Editorial

Our Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences has undergone two important changes recently. First, it has become a full Open Access journal. Second, we have a new editorial team. We have taken over the responsibility for selecting, editing and publishing articles for this journal. This double transition offers a new future to the Journal. In this editorial, we like to reflect on the journal’s past and describe the future we envision for the journal.

About 15 years ago, the preparation started to develop a new journal. This journal would be the internationally focused successor of a Dutch scientific journal ‘Milieu’, the brainchild of the Dutch society of environmental professionals (VVM). Originally, mainly scientists from the Netherlands were involved. The new journal was called ‘Environmental Sciences’, with the challenging subtitle ‘Journal of Integrative Environmental Research’. Taylor & Francis became the publisher. According to a leaflet (dated January 2004), the motivation for the transformation of the Dutch journal to the international journal was ‘to achieve a broader scope and to reach a world audience’. The first Editors-in-Chief were Jan Boersema, Andrew Blowers, and Adrian Martin, with Allison Gilbert serving as Managing Editor. In the first Editorial, they specifically explained the focus on integration. Integration has a threefold meaning: integration between disciplines (interdisciplinarity), integration on spatial and temporal levels, and integration between science and policy (and other societal spheres). Interestingly, the cover of the issues in 2004 also indicated the transition to the internet with a message printed on the cover ‘we are online’.

In the years since 2004, some minor changes occurred: Eric Massey replaced Allison Gilbert as Managing Editor in 2008.; the name of the journal changed in 2009 to the present name Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences.; in 2015, Andrew Blowers retired as Editor-in-Chief; and in 2016, the other Editors-in-Chief prepared for retirement. Our three founding Editors-in-Chief, each serving for more than 10 years, deserve our great thanks and a warm applause for all their efforts to keep our journal alive and kicking!

During the whole period, a steady stream of articles were published. Several articles attracted attention from the research community and after some years the citation index has risen above one. Publications in our journal report on integrative studies, and cover a wide range of topics. We publish papers on a variety of environmental issues ranging from the local scale (e.g. pollution problems) to the global scale (e.g. climate change and biodiversity loss). The papers also vary in their research approaches. We publish interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. Examples of this variety of papers can be found in recent issues (Scholte et al. 2013; McCormack et al. 2016; Leal Filho et al. 2017; Mhlanga-Ndlovu and Nhamo 2017; Bhatasara and Nyamwanza 2018; Kopnina 2018; Uggla 2018).

Now in 2019, the journal is fully open access enabling JIES ‘to achieve a broader scope and to reach a world audience’, as stated earlier in 2004 and now fully online. The last printed issue appeared in 2016 (Vol 13, Issues 2–4). We have adapted our editorial support structure, appointed a new managing editor, and have appointed a new editorial board.

The new mission of JIES is the furthering of integrative and interdisciplinary approaches in the field of environmental sciences. JIES provides a stimulating, informative and critical forum for intellectual debate on significant environmental issues. It brings together perspectives from a wide range of disciplines and methodologies in both the social and natural sciences in an effort to develop integrative knowledge about the processes responsible for environmental change, the impact of environmental change on nature and society, and possible solutions. The Journal is especially concerned with the relationships between science, society and policy and one of its key aims is to advance understanding of the theory and practice of sustainable development.

We specifically want to publish articles that report on integrative research, where integration can be defined in different ways, for instance, integration across disciplines, societal sectors, scales, environmental issues, the cause–effect chain, or the supply chain.

JIES is now a making a new step into the future. The vastness and pressing nature of the themes we publish may imply that we expand in terms of publication numbers. Nonetheless, maintaining the scientific quality of the published articles and the quality of the review process are key. In our opinion, the role of review is twofold: at one side ensuring the publication of high-quality articles, and at the other side assisting authors in raising the quality of potentially interesting ideas and results. As Editors-in-Chief, we devote a substantial amount of our time safeguarding both roles of the review process. Our editorial board will be challenged to support us in the process of increasing the number of articles and increasing the quality of the published articles.

Sustainability and equity, planetary boundaries and resilience are a few examples of themes based on integration and interdisciplinarity. For the future, we see new themes such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Energy Transition, and Circular Economy as important environmental topics. JIES has strived and will continue to strive to become a platform for research and policy studies around these themes.