Editorial: The Depositional Record

Abstract

Many of you will have already heard about the launch of a major new journal ‘The Depositional Record’ to be published alongside the flagship journal ‘Sedimentology’. The new journal, owned by the International Association of Sedimentologists (IAS) and published by Wiley, will be Open Access and digital only. The journal was launched at the 19th International Sedimentological Congress in Geneva and the web site has been ‘live’ since 19 August 2014. Our aim is to publish the first issue by May 2015 and obtain an Impact Factor by July 2017. Over this period, the authors’ publication charges will be met by the IAS. The purpose of this editorial is to define how we, the Editors, envisage that The Depositional Record will differ from Sedimentology. Historically, the journal Sedimentology has emphasized classic sedimentology, such as the description of sedimentary sequences and processes. While Sedimentology will continue to publish such studies and others, new analytical methods and approaches have been developed over the past 50 years. New geochemical and geobiological techniques, in particular, can provide information on climate, carbon dynamics, evolution of the oceans, formation of sediments and diagenesis within the depositional record. In addition, there are many types of deposits often not considered within the remit of classic sedimentology, yet they utilize the geological principles on which our science is based. Through environmental reconstruction using such proxies, the depositional record at all scales can be used to better understand anthropological, archaeological, palaeobotanical and palaeofaunal histories, including extinction events and environmental modelling more generally. Although papers on new methods and different types of geo-records have been published in Sedimentology, many of the fundamental papers in the areas listed above are published in journals such as Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Geobiology, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Paleoceanography, Biogeosciences, Quaternary Science Reviews and many others. The Depositional Record is aimed at such papers. We want to attract high-impact research papers that address processes which affect, or which are recorded in, the depositional record over all time and physical scales. We would be equally happy with studies addressing the impacts of ocean acidification upon the growth rate and chemical composition of a modern coral, the application of next-generation gene sequencing data to understand the role of microbes in carbonate mineral precipitation, investigations into the Neoproterozoic carbon cycle, the geological records of the Mg/Ca ratio of the oceans, the sedimentary record of ancient Roman harbour utilization or the reconstruction of past and future ice-sheet dynamics using glacial sediments. We encourage you to submit your exciting papers in these areas to The Depositional Record. A more detailed description of the scope and goals of the journal can be found at http://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2055-4877.