The journal Umweltwissenschaften und Schadstoff-Forschung (UWSF) will become Environmental Sciences Europe – an open access journal for bridging sciences and regulation at the regional and European level

Dear Readers and Subscribers,

1 Open Access Journal

As you may know from the editorial in the August issue (Hollert and Heinrich 2010), UWSF will be transformed into an open access Journal. This means that beginning in 2011 all articles published in Environmental Sciences Europe will be freely and universally accessible online, so everyone with an internet connection can read, download, print and distribute the journal’s articles. Further, full texts of the articles will be permanently and openly archived in internationally recognised open access repositories. Open access will result in a broad distribution of the published articles, a well-recognised strategy for environmental authorities to cope with national laws (e. g., the German Umweltinformationsgesetz from 2004). This guarantees easy access to well evaluated information on environmental issues. For scientists this publication strategy will result in increased citations of their own work.

2 Subscriptions to UWSF and Environmental Science and Pollution Research (ESPR)

Starting in 2011, UWSF will be re-launched. This means that current subscribers will not need to renew their subscriptions to UWSF. Environmental Sciences Europe will be freely available worldwide. For subscribers who have a combi-subscription to Environmental Science and Pollution Research (ESPR) and UWSF, please convert your subscription to ESPR only. ESPR will continue as a subscription-based journal.

3 www.enveurope.com

The homepage of Environmental Sciences Europe can be found at www.enveurope.com. Here all detailed info can be found for authors and readers. The articles published in Environmental Sciences Europe will be added to the SpringerLink website of UWSF.

4 Languages

Environmental Sciences Europe will use English as its main language. However it will be possible to submit and publish non-English articles. See Sects. 6.2 (3.) and 9.

5 SpringerOpen and BioMed Central

The journal Environmental Sciences Europe will continue to be published by Springer-Verlag GmbH and will be included in a new journal portfolio: SpringerOpen.

SpringerOpen is Springer’s new suite of open access journals and complements the open access journals of BioMed Central (acquired by Springer in 2008, www.biomedcentral.com). BioMed Central is an online publisher of more than 200 free peer-reviewed scientific journals in all areas of medical research and biology. It provides its expertise and infrastructure to SpringerOpen.

6 About Environmental Sciences Europe

6.1 The profile

 

• Environmental Sciences Europe is an international journal, focusing primarily on Europe, with a broad scope covering all aspects of environmental sciences, including the main topic regulation.

• Environmental Sciences Europeis the first Springer open access journal in environmental sciences.

• Environmental Sciences Europe will discuss the entanglement between environmental sciences and regulation, because in recent years there have been misunderstandings and even disagreement between stakeholders in these two areas. Environmental Sciences Europe will help to improve the comprehension of issues between environmental sciences and regulation.

• Environmental Sciences Europe will be an outlet from the German-speaking (DACH¹) countries to Europe and an inlet from Europe to the DACH countries regarding environmental sciences and regulation.

• Environmental Sciences Europe will facilitate the exchange of ideas and interaction between Europe and the DACH countries regarding environmental regulatory issues.

• Although Europe is at the center of Environmental Sciences Europe, the journal will not exclude the “rest of the world” because regulatory issues pertaining to environmental sciences can be fully seen only from a global perspective.

6.2 Environmental Sciences Europe (http://www.enveurope.com) is the direct continuation of UWSF:

 

• 1. Environmental Sciences Europe changes the publication platform from a print-online to an open access journal. However, fully formatted article pdfs will be available from the website and can be printed by the users.

• 2. Abstracts from articles published in Environmental Sciences Europewill consequently be indexed by all the databases which formerly evaluated UWSF: Academic OneFile, ASFA, Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, CAB International, CEABA-VtB, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), CSA/Proquest, DECHEMA, Expanded Academic, GeoRef, Global Health, Google Scholar, INIS Atomindex, International Bibliography of Book Reviews (IBR), International Bibliography of Periodical Literature (IBZ), OCLC, OPAC, SCOPUS, Summon by Serial Solutions, UFORDAT. Furthermore, the journal continues to be under evaluation for being included in Thomson ISI Web of Science Extended.

• 3. Environmental Sciences Europe extends the audience from the DACH countries to Europe and will not exclude the “rest of the world” focusing on English while retaining German-language articles, and offering the possibility to also submit papers in other languages of the EU.

• 4. Environmental Sciences Europe shifts the thematic focus to environmental regulatory issues without neglecting themes from all of environmental sciences, as UWSF did before (Hollert and Heinrich 2010). Environmental Sciences Europe covers the following main subjects:

7 Advantages of publishing in Environmental Sciences Europe

7.1 High visibility

Environmental Sciences Europe’s open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed will be highlighted by article level metrics.

7.2 Speed of publication

Environmental Sciences Europe offers a fast publication schedule while maintaining rigorous peer review. All articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF and HTML form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The articles will subsequently be published in both fully browseable web form, and as a formatted PDF. The articles will then be available through the journal website of Environmental Sciences Europe (www.enveurope.com) and SpringerLink.

7.3 Flexibility

Online publication in Environmental Sciences Europe gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages allowing readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

7.4 Promotion and press coverage

All articles published in Environmental Sciences Europe are included in article alerts and regular email updates. In addition, articles published in Environmental Sciences Europe may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Environmental Sciences Europe.

7.5 Copyright

Authors of articles published in Environmental Sciences Europe retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work.

7.6 Supplements

Environmental Sciences Europe might consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print.

8 Article-processing charges and payment

Open access publishing is not without costs. Environmental Sciences Europe therefore requests an article-processing charge (APC) of £ 660/$ 1025/€ 800 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author’s institution is an open access member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. Authors whose institutions are supporter members pay only a discounted article-processing charge. The membership program now has 347 members and supporter members in 39 countries. A list showing all the member and supporter institutions is provided under: http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/. Please notice that various universities and research institutions plus industry companies and regulatory authorities are supporting BMC. If your institution is not listed as member/supporter and you are intending to publish frequently in Environmental Sciences Europe or in the 200 other BMC/SpringerOpen journals, please recommend membership to your librarian: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/recommend. Also note the European commission (FP7 projects), the German Research Foundation DFG and the Max Planck Society are recommending to publish scientific results in open access journals.

Individual waiver requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis and may be granted in cases of lack of funds. To apply for a waiver, please request one during the submission process. A decision on the waiver will normally be made within two working days. Submission of the article to the journal can then be completed.

Whoever submits the manuscript is responsible for making or arranging the payment (for instance, via his or her institution).

Payment can be made by any of the following methods:

• Credit card payment can be made online using a secure payment form as soon as the manuscript has been accepted in principle.

• Invoice payment is due within 30 days of the manuscript receiving editorial acceptance in principle.

Prompt payment is advised, as the article will not be published until payment is received. Payment other than by credit card carries an administrative surcharge of £ 50/$ 75/€ 55 depending on your payment currency. If you pay via online credit card, a receipt will be sent by email once payment has been processed. Receipts upon payment of an invoice are available on request.

9 Now accepting submissions

Environmental Sciences Europe is accepting submissions; please use the online submission system (http://www.enveurope.com/manuscript) to submit your manuscript. For all enquiries about the journal, please contact: editorial@enveurope.com.

If you wish to submit a paper in a language other than English, please get in touch with the managing editor at editorial@enveurope.com before submitting and ask for special instructions.