamental principle and a driving force in the regional marketing of mineralogy. As a consequence, the important role of applied research is reflected by review articles published in the Fortschritte der Mineralogie. As early as 1936, the term Technische Mineralogie was used as a subheading in this journal. A few examples are given here: In his review paper on slag research as a basis for research on petrological systems, Leo Koch (1936) tried to bridge the gap between applied and fundamental research. Multicomponent systems with iron oxides of technical relevance were evaluated by Heinrich zur Strassen (1936). Important review articles were published by F. Stöckmann (1954) on semiconductors and by Walter Noll (1955) on the characteristics of the siloxane bond in polymeric anions (silicates) and polymeric molecules (silicones). The German coal petrographer Marie-Therese Mackowsky was the first female author of the Fortschritte. In 1953 she published a short note on the microstructure of coal, followed by review papers on applied research in mineralogy (1961) and progress in coal petrography (1968).

Besides review articles, the Fortschritte der Mineralogie or, from 1970 on, the Beihefte (Supplements) published reports on, or guides to, field trips, which increasingly developed into valuable sources for preparing field courses for students. Since 1927, papers presented at the annual meetings of DMG have appeared in print. Initially, these amounted to several pages each and had the character of genuine publications. However, with the increasing numbers of talks at the annual meetings of DMG and its various sections, these papers had to be shortened considerably: they did not appear at all between 1966 and 1969, and from 1970 on were published as short Abstracts in the Beihefte.

Up to 1960, publications in the Fortschritte der Mineralogie were written exclusively in German. The first larger paper in English was published by Martin J. Buerger (1961) who gave an invited key-note lecture on polymorphism and phase transformations at the annual meeting of DMG in Bonn. In the years to come, articles in English appeared occasionally, but more frequently after 1970, in part also written by German-speaking authors. In 1987, 5 out of 11 papers were published in English, thus stressing the trend towards the common use of English as a science language.

The rising international importance and distribution of the American Mineralogist after 1945, compared to the multitude of European journals of lesser international impact, led to deliberations for a new, competitive European journal. So, as early as 1974, French mineralogists initiated the idea of establishing a “European Journal of Mineralogy” by merging the traditional periodicals of the following British, French, German, Italian and Swiss mineralogical societies:

• Mineralogical Magazine (founded in 1876),

• Bulletin de la Société française de Minéralogie et de Cristallographie (founded in 1878 and renamed in Bulletin de Minéralogie in 1978),

• Fortschritte der Mineralogie (founded in 1911),

• Schweizerische Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen (founded in 1921),

• Rendiconti della Societá Italiana di Mineralogia e Petrologia (founded in 1941).

In 1975, the general assembly of the Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft arrived at an affirmative decision, following the suggestion of Hans Ulrich Bambauer, chief editor of Fortschritte from 1973 to 1988. From 1979 on, detailed negotiations were held under the aegis of the Group of European Mineralogists (GEM), an informal association of 12, later on 14 societies, founded to come into closer contact and to stimulate scientific cooperation among the European mineralogists. In 1987, the European Mineralogical Union (EMU) followed GEM as an official umbrella organization of the 14 European mineralogical societies. Very soon, it became clear that, mainly from financial considerations, founding of a new journal in addition to the existing five journals proved to be unrealistic. Thus, efforts were made to merge five journals, which not only differ in scientific preferences but also greatly in technical respects, e.g. in format, layout, numbers of issues and pages, referee system, subscription fees and subsidies.

However, notwithstanding the keen interest especially of French and German mineralogists, but due to the wait-and-see attitude mainly taken by the British side, the negotiations dragged on for more than 12 years without final result. In the meantime, the European Monetary System and the direct election to the European Parliament had been established in 1979, but the European mineralogists still were not able to agree on a common journal. As a step to get closer to this goal, a Directory of Institutions of the 14 GEM societies was published in 1982 with the support of the Italian Society; in 1983, the British delegates made a proposal for a GEM tie.

