Comment ▼ That vision thing worry about “that vision thing”. And I hope you do, too. As the new editor of ES&T, I worry about losing it, or worse still, never having found it in the first place. Where is the field going? Where should we take the journal in the future? One thing is clear: Previous editors certainly had it in a big way. We are indebted to Jim Morgan, founding editor and visionary who guided the journal from its inception in 1967 through 1974. Jim and the dedicated staff at ACS developed the journal, and in many respects, they helped to develop the entire field of environmental science during the first Earth Day, the founding of the U.S. EPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the first Clean Water Act of 1972. Those were heady days when the embryo of an environmental movement first grew to be a strapping teenager. Russ Christman led ES&T through its progression to adulthood from 1975 to 1987. During his tenure as Editor, we saw the number of people in the field and contributors to our journal grow steadily, while the publication embraced an ever-burgeoning range of topics (toxic chemicals, photochemical smog, acid deposition, groundwater remediation, risk assessment, and sediment quality). Everyone recognized the importance of protecting and preserving the environment, and few questioned that the environment was a major priority for government at all levels. We stand on the shoulders of giants and, by now, Bill Glaze’s back surely must be hurting. I was fortunate to join the ES&T Editorial Advisory Board near the beginning of Bill’s tenure as Editor-in-Chief. He has guided us from 1988 to 2002. During Bill’s editorship, we added a highly successful European office at EAWAG and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which was the beginning of an internationalization of the journal that I pledge to continue. Under Bill’s leadership, ES&T expanded its coverage into the biological sciences with the addition of Joe Suflita, Gary Sayler, and Alex Zehnder as editors; we attracted high-quality papers in the policy arena employing the expertise of Mitch Small; and we received contributions on green chemistry and sustainability through the efforts of John Crittenden, Jim Pankow, Alex Zehnder, and Paul Anastas. Most important, our core strengths in the area of environmental chemistry (both water and air) remain sterling through the work of Ron Hites, Walter Giger, Laura Sigg, Lynn Hildemann, and Jim Pankow. Bill Glaze
I
©2003 American Chemical Society
and his team have led ES&T to be the #1 journal in total citations and total impact in both environmental science and environmental engineering. With the help of these three Editors-in-chief, ES&T raced right through the years of George Orwell’s newspeak (1984), and we made it past Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 as well, only to discover that our odyssey is not in space but right here on earth. Perhaps HAL 9000, the computer in the movie 2001 Space Odyssey, was right all along when it comes to our continuing environmental problems: “It can only be attributable to human error.” In the coming years, ES&T will become a truly international journal. We seek nothing less than to be the foremost publication for all environmental sciences and engineering. Whenever an author has the best environmental paper that they have ever written, we want them to think first of ES&T for publication. Make no mistake about it, environmental chemistry will remain the core strength of ES&T—we are an American Chemical Society journal, and it remains our primary mission. But we will also embrace the biological revolution and all the power that it holds for environmental analytical chemistry, remote sensing, ecotoxicology, and remediation. And we will accept sustainability as our mantra and quintessential policy goal for the 21st century. ES&T is, in the words of the ACS, a “special” publication, meaning it is both a magazine and a technical journal. We relish this position. Together with Alan Newman, Managing Editor; Mary Warner, Director of Special Publications; Mary Scanlan, Director of Publishing Operations; and their excellent staffs, we pledge to make the A-pages in the magazine section and the technical journal the best in the field. So, I come to you humbled by great editors and a first class journal. I ask for your help in making Environmental Science and Technology even better. We must build on the legacy of previous editors, staff, authors, and reviewers. I seek your ideas, contributions, and (perhaps most of all) quality reviews. And then I won’t fret the vision thing.
Jerald L. Schnoor
[email protected] JANUARY 1, 2003 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 5 A
