Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, a peer reviewed, open-access scientific journalco-published by Dartmouth in collaboration with BioOne, was launched December 4, 2013, to praise in the science community and attention in the general press and social media.
“We have seen excellent responses to the first articles published,” says Elementa’s director of communications Clare Dean. “In the first two weeks after publication, we have seen over 2,400 downloads of “Dating the Anthropocene: Towards an empirical global history of human transformation of the terrestrial biosphere,” by Erle C. Ellis, Dorian Q. Fuller, Jed O. Kaplan and Wayne G. Lutters.
Elementa was featured in Scientific American and caught the attention of science writer Andy Revkin, author of The New York Times’ opinion blog Dot Earth, who commented on the journal in his Twitter feed @Revkin.
Elementa, a nonprofit, open access, multidisciplinary journal, has a distinct agenda: publishing original research on new knowledge of the Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems; interactions between human and natural systems; and steps that can be taken to mitigate and adapt to global change.
Elementa’s delivery is cutting edge as well: Articles are available in formats such as HTML, PDF, EPUB3, Mobipocket, XML, and JSON. Its use of responsive design and its support for two widely adopted eBook formats makes Elementa viewable on the majority of tablet and reader devices, including iPad, Android, and Kindle. Using EPUB3 allows video content to be embedded seamlessly in the articles.
The technical infrastructure for Elementa is being developed in collaboration with the Dartmouth Library.
“The library sees this effort as an integral part of its work in supporting research, scholarship, and publishing opportunities for Dartmouth faculty and students into the future,” says Jeffrey Horrell, Dartmouth’s Dean of Libraries and Librarian of the College.
Horrell says Dartmouth’s Dave Green and Liba Hladik, “with their deep programming and editorial management skills, respectively, have been critical to the design and launch of Elementa,” as have library leadership team members Barbara DeFelice, director, Digital Resources and Scholarly Communication Programs; Eliz Kirk, associate librarian for information resources; and David Seaman, associate librarian for information management.
Elementa covers atmospheric science, earth and environmental science, ecology, ocean science, sustainable engineering, and sustainability sciences. Editors-in-chief for these areas come from the faculties of the University of Colorado, Boulder; the University of Michigan; the University of Washington; and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dartmouth’s David R. Peart, professor of biological sciences, and Anne Kapuscinski, the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Sustainability Science and chair of Dartmouth’s Environmental Studies Program, serve as editors-in-chief for the sustainability sciences domain.
