New languages: translation of titles and abstracts

English is the primary language of Hydrogeology Journal (HJ) but the Editors and the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) have always supported publication of submittals that may initially be written in weak English by non-Anglophone authors, provided the scientific quality is high. IAH does this by helping authors to rewrite in professional English. Furthermore, since HJ’s inception, English abstracts have been translated into French and Spanish, and these translations are published as part of each article. IAH and the HJ Editors, in cooperation with the HJ publisher, Springer Verlag of Heidelberg, Germany, will soon be making the journal even more international by providing translations in more languages. Titles and abstracts will appear with each article in English, Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish as standard.

Translations of English titles and abstracts are not limited to the above four standard HJ languages; there are currently 32 languages possible. Authors may provide translations (when invited by the Technical Editorial Advisor) in any languages they prefer within the following list: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Punjabi, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

IAH National Chapters have taken the responsibility of providing translations to the standard HJ languages. Other IAH Chapters are welcome to add their language as an HJ standard language, by contacting the Executive Editor, Cliff Voss. The current abstract translation managers are:

Chinese:

Zhonghe Pang, IAH China

French:

Jean-Jacques Risler, IAH France

Portuguese:

António Chambel, IAH Portugal

Spanish:

Eduardo J. Usunoff, IAH Argentina

The four standard languages and additional author-provided languages will appear online on the Springer website for HJ (http://www.springeronline.com/hydrogeologyjournal) in alphabetical order by the English name of the language. The text of translations will be fully searchable in each language, while keywords will remain in English only. Translations will no longer be part of the full text of articles and will no longer appear in print, saving space in the journal for more articles each year. It is hoped that this new service will provide good access for searches and convenient basic information about HJ article content worldwide.

Current and new HJ staff

The last staff announcement was made in HJ 13:4 (August 2005). Since then, the HJ Editorial team has changed. Catherine O’Flynn’s term as Editorial Office Manager came to an end, as did Christine Watson’s temporary support of that vacant position. Bridget Scanlon ended her term as Managing Editor at the end of 2007 and Craig Simmons will be ending his term as Managing Editor in 2008. Philippe Renard became a Managing Editor of HJ in late 2005. Susanne Schemann became the Editorial Office Manager in mid-2006. Jiu Jimmy Jiao recently joined the HJ staff as a Managing Editor. The current HJ staff organization is as follows:

Executive Editor:

Clifford I. Voss (US Geological Survey, USA)

Managing Editors:

Jiu Jimmy Jiao (University of Hong Kong, China)

Philippe Renard (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland)

Maria-Theresia Schafmeister (University of Greifswald, Germany)

Craig Simmons (Flinders University, Australia)

Technical Editorial Advisor:

Sue Duncan (United Kingdom)

Editorial Office Manager (Journal Administrator):

Susanne Schemann (Germany)

Jiu Jimmy Jiao obtained his BEng and MEng in Hydrogeology from China University of Geosciences (Wuhan, China) in 1983 and 1986, respectively, and his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Birmingham, UK, in 1993. He worked at the University of Alabama, USA, as a research associate from 1994 to 1996. Jimmy joined the University of Hong Kong in 1997 and is currently an Associate Professor in Hydrogeology. He has been an Associate Editor for Ground Water since 2002 and for Hydrogeology Journal since 2004. Jimmy was elected Fellow of the Geological Society of London and of the Geological Society of America. His current research interests include dynamic interaction between seawater and groundwater, impact of human activities on coastal groundwater regimes, subsurface airflow induced by pumping and tidal fluctuation, and the role of groundwater in slope instability of weathered igneous rocks.

Philippe Renard is a graduate of the Nancy School of Geology, France, and received a Doctorate from the Paris School of Mines in 1996. He was a research engineer at BRGM (Geological Survey of France) in Orléans in 1991, then a rural water-supply engineer for the French Ministry of Cooperation in Guinea from 1992 to 1993. Philippe was a lecturer at ETH Zürich, 1997 to 2001, then Lecturer with the Centre of Hydrogeology (CHYN) of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. In 2005, Philippe was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation professorship and has since then been an Assistant Professor at CHYN. His research is mainly concerned with the characterization and modeling of aquifers. This includes the development of well-testing interpretation methods, stochastic modelling of internal architecture of aquifers, development of inverse techniques that account for a geological conceptual model, and the application of these techniques to practical problems such as coastal aquifers and large-scale arid basins. Currently, his stochastic hydrogeology team is working on various aspects of the problem: multiple point geostatistics, geological characterization, inverse modeling, and creation of a data base of statistical properties of aquifers. Applications are diverse and currently include: contaminated site characterization, optimization of pumping schemes for desalination plants, and safety of deep CO2 sequestration. He has been an Associate Editor for Ground Water and for Hydrogeology Journal. In addition, Philippe is currently president of the geoENVia Association for the promotion of the application of geostatistics to environmental sciences.