As a first substantial step towards the EJM, born among the closely and amiably cooperating delegates from France (Victor Gabis and Martine Lagache) and Germany (Hans Ulrich Bambauer), the British, French, German, Italian and Swiss societies arrived at an interim solution in 1983: Their traditional journals received a common index, a similar format of 24 × 17 cm, and a two-column layout, but kept their own volume numbering, a characteristic colour of the front cover, and showed their own symbols: a Carsbad twin of feldspar for the Mineralogical Magazine, a group of quartz crystals for the Bulletin de Minéralogie, a knee twin of cassiterite, in German called “Visiergraupe”, for the Fortschritte der Mineralogie, a Brazilian twin of quartz for the Schweizerische Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen and a pentagon-dodecahedron of pyrite for the Rendiconti della Societá Italiana di Mineralogia e Petrologia (Fig. 6⁶). The common index, elaborated by Martine Lagache and coworkers with painstaking efforts, shows the heading European Journal of Mineralogy for the first time.

This compromise prevented a French and German solo run (quotation from a French statement: “à faire avancer les choses sur le continent”), and the British colleagues were taken in the same boat, at least temporarily. However, finally in 1986, the Mineralogical Society definitely rejected any participation on a common European journal. Apparently, one of the several British problems which remained unsolved, was that the Mineralogical Magazine was held by the Mineralogical Society as a private publishing venture (quotation: “If the proposed EJM were to be published by a commercial publisher, this would be an admission of defeat”). The decision of the British colleagues was followed by the Swiss mineralogists in 1987, and in 2006 the Schweizerische Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen was merged with the Eclogae Geologicae Helvetiae to form the Swiss Journal of Geosciences.

As a consequence of this somewhat discouraging development, only the Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft (DMG), the Société française de Minéralogie et de Cristallographie (SFMC) and the Societá Italiana di Mineralogia e Petrologia (SIMP) remained as partners who, in cooperation with the European Mineralogical Union (EMU), were prepared to publish the European Journal of Mineralogy as a bimonthly periodical, and, by the same token, discontinue their own traditional journals. As a symbol for this triple alliance, a chrysoberyl triplet was chosen (Fig. 7⁷, 8⁸). On 1 August 1988, the presidents of the three responsible societies Wolfgang Hoffmann, Jean Protas, and Paolo Omenetto, signed an “Agreement upon the publication of the European Journal of Mineralogy”, organizing the editorial life of a modern, international, peer-reviewed journal. At the same time, the three presidents and Dr. Erhard Nägele of the publishing house E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung signed the detailed publisher’s contract according to which the societies are responsible for the quality of the accepted papers, and the publisher controls the production and is in charge of selling, distribution and marketing of the new journal. The contracts establish that the editorial office was to be placed in Paris, while printing (only after 2007) and sale of the journal were to be organized by E. Schweizerbart in Stuttgart.

In January 1989, number 1 of volume 1 of the EJM appeared, still in the 24 × 17 cm format; finally, from volume 14 (2002) on, the journal adopted the “international” sub-A4 (27.5 × 21 cm) format. Starting with volume 13 (2001) the EJM became available online under www.schwei-zerbart.de/j/ejm.

Participation of additional mineralogical societies from Europe was a desirable option. A first step in this spirit was, in 1996, the creation of an additional chief-editor position, on behalf the European Mineralogical Union. As a further significant step, the Sociedad Española de Mineralogía (SEM) joined the contract in 2004, and at the same time, discontinued the Boletín de la SEM, the official journal of the Sociedad from 1978 to 2003. Chief editors of the first EJM volume were Egon Althaus (Karlsruhe), early GEM representative and last editor of the Fortschritte der Mineralogie, for DMG, Christian Chopin (Paris) for SFMC and Francesco P. Sassi (Padova) for SIMP.²

Christian Willaime (Rennes), a prominent supporter over the years, acted as a managing editor; he was followed by Christian Chopin from 2001 on. Fernando Nieto-Garcia (Granada) is chief editor for SEM from 2004 on, while Ernst A. J. Burke (Amsterdam) acted as the first chief editor for EMU from 1996 to 2001 and created the EJM website in 1997; he was followed by Ekkehart Tillmanns (Vienna) from 2002 on.

The contracts allow society’s supplements to the EJM. Thus, for the DMG the annual supplement “Berichte der Deutschen Mineralogischen Gesellschaft” (successor of the “Beihefte” – supplement to Fortschritte der Mineralogie) 1988–2006, was reserved for DMG news, scientific abstracts of the annual meetings, and field-trip guides (Fig. 9⁹). The Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft decided to discontinue this supplement and to offer EJM in combination with the new review journal Elements from 2007 on.

