PREFACE to the First volume of PEPS

It is a great pleasure for us to announce the launch of our new journal, Progress in Earth and Planetary Science (PEPS). PEPS is an international peer-reviewed open access E-journal published by the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) in partnership with Springer. It is devoted to original articles and reviews in the Earth and Planetary Sciences (which are the research fields that are covered by the JpGU).

The general assembly meeting that the JpGU now holds for about one week each year traces its origins back to 1990 when several scientific associations held a joint meeting, and so we will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the JpGU in 2014. In this memorable year we are also celebrating the launch of PEPS after three years of discussion, planning and preparation. In addition to the annual JpGU meeting, we consider publication of this scientific journal to be one of the most important tasks of the JpGU as a public-service corporation.

Earth and planetary science covers a variety of topics ranging from the pursuit of purely scientific subjects, such as the origin of human life and formation of the solar system, to practical applications, like weather forecasting and the establishment of a resilient society. Although many existing journals provide coverage of research achievements in each of the many individual scientific fields that make up Earth and Planetary science, we feel that it is important for the community to have a quality journal that comprehensively covers all the these fields together.

Open-access is a modern system of publication, which provides an innovative and valuable opportunity for both readers and authors to expose and share the most up-to-date knowledge developed by our community. Based on this new form of publication, we hope that PEPS will become a useful interdisciplinary forum for the widespread and timely exchange of research results with the global community. PEPS will accept general research papers and research papers based on presentations at the JpGU annual meeting (if recommended by a session convener). In addition we welcome the submission of a review articles on research subjects from Space and Planetary sciences; Atmospheric and Hydrospheric sciences; Human Geosciences; Solid Earth sciences; and Biogeosciences.

We hope PEPS will function as a first rate platform for the publication of high-quality articles covering the wide field of subjects of interest to the JpGU. We would very much like to ask researchers and students to submit their scientific achievements to PEPS.