Maria-Theresia Schafmeister and Craig Simmons have been Managing Editors and Sue Duncan has been Technical Editorial Advisor since mid-2005. Their profiles are published in the Editor’s Message of August 2005 (HJ 13:4).

Susanne Schemann studied German language and literature and musicology from 1986 to 1991 in Würzburg, Germany, and then held an apprenticeship at Springer-Verlag until 1993. Subsequently, she worked in Springer’s journal production department and eventually took over primary responsibility for production of Hydrogeology Journal. As part of the Springer reorganization, her office was closed in September 1994. Susanne began working again with HJ, as Journal Administrator, in August 1996. She is the coordinator of all activities associated with HJ, aiding in communications among HJ staff, Associate Editors, reviewers and authors, and she manages the online manuscript system (Manuscript Central) tracking the processing of each manuscript. Questions concerning publishing in HJ may be directed to Susanne.

Time for review, processing, and publication

The reorganization of the HJ staff and manuscript review process and of publication procedures by Springer resulted in great improvements in the timing of manuscript processing and article publication. The Editors are pleased to announce that most articles are now published within one year from initial manuscript submittal.

For most manuscripts, the time from author submittal to first decision on publishability by an HJ Managing Editor is now only four months. Following this first decision, authors are expected to return manuscripts requiring revision within about two months. The next two months are usually required for technical editorial revisions before the manuscript is forwarded to Springer for copyediting and publication. Once with Springer, most articles now take only one month to be officially published online (Springer’s Online First is found on http://www.springeronline.com/hydrogeologyjournal) and then about five months to appear in a printed issue of HJ. Thus, for authors who return acceptable revisions in two months, the total time between their initial submittal and online publication is usually only about nine months and the total time to printing is about 14 months.

To accomplish a four-month initial review time, HJ Managing Editors handle all manuscript decisions promptly and the HJ Editorial Board retains only dedicated Associate Editors who manage the review process in a timely manner. The Associate Editors are all volunteers and their expert scientific insights and critiques are vital to the quality of HJ articles. The one-month time to online publication of accepted articles is due to Springer’s implementation of new production procedures over the past two years. The yearly size of HJ directly impacts the time before printing of each article. The Editors estimate that the current yearly HJ size (eight issues of about 200 pages each) of 1650 pages is stable, but this can be adjusted as necessary to accommodate future changes in the flow of accepted articles, allowing printing of accepted articles to occur as quickly as at present.

Hydrogeology Journal scope

About 10% of submittals are immediately rejected by a Managing Editor because these do not fit within HJ scope. Though subject matter that primarily deals with disciplines other than hydrogeology is welcome, such manuscripts must somehow emphasize either increase of hydrogeologic knowledge by the analysis presented, use of hydrogeology as a basis for analysis of other aspects of earth science, or relation of hydrogeology to the human condition. The majority of rejected submittals are concerned with geochemical analyses that only serve to characterize and interpret groundwater chemistry without any significant attempt to improve understanding of the hydrogeology of the studied system.

New benefits for authors (and readers)

Springer has made available several new benefits to HJ authors and readers.

  • Free color: Beginning in 2008, articles published in HJ may contain color figures, with no cost to the author. Free color is a great benefit that will allow authors to express information more effectively and with greater visual impact. Of course, HJ also continues to publish articles without any charges, even on article length, making it one the most accessible outlets for hydrology authors everywhere.

  • Time Capsule profiles: The initiation of the IAH-sponsored Hydrogeologist Time Capsule website (http://timecapsule.IAH.org), containing freely downloadable interviews of eminent hydrogeologists, was announced in a recent HJ issue by Managing Editors, Philippe Renard and Craig Simmons. An HJ Profile article about the eminent hydrogeologist will accompany each new interview. Springer is making these Profiles freely available to the worldwide community for downloading and distribution, with no need for a subscription to HJ.

  • Highlight articles: Each year the Editors will select five HJ articles that will be made freely available by Springer to everyone. These will be articles of particular quality or interest. Selections of 2007 Highlight Articles are now being made. Reader advice is appreciated (contact Executive Editor, Cliff Voss). This is a benefit to both the article authors and to readers. Highlight Articles will be announced in a later issue.

Future content

There was no 2008 Theme Issue in order to further shorten lag time for printing of accepted articles, but due to their popularity, no more Theme Issues will be skipped and there will be one each year. The next Theme Issue concerns the importance of groundwater to ecosystems. Peter Hancock, Randy Hunt, and Andrew Boulton have invited hydrogeological ecosystems articles to appear as the next Theme Issue, the first issue of 2009.

The HJ Editors are organizing a new series of articles called Regional Reviews. These invited articles will review the state of knowledge of hydrogeology and related water resources issues in distinctive world regions. Several of these are in preparation. Authors interested in contributing to the series should contact Managing Editor, Philippe Renard.