In order to continue the tradition of the Fortschritte der Mineralogie, the EJM contract determined that two of the six annual issues of the EJM should consist exclusively of invited progress reports. These issues would be delivered to DMG and SIMP members as part of their annual fees, whereas the other four issues would be available at a reduced price. SFMC members were to obtain the whole volume at a reduced price, independently of the annual fee; the same holds true for members of other European societies. Unfortunately, the intention to fill two issues with invited reports did not stand up to reality as the chief editors were not successful in acquiring sufficient interesting overview papers. Moreover, from experience, some of the authors who had submitted review articles, especially in the field of technical mineralogy, needed special support with respect to the strict peer review process.

Because of these developments, the general assembly of the DMG decided in 1993 that each DMG member should obtain all six annual issues, which necessitated a doubling of the annual subscription fees. Not unexpectedly, this decision was not well accepted by some of the DMG members, and even caused a number of resignations. Especially those mineralogists working outside the universities, e.g. in industry, complained about the shortage of good overview articles in applied mineralogy, particularly in technology and environmental concerns. On the other hand, the EJM contains a wealth of good to even excellent original papers, covering a broad spectrum (see below). The lack of geoscience overviews, is at least in part compensated for by Elements, an international magazine of mineralogy, geochemistry, and petrology that was founded in 2005, as it contains concise, up-to-date review articles on current developments in all fields of mineralogy. Since the DMG has joined the group of 15 world-wide sponsoring societies, this new international journal is now available to all members without additional costs.

The promoters of EJM clearly aimed for an international journal of high scientific standard, i.e. comparable to the American Mineralogist. Of course, the prerequisites necessary for reaching this goal are

• a broad variety of subjects;

• the submission of a wealth of good papers from all over the world;

• a strict peer review system to select, out of the manuscripts submitted, those of the highest quality and

• publication of these with considerable speed.

During its first 20 years of existence, between 1989 and 2008, nearly 1900 papers have been published in EJM, starting with a minimum of 67 in volume 1 and reaching a maximum of 116 in volume 4, on average 94 publications per year. In the years 2003–2006, the annual publication rate decreased somewhat, but has again increased since then to 106 in 2009, the average presently being at 89 contributions. Throughout this period, the editorial board of EJM has made every effort to enhance the publication speed of the journal and to reduce the time used for the peer review process as far as possible (e.g., Willaime, 1990, 1992, 1994; Maresch, 1994; Chopin, 2007, 2008, 2009). Nevertheless, the marked increase in submissions enjoyed in 1990 and 1991 led to an unacceptably long publication delay in 1992. Thanks to a grant from each of the three founding societies, however, the bow wave of manuscripts was levelled out by increasing the number of printed pages for volume 4 to about 1500 (Willaime, 1993; Maresch, 1994). In order to enhance publication of more, but shorter papers, a page charge has been raised for manuscripts longer than 12 printed pages since 1992 (Willaime, 1992), and the submission of short notes and letters is encouraged. From volume 14 (2002) on, the format of EJM has been extended to sub-A4; at the same time, the upper limit for articles free of page charges was initially reduced to 10 printed pages, but has recently been returned to 12 printed pages. The last eight volumes contain between 870 and 1344 pages, with an average of about 1070. Since 2001, the full-text version of the journal is available online to institutional subscribers and since 2002 to members of the societies (Chopin, 2002). Not unexpectedly, an increasing amount of online subscribers do not purchase the printed version any longer. Whereas about 3100 printed copies were published in volume 1 (1988), only about 2050 copies appeared in 2009. However, this drawback is widely compensated by use of the online version with about 2000 entitlements (Dr. Andreas Nägele, pers. comm., 2009).

Unfortunately, launching of the EJM coincided with a major change in the field of scientific publishing. With a majority of traditional international journals in the hands of only two or three commercial publishers, these publish-for-profit organizations were able to corner the market and increase journal prices at will (e.g., Chopin, 2005). Faced with package contracts, many libraries were forced to cut back on society journals or, in the case of the new EJM, many were never able to become subscribers at all. It is a measure of EJM success that these large commercial publishers repeatedly offered to take over the publication of the EJM, an offer that would have brought with it many advantages to the editorial board in terms of technical support and financial peace of mind. On the other hand, these offers would also have led to a complete loss of control over pricing policy, and the yearly increases of more than 10–20 % in subscription prices contained in some of these take-over bids were certainly not in line with the responsibility that the founding societies owed to their members for providing a low-cost scientific publication medium.

