There is still just a little time to submit your new papers for publication in Mires and Peat (the new IMCG/IPS peer-reviewed academic journal) before its official launch, which will give an excellent opportunity to expose your work to a wide audience.
As promised in the last newsletter and during the Tierra del Fuego meeting, Mires and Peat went online on 01 January 2006, when we posted two papers:
- The distribution of peatland in Europe by L. Montanarella, R.J.A. Jones and R. Hiederer;
- Chemical characteristics of
some peatlands in southern
In February, we added:
- Increased decomposition of subsurface peat in Swedish raised bogs - are peatlands still net sinks of carbon? by Lars G. Franzén; and
- Causes of degradation and erosion
of a blanket mire in the southern Pennines,
The journal will not be launched officially until the joint IMCG/IPS meeting in Helsinki, by which time we hope to add at least a few more papers. Nonetheless, there has already been some highly complimentary feedback. It does seem that we have here the makings of what we set out to establish, namely:
- a high-quality journal
- devoted specifically to mires and peat
- covering all aspects of peatland science, technology and wise use, with
- unlimited free distribution.
Please do take at look at http://www.mires-and-peat.net/ and see if you agree. Although the journal already serves a useful function, we are aiming to achieve a level of content and quality that will warrant classification in the ISI Thomson Master Journal List, so that Mires and Peat will have an ‘impact factor’. All comments, and especially (constructive) criticism in this context, will be most welcome.
As always, where we go from here is up to all of you. Please continue to send in your publishable material (see the web site for Instructions to Authors). If there are any more of the papers from the IMCG Tierra del Fuego meeting that can be written up to an appropriate standard, it would be especially good to see these very soon.
Comments (as appropriate) to: Olivia Bragg (Editor): o.m.bragg@dundee.ac.uk or Michael Trepel (Web Administrator): mtrepel@ecology.uni-kiel.de