After ten years’ development, the Journal of Mountain Science (JMS) has seen great improvement in journal quality and international influence, and more distinguished scientists have joined in the editorial board.

In the morning of October 23, 2014, JMS Editorial Board Workshop was held in Chengdu to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the journal establishment and to discuss future development strategy. 25 board members and editors attended this workshop.

Prof. CUI Peng, the vice director of the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment (IMHE), and the editor-in-chief of the JMS, chaired the meeting. Firstly, he made a welcome speech to thank all editorial members, editors for their consistent contribution and support to the journal, and thank all on site being able to spare time to attend the editorial board workshop. Then Prof. YU Dafu, former executive editor-in-chief of the journal, introduced the history of JMS. He described the difficult time when applying for ISSN and CN numbers, organizing editorial board, soliciting papers, and determining journal directions. He stressed that the journal should stick to take an international road in inviting editorial members and soliciting papers, and keep the mountain features.  

Editorial board workshop (by IMHE)

Prof. QIU Dunlian, the present executive editor-in-chief of the JMS, made a presentation about the journal development trends and recent years’ practices in editing environment construction, journal promotion, language improvement and author service. She used data to show the journal’s upward development trends in manuscript submission and publication, institution subscription, fulltext downloads, and international impact. She then described the current difficulties and challenges the journal is facing and asked for the editorial board members’ active suggestions and opinions, especially on the aspects of attracting and organizing high quality papers and raising journal impact.

Then Dr. ZHOU Gongdan, as a scientific editor of the journal, made a presentation on what is a good academic journal in his mind. He said paper quality and paper review procedures are key factors for enhancing journal impacts. From his experience of being a scientific editor of JMS, he also gave some suggestions about how to organize special issues.

Editorial board member, Dr. Paolo Tarolli, from University of Padova, talked about what a good journal should do and how to raise journal impact from his experience as author and editor. He proposed several hot topics for consideration to invite papers, including humans-earth interaction, land use change, climate change, etc..

Editorial board member, Prof. LIU Shiyin, from the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Science, narrated the discussion results with other three editorial members of the JMS. He stressed that topics on glaciers should be always an important theme in the Journal of Mountain Science in different ways. He put forward some general strategies to organize special issues which may be helpful to increase the visibility and enhance the impact of the journal.

Then, scientists attending this workshop had a free discussion on which columns should be listed in each issue, and how to raise the journal impact and how to organize high quality papers. Prof. ZHANG Xinbao, Prof. FANG Yiping, Prof. LI Ainong and Dr. SU Lijun all proposed their ideas. All members and editors agree that it can be a very effective way to organize feature special issues by distinguished scientists as guest editors.

This board member workshop has yielded fruitful results and has greatly strengthened the connections among the editorial members and editors.