Fortunately, in 2004 GeoScienceWorld (GSW) was formed as a non-profit corporation by a group of leading geoscientific organizations for the sole purpose of making geoscience research and related information easily and economically available via the Internet. Originally an unprecedented collaboration of seven leading earth science societies and institutes, these founders now work together with other geoscience societies and university presses to develop an electronic research resource that is unprecedented in our field of science. GeoScienceWorld delivers online the aggregated content of over 35 journals published by cooperating not-for-profit and independent geoscience publishers. In total, the cooperating organizations represent over 100,000 geoscientists engaged in basic and applied research and education in geosciences. This venture can well be understood as a serious bid to curb the influence of the large publish-for-profit commercial publishers and their often horrendous pricing policies.

In 2005 the councils of the four societies publishing the EJM agreed to join the GSW venture in the year 2006, in concert with the Mineralogical Societies of America and Canada as well as Great Britain and Ireland (Chopin, 2007). The decision was not an easy one, because libraries subscribing to GSW could be expected to cancel their present EJM subscriptions, a mainstay of the journal’s budget. However, these fears so far appear to be unfounded, because GSW has brought many new subscribers and has led to few cancellations. Technical implementation (involving considerable start-up costs that also needed to be considered) began in 2006, and by 2007 all EJM issues back to 1989 were available on-line and searchable on the GSW website (Chopin, 2008). The EJM is gaining a higher exposure to non-European readership; supplementary data can be linked to published articles and are freely accessible online, in addition to abstracts, editorials, obituaries and IMA reports. The purely financial returns for EJM are modest, but nevertheless amount to ~10 % of EJM’s total operating budget. As noted by Chopin (2007), the GSW venture signifies a new era in the development of the European Journal of Mineralogy.

From 2009 on, colour figures may appear in the online version of EJM free of charge, whereas the price for publication in the printed version has been considerably reduced (Chopin, 2009). Although English is strongly preferred as publication language in EJM, the theoretical option to submit publications in French, German or Italian was used by some authors. Between 1989 and 1999, 15 articles appeared in French and three in German whereas, later on, papers were exclusively published in English.

We have tried to group the papers published in the first 20 volumes of EJM according to their fields of research, following similar surveys made by Maresch (1994) and Chopin (2005). Undoubtedly, the results listed in Table 1¹ are somewhat ambiguous, as there exist no clear-cut limits between the individual fields and there is considerable overlap, e.g., between papers on rock-forming minerals and the various petrological subjects. Nevertheless, the proposed classification provides some hints for the strong and weak points of the journal. First of all, there is a rather well balanced ratio of papers in the fields of systematic, regional and applied mineralogy (38.9 %) and petrology (43.4 %). Moreover, EJM contains a considerable amount of articles in pure crystallography (17.7 %) including work on the crystal structures and crystal chemistry of artificial compounds. Thus the journal should attract a broad readership with very different scientific preferences. From Table 1¹, hardly any clear trend in the temporal development of the main groups and subgroups of research subjects can be detected. Distinct peaks for specific subjects in individual years reflect accumulations of papers presented at topic-related meetings and congresses.

Within the main group systematic, regional and applied mineralogy, papers on rock-forming minerals clearly dominate (17.2 %), whereas those on rarer minerals (5.9 %) and new minerals (7.4 %) are subordinate in number (Table 1¹). Thus, the prejudice, sometimes expressed by critics, that EJM contains predominantly articles on “exotic minerals” is not justified by the actual facts (see also Chopin, 2006). In this context, it should be stressed that minerals initially regarded as “exotic” may become of considerable importance. For instance, the Fe³⁺-sulphate schwertmannite turned out to be the most important mineral phase in low-temperature processes at the bio-geo interface (Putnis, pers. comm., 2009). On the other hand, there is a deplorable shortage of papers in the field of applied mineralogy in technology and environmental concerns (1.9 %) where, obviously, authors seek and find their readership in more specialized journals. As already stated, this drawback makes the EJM less interesting for many mineralogists working in the industry. On the other hand, 41 papers (=2.2 %) have been published on archeometry and conservation and 20 papers (=1.1 %) on biomineralization and related subjects, 19 of which have appeared since 2001 thus reflecting the increasing interest in this field of research. Only 16 papers (=0.8 %) on cosmic mineralogy, especially on meteorites, were published in EJM, as authors in this field generally prefer to submit their manuscripts to relevant journals like Meteoritics & Planetary Science. Finally, 45 articles (=2.4 %) that appeared in EJM are devoted to new or improved mineralogical methods and one paper to the history of mineralogy.

