Community News Archive
Environmental Research Letters
Institute of Physics Publishing
17 May 2006
Institute of Physics launches new open-access environmental science journal
From climate change to waste management and renewable energy sources, environmental science has always covered issues that affect everyone. Although specialist publications for the different branches of environmental science exist, there is still a need for a central source for all environmental research. The Institute of Physics recognises this and is launching Environmental Research Letters (ERL), the first open–access journal that will cover the whole of environmental science.
ERL will serve the entire environmental science community, including both specialist researchers and the wider public, by providing free access to wide-ranging content on topics extending across environmental science. The journal will offer a combination of research letters, commentaries, job and other advertisements, reviews and news items. ERL will be completely free to read online and published authors in the journal will be required to pay an article publication charge.
The editor-in-chief Daniel Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, said "ERL will be a new, world-class, free-to-read journal dedicated to bringing together professional scientists, economists, and engineers as well as the public sector and people who are engaged in efforts to understand the state of natural systems and, increasingly, the human footprint on the biosphere."
The journal's coverage will reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of environmental science, recognising wide-ranging contributions to the development of methods, tools and evaluation strategies relevant to the field. Typical areas of interest will include biodiversity, climate change, energy and health.
Tim Smith, publisher at Institute of Physics Publishing said “ERL is intended as the meeting place of the wide-ranging research and policy communities that are now concerned with environmental change and management. We believe that ERL’s topical coverage together with the general public’s increasing awareness of issues relating to the environment makes open-access an appropriate publishing model for the journal.
“ERL will be primarily an online publication, but people will be able to subscribe to a print version in 2007. The first content will be available in October 2006.”
The journal is now inviting research letter submissions from all researchers working at the forefront of environmental science. Submissions should be no more than 4000 words (inclusive of all text and 1-3 graphics). The peer-review of all articles will be guided by the Editorial Board to ensure maximal appeal to the journal’s broad readership. Full details about the article submission process and other details about ERL may be found on the journal homepage and the first content will appear in October 2006.
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