Mineralium Deposita: change and continuity

Abstract

2012 has been a year of transition for Mineralium Deposita.After 4 years as co-editor, Patrick J. Williams has steppeddown in June to fully concentrate on his consulting busi-ness. During Patrick's tenure, Mineralium Deposita hascontinued to grow as a top journal for research on mineraldeposits. We are grateful for his dedicated work and wishhim the best of luck for the future.The Council of the Society for Geology Applied toMineral Deposits (SGA) has appointed Georges Beaudoinfrom Universite Laval (Quebec, Canada) as the new co-editor of the journal. Georges has been on the EditorialBoard since 2001. Bernd Lehmann from TechnischeUniversitat Clausthal (Clausthal, Germany) remains asco-editor. Three new associate editors joined the EditorialBoard in 2012. These are David Craw (University of Otago,Dunedin, New Zealand), Albert Gilg (Technische UniversitatMunchen, Munich, Germany), and Robert Linnen (WesternUniversity, London,Canada).Associate editor Noel C. Whitehas stepped down after many years of service, and we thankhim for his energic and careful work.The journal continues to attract a high level of sub-missions of about 120–140 papers per year. Since 2011,a Mineralium Deposita volume contains about 1,000printed pages, with color print free of charge to allauthors. We have a wide distribution across the world.Through subscriptions and more than 300 online dealswith aggregators and consortia,Mineralium Deposita isaccessible to more than 7,700 institutions worldwide.This is a strong incentive to submit research to MineraliumDeposita and to gain large exposure. The world of scientificpublishing is changing quickly, and direct download ofpapers published in Mineralium Deposita has grownfrom about 98,000 in 2008 to 133,000 in 2011, for anannual rate of increase of approximately 10 %. Approx-imately 20 % of downloads are for papers publishedOnline First and for the calendar year, whereas about60 % of downloads are for papers published since 1997.Roughly 44 % of downloads are from the Asia-Pacificregion (China, 18 %; Australia, 10 %), whereas Europeaccounts for 28 % (Germany, 6 %; UK, 4 %), NorthAmerica for 16 % (USA, 8 %; Canada, 7 %), and bothAfrica and South America each account for 6 %.As editors of Mineralium Deposita, we are committed todiligent review of submissions. In 2011, the average timefrom submission to acceptance, including author correctionsof revised versions, was 217 days, slightly down from239 days in 2010. However, this distribution is highlyskewed, and most papers were handled within 150 days.After acceptance, a paper is published online with a DOIwithin approximately 3 weeks. This ensures rapid publica-tion and allows the new papers to be read, downloaded, andcited immediately, such that your work reaches the scientificcommunity quickly. The research submitted to MineraliumDeposita is sourced from a large number of countries withtop contributors, in 2011, being China (30), Canada (15),and Australia (11). As we wish to ensure high scientificquality, we accept, on merit, approximately 40 % of thesubmissions from year to year. Since 2006, the annualimpact factor (IF) of Mineralium Deposita has variedbetween 1.25 and 2.06, with a value of 1.68 in 2011,close to the average 10-year IF of 1.66. We are dedi-cated to publish high-quality, innovative, and challeng-ing papers in Mineralium Deposita, and we work toimprove the standing of the journal. The two most citedpapers to date, published in Mineralium Deposita in2010, were by R.R. Keays and P.C. Lightfoot on thecrustal sulfur contamination that causes formation ofmagmatic Ni–Cu sulfide deposits (Keays and Lightfoot2010)andbyN.Koglin,H.E.Frimmel,W.E.LawrieMinter, and H. Braetz on the trace element compositionof pyrite from Mesoarchean and Paleoproterozoic placerdeposits (Koglin et al. 2010).