During the past years the Italian Geological Society and the past Editorial management brought the “Bollettino della Società Geologica Italiana” to achieve several important goals. First the transformation from a local society journal to an international journal with the inclusion in the Journal Citation Report^® (JCR) expanded by Thomson Reuters, and after two years, in 2006 being granted an ISI impact factor. Since 1882, when the Bollettino della Società Geologica Italiana was established, the journal has represented a milestone for the Italian and Southern European Geological communities. During the last editorial direction it merged with the Bollettino del Servizio Geologico d’Italia, another long established geological journal (since 1870), becoming the Italian Journal of Geosciences, and thus deciding to publish papers exclusively English-written. We sincerely appreciate all these transformations that established the journal in the international geo-scientific firmament, but we are conscious of the challenge that we are facing taking the editorship of the Journal.

Following the existing track 2010 year will mark a further step in the renovation of the structure of the journal. The editorial responsibility has become collegial, and further important changes have been introduced in the submission system and the publication procedures.

The new Editorial Team is composed by Angelo Camerlenghi (Barcelona), William Cavazza (Bologna), Raffaello Cioni (Cagliari), Sandro Conticelli (Firenze, Editor-in-Chief), Giovanni Battista Crosta (Milano Bicocca), Elisabetta Erba (Milano), Claudio Faccenna (Roma TRE), Stefano Mazzoli (Federico II - Napoli), Daniela Pantosti (INGV – Roma), and each of them will be the scientific Editor responsible for different areas of the geosciences.

The manuscripts submission is now fully electronic through the ScolarOne system by Thomson Reuters. Authors submit their manuscripts to the Editorial Office in Rome connecting to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijg website or using the link present in the journal’s new home page on the web at http://italianjournalofgeosciences.it. The system is easy to use and friendly. The Authors will be granted with a personal account page where they can upload their manuscript files, text plus artworks, and check constantly the progress of the evaluation procedure.

After the paper is accepted and the proofs are corrected by the corresponding Author, the articles will appear as advance publication on-line in the journal’s new home page on the web. Thus, articles will be immediately citable through their final DOI, without having to wait for pagination. Authors will have a double benefit from this new publication procedure: (i) more rapid dissemination of their scientific work and ideas; (ii) advance citations of the articles prior to final traditional printing of the regular issue.

Both electronic submission/evaluation and advance publication on-line will allow fast publication of an article, a key issue for Authors in the new millennium. We envision that well-organized Authors, who revise their copy speedily, might expect publication on-line within 5-6 months from submission.

Beside regular articles (i.e., Original Research-, Short-, Review-, and Discussion/Reply- papers) the journal will continue to publish thematic sets of papers, which might occupy either an entire issue or a section of it. Coloured artworks and geological maps are still very welcome, but – as in the past – Authors are expected to cover the printing costs for them. On the other hand, for those Authors wishing to publish their artwork in colour but free of charge, we promote a further option to keep colour artwork in the electronic version of the paper (pdf) with black & white version in the hardcopy of the journal.

Starting with this year the dissemination of the journal will greatly increase. The editorial team promotes a further increase of dissemination of the “Italian Journal of Geosciences” through the GeoScienceWorld website, an on-line publication of the GeoRef. By joining the GeoScienceWorld website publication the published articles of IJG, through their key words, can be readily reached and opened by all Geo-Scientists in the world.

All the above issues, along with the increasing impact factor in the last three years (2006 = 0.442; 2007 = 0.553; 2008 = 0.603), should make the Italian Journal of Geosciences an appealing vehicle for the publication of important scientific results about the Italian and Mediterranean geology, but also open to all fields of Earth sciences.

Angelo Camerlenghi (Barcelona)

William Cavazza (Bologna)

Raffaello Cioni (Cagliari)

Sandro Conticelli (Firenze)

Giovanni Battista Crosta (Milano Bicocca)

Elisabetta Erba (Milano)

Claudio Faccenna (Roma TRE)

Stefano Mazzoli (Napoli Federico II)

Daniela Pantosti (INGV – Roma)