News & press 

EGUsphere, the innovative open-access repository created by the European Geosciences Union and Copernicus Publications, is growing. For the first time, authors will be able to upload preprints to the online resource, taking advantage of EGU’s pioneering public peer-review process, whilst preparing their papers for future release.

At the end of the year, we would like to express our deep gratitude for our collaboration with all editors, referees, and authors in 2021. Please take a look at our Christmas card. Since our virtual office is closed from 23 Dec to 2 Jan and a significant number of editors and referees pause their work over the Christmas days, we extended all journal review deadlines: deadlines expiring shortly before or over Christmas have been extended to the week after and deadlines expiring after Christmas or over New Year have been extended to after New Year’s Day. Season's greetings and a happy New Year. Please stay healthy.

In April 2021 the EGU Publications Committee launched the first author survey to routinely ask authors about their publishing experience in EGU journals, in order to learn more about how EGU and Copernicus can serve the scientific community with their publications. Over the last 6 months, 160 contact authors answered the survey representing about 10% of the papers published during this time. We are delighted about the positive feedback and thank all authors. Please read the full report.

The executive editors (EEs) of SOIL are delighted to welcome Engracia Madejón Rodríguez to the executive editor team of SOIL.

Clarivate Analytics just released its 2020 journal citation report, and SOIL has made a major leap forward in its impact factor from 3.343 last year to 5.841 this year. And SOIL is now ranked 5th in soil science!

The journal metrics were updated and the current numbers are available from the journal metrics overview.

As of 1 November 2020 the direct settlement of article processing charges (APCs) between the ETH Zurich and Copernicus Publications will be valid for corresponding authors.

EGU is seeking scientists who want to gain experience in the realm of scientific publishing to pre-screen manuscripts submitted to the Union's new online platform.

We are delighted to announce that SOIL has received its first Impact Factor from Clarivate Analytics.

Gothenburg University Library and Copernicus Publications have signed an agreement on the central billing of article processing charges (APCs) to facilitate the publication procedure for authors.

The Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC) will now provide a publication fund for their corresponding authors publishing in Copernicus' open-access journals.

Following the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011, the Japanese authorities decided to carry out major decontamination works in the affected area, which covers more than 9,000 km². On December 12, 2019, with most of this work having been completed, SOIL is publishing a synthesis of approximately sixty scientific publications that together provide an overview of the decontamination strategies used and their effectiveness, with a focus on radiocesium.

SOIL introduces reduced article processing charges (APCs) to be paid by the authors (or their institution) for any manuscripts submitted from 1 January 2020.

The journal metrics were updated and the current numbers are available from the metrics box on the left-hand side.

A video abstract is a short video statement providing authors with the opportunity to present background information about their findings and to showcase their research activities to a wider audience.

Clarivate Analytics has accepted SOIL into the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE); the Journal Citation Reports (JCR); and Current Contents/Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences.

Lily Pereg, Executive Editor of the SOIL journal as well as Deputy President and Programme Group Chair of the EGU Soil System Sciences (SSS) Division, died tragically and unexpectedly earlier this month during a trip to Argentina.

Copernicus Publications recently launched its full-text HTML workflow and optimized the SOIL website for mobile devices. Thereby, the user experience is significantly enhanced when reading SOIL articles.

Data underpinning any research finding should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) - not only for humans, but also for machines. Therefore, Copernicus Publications requests that such data are available upon publication of an article.

We are pleased to announce that Scopus has completed its evaluation of SOIL and announced that it will include the journal in its database.

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 EGUââ?¬â??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.