A new partner for the Journal of Oceanography

Abstract

I am pleased to announce that we have a new partner, Springer Japan, in publishing the Journal of Oceanography (JO) beginning with this issue. The journal started in 1992 as a continuation of the Journal of the Oceanographic Society of Japan in celebration of its 50th anniversary. During its 19-year history, having been in partnership with Terra Pub, TerraPub/Kluwer, and TerraPub/Springer, JO has received increasing recognition in the world of science. However, it became evident that having both domestic and international partners simultaneously was not appropriate in the ‘‘Era of Online Journals’’. Another matter was page charges for authors. As the Society’s official journal, JO was not independent of the financial status of the Society, hence JO had been obliged to impose page charges for authors since 2006. The new partnership with Springer Japan resolves these matters. Under this new partnership, we are initiating Online First service, the quick online publication of articles shortly after receipt of the corrected proofs. Online First publishes accepted articles in electronic form prior to the appearance of the printed journal, without having to wait for the completion of an entire issue, printed or electronic. As each article becomes ready for Online First publication, it will be published on the Web with its own publication date. Each article will receive a permanent, unique international identification code, the digital object identifier (DOI), which is registered with the International DOI Foundation (http://www.doi.org). Contributions published Online First but not yet available in print may be cited by journal title and DOI only. The print version also includes the DOI and date of online publication. This means a significant reduction in publication time, as it will not be necessary for manuscripts to wait until the next available issue printed. We will also introduce a fully electronic manuscript submission and processing system, facilitating manuscript submission, review, and tracking. Authors can view the status of their manuscripts online at any time and can both read and respond to reviewers’ comments; they also have the convenience of submitting revisions online. This system substantially shortens the time from submission to acceptance, so that articles can be published promptly. The system will become effective from 1 April 2011 with a new Editor-in-Chief and editorial board members. I am honored to announce this news as I come to the end of my term as Editor-in-Chief. Taking advantage of this opportunity, I thank TerraPub for being a successful partner of JO. I sincerely hope that our new partnership with Springer will be a good step in preparing JO to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the society’s official publication next year.