Ten years of Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts

With this issue, Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts (ESPI) turns 11, having published a full decade of issues. As I write this, I do so with a mixture of amazement and a bit of pride. The amazement is a familiar feeling to any parent—how can my child be this age? It seems like just yesterday they were an infant. The pride, of course, is that ESPI has grown from an unknown journal to what it is today: an established venue for high-quality environmental science papers, with a devoted following of readers and authors. To commemorate ten years, I would like to reflect on some of our accomplishments and to share a few thoughts about the future of ESPI.

ESPI may be starting its 11th year, but it is already publishing as volume 25, which is thanks to our predecessor, the Journal of Environmental Monitoring (JEM), which ran from 1999–2012. I was a member of the Editorial Board of JEM and remember well the discussions about the relaunch as ESPI. Our motivation was to broaden the scope of the journal beyond monitoring to encompass other aspects of environmental science. ESPI’s launch was a success, which can be measured, in part, by the fact that it was quickly followed by the launches of its sister journals: Environmental Science: Nano (2014), Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology (2015), Environmental Science: Atmospheres (2021), and Environmental Science: Advances (2022). While many of the journals in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environmental Science portfolio have a narrower scope, ESPI’s scope is notably broad, publishing papers in all areas of the environmental chemical sciences. Over the years, our core audience has solidified around five main areas: environmental organic chemistry, geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, environmental nanoscience and environmental health impacts (including both human and ecotoxicology).

One of the hallmarks of ESPI has been our focus on early career scientists, the most prominent example of which is our Emerging Investigator series. This began as a themed issue (https://rsc.li/espi-emerging-2016), featuring contributions from 15 early career scientists. The success of this issue and the enthusiasm with which it was received led us to begin a rolling Emerging Investigator series, which now includes papers from 39 more early career scientists (https://rsc.li/espi-emerging). One of my personal favorite aspects of this series is the accompanying interviews that are published on the ESPI blog (https://blogs.rsc.org/em/category/emerging-investigator/).

ESPI has always tried to stay responsive to the community. Along these lines, we were proud to introduce, along with our sister Environmental Science journals of the RSC, double-anonymized peer review as an option for our authors. With this option, not only are reviewers anonymous to the authors, but authors are anonymous to the reviewers. The idea is that this may be a way to minimize implicit biases that creep into the peer review process.

What is in store for the future of ESPI? ESPI will continue to push to be a home for high quality environmental science papers, with a focus on making the experience as pleasant as possible for our authors, reviewers, and readers. We strive for fast turnaround—the time to first decision on peer-reviewed articles is 46 days on average—and for high quality reviews with thoughtful manuscript handling by our outstanding team of associate editors. All of us work by the motto to make ESPI the journal that we ourselves would like to publish in.

What is in store for the future of academic publishing is another, larger question. There are enormous changes underway throughout the publishing industry, and a thorough discussion will have to wait until a future editorial. One notable example of these sweeping changes, which in my opinion is a positive example, is the RSC’s recent commitment to having every RSC-owned journal converted to 100% Open Access within five years (https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2022/oct/rsc-oa-commitment/). As part of this process, cOAlition S has recognized all 31 fully-owned RSC journals as “transformative journals”. This is an important step, as it opens options for some authors who are mandated to publish in fully open access or those that are recognized as transformative journals.

In closing, I want to thank all the people that have made ten years of ESPI possible, which includes the editorial board and editorial advisory board members, and those behind the scenes at the RSC. Most importantly, I wish to thank the authors and reviewers of ESPI. Their contributions have made the journal what it has become over the past decade and the growth and strength of ESPI portends great things for the decades to come. Thank you for reading and for your continued support of ESPI.

---