In the main group petrology, a rather good balance has been attained between publications on field-related petrology (19.1 %) and on experimental and theoretical petrology (16.9 %). In contrast to these two overwhelmingly predominant subgroups, only 52 papers (=2.8 %) were published on mineral deposits, and 74 (=3.9 %) on the related subject of fluid and melt inclusions. Again, more specialized journals like Mineralium Deposita are preferred by most authors in these fields of research. This holds true even more for geochemistry s. s., for which EJM cannot compete in the least with journals like Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta or Chemical Geology. We counted only 14 papers (=0.7 %) with subjects of pure geochemistry although, of course, many publications on field-related petrology deal with geochemical aspects as well.

An important indication for the international acceptance of a journal is the variety of the authors’ affiliations. Although, for simplicity, we counted only the senior authors, a clear picture evolved showing that mineralogists from the four constituting European societies provided as much as 56.3 % of the published papers (Table 2²). Among these, Italy ranks first (21.6 %), closely succeeded by Germany (20.3 %) and – at a considerable distance – France (11.4 %); Spain, that joined the contract only in 2004, has so far contributed 2.9 % of the papers, however with increasing tendency. Among the other European countries, notable contributions were provided by the United Kingdom (5.2 %), Switzerland (3.1 %) Austria (3.0 %), the Czech Republic (1.7 %) and Sweden (1.7 %), while authors from 18 other European countries, including Israel, each published less than 1 % of the papers in EJM. Altogether, the European contribution amounts to 78.8 %. Russian authors provided a considerable number of articles (4.9 %) – and with increasing tendency –thus enhancing the portion of European papers in the widest sense to 83.7 %. Consequently, there is no doubt that EJM is in fact a European journal which, in turn, clearly indicates that the acceptance by mineralogists from overseas countries is still limited. Considerable contributions of 5.0 % and 3.3 %, respectively, were provided by authors from USA and Canada, while 5.1 % were contributed by authors from six East and Southeast Asian countries, among which Japan ranks first (2.5 %), followed by the Peoples Republic of China (1.2 %). The Australian contribution amounts to 1.5 %, whereas authors from New Zealand provided only 0.2 %, four Arab countries 0.3 %, South Africa 0.4 % and four Latin American countries 0.4 %.

In the last decades, the impact factor has developed as the most significant indication for the rank of scientific journals, although its merit seems to be somewhat exaggerated. Within its first 2 years of existence, the EJM reached a notable position among the journals devoted to mineralogy and petrology, with an ISI impact factor of 0.68 for 1989 and 1.07 for 1990 (Maresch, 1994). Since this time, the impact factor of EJM was always above 1.1; in the period from 1998 to 2007 it ranges from 1.19 (in 2003) to 1.45 (in 2001), with an average of 1.29, however with a slightly decreasing tendency. However, in 2010, the impact factor reached again a considerable 1.45, although still below those of American Mineralogist or Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology. At present (October 2010), EJM is in 11^th position among 31 mineralogy-related periodicals, and 3rd among the society journals publishing research papers. Clearly, an increasing proportion of papers from the UK, USA, Canada, Japan or Australia could further improve the ISI ranking.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the EJM plays an important role as a window to European mineralogy and related sciences. At a time when libraries have to struggle with an extreme increase in the cost for periodicals from the prominent publishing companies, the EJM, as a nonprofit journal sponsored by four mineralogical societies, recommends itself by its modest price. Moreover, a broad spectrum of research subjects, publication on a regular schedule and a relatively fast review procedure are clear advantages of this journal.

Archive of Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft (DMG) at Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin (e-mail: e-mail: archiv@bbwa.de).

Files used: VA 25072, VA 25086, VA 25094, VA 25123, VA25126, VA25141.

We thank Vera Enke (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin) for kind support during the archive work, Gerd Klöß (Leipzig) and Andreas Nägele (E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Stuttgart) for important information, Hartwig Frimmel (Würzburg) for fruitful discussions, and Andrew Putnis (Münster) for special support. The paper benefitted from critical reviews by Christian Chopin (Paris), Herbert Kroll (Münster), Walter Maresch (Bochum), Wolfgang Müller (Darmstadt) and Erhard Nägele (Stuttgart), and the editorial handling by Ekkehart Tillmanns (Wien) which are gratefully acknowledged. Our special thanks are due to Walter Maresch who kindly provided the text on GeoScienceWorld and polished the English text.