SOIL readers and EGU members will be sad to learn that Dr Barry Rawlins died on Friday 29th September two years after being diagnosed with cancer.

The updated publication policy now is extended by the journal's open access statement, its archiving and indexing scheme, and explicit policies on corrections and retractions.

The general obligations for editors, referees, and authors have been revised to give advice for the appropriate handling of literature suggestions.

From 6 June onwards, all newly submitted articles, if accepted for publication, will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

To make it as easy as possible for users without technical knowledge to cut and paste or click to share DOIs, CrossRef has changed the display and citation guidelines for DOIs from "doi:10.5194/abcd" to "https://doi.org/10.5194/abcd".

Since early 2016, Copernicus Publications has been enabling authors to connect their articles with underlying or related material such as research data, model code, or scientific videos. To enhance reproducibility it is now also possible to include International Geo Sample Numbers (IGSNs) as assets.

In 2016, the 17 EGU–Copernicus peer-reviewed open-access journals experienced significant growth. We published over 3300 final-revised papers, corresponding to some 53,500 pages, a growth of about 10% compared to the previous year. These papers were downloaded over 645,000 times.

Eric Brevik leaves the editorial board of SOIL as of today. Please read his farewell address.

EGU and Copernicus Publications carefully investigated the editorial and reviewing activities of all eight scientists accused in the anonymous "McDonald" report about an alleged "citation cartel". The report is available for download.

Recently we have become aware of a case of scientific malpractice by an editor of two of our journals (SOIL and SE) who used the position as editor and reviewer to disproportionately promote citations to personal papers and associated journals. Please read the published editorial.

Copernicus Publications has extended the article level metrics (ALMs) by showing the geographical distribution of views. This information is available for articles published after 3 August 2016.

SOIL has been accepted into the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and has received the DOAJ Seal which recognizes journals with an exceptionally high level of publishing standards and best practice.

We have summarized the upcoming changes to SOIL by the end of the year.

In cooperation with the TIB|AV-Portal SOIL authors can now add short, citable video abstracts and video supplements to their articles.

From January 2016 onwards, SOIL will see changes to the way papers are archived and paid for.

We have updated our data policy: it now also refers to the Data Citation Principles and stresses the necessity of data availability.

SOIL has become a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and thereby subscribes to the principles of COPE.

The SOIL website has been given a new look, and the navigation has been adjusted. Further details:

SOILhas started an XML-first workflow and will provide all new articles in full-text XML from now on.

SOIL, the newest interactive and open access journal of the EGU, is dedicated to the publication and discussion of high-quality research in the field of soil system sciences.