Environmental Earth Sciences Progress Report 2020 and Outlook 2021

Olaf Kolditz,Gioacchino F Andriani,Gabriele Buttafuoco,Ted Asch,Paola Teti,Andrew Hursthouse,Jim Lamoreaux,Jan Schwarzbauer,Siegfried Siegesmund,Barbara Kolditz,Broder J Merkel,Stephen Appleyard,Peter Dietrich,Gunter Dörhöfer,Derek Kim

doi:10.1007/s12665-021-09531-8

Abstract

The present editorial 2020 continues the series of status reports in Environmental Earth Sciences (EES) in previous years 2017 and 2019 (Kolditz et al. in Environ Earth Sci 77: 8, 2018, Kolditz et al. in Environ Earth Sci 79: 11, 2020). The year 2020 coming to an end was heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic affecting all areas of life including research work and, therefore, scientific publishing as well (“Introduction”). One bright spot which shows longevity of journals that produce a quality product is that Environmental Earth Sciences (EES) is celebrating its 45th anniversary of publication. To this extent EES continues the tradition to honor the most cited papers contributing to the 2020 Impact Factor (IF) (“Highly and most cited topics”) and provide information on the current status of EES as well as an outlook to 2021 (“Progress report”)

Highlights

Over the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic and social effects throughout the world, and has caused significant impacts on the way that the research community has been able to live and work during this period
As a result of the pandemic, immense research efforts have been directed towards improving our understanding of the behaviour of the virus and of ways to defeat it
The way in which scientific communication has been changed entirely, as conferences are mainly held in virtual formats

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic and social effects throughout the world, and has caused significant impacts on the way that the research community has been able to live and work during this period. These distinguished scientists have helped establish EES as a well-respected journal known for its applied approach to science with an emphasis on the coverage of research in developing countries. – 2018-2019: Water quality, risk, rock, and gas are the leading topics in most cited EES’ papers for the upcoming impact factor 2020 (Fig. 2b). As a tradition of the EES editorial analysis, among the large number of excellent works, the most cited papers for the upcoming impact factor 2020 are highlighted here. These eight are highly cited as well (see above). Huang et al (2018) Congratulations go to authors of these most cited papers and to all EES authors and reviewers for their excellent contributions to the journal

Progress report

Impact factor development

Findings

Submissions and publishing