Last year, 2016, was a big one for European Geosciences Union (EGU) publications. January kicked off with the implementation of a new concept for the journals, with changes to the way papers are archived and paid for. The Union became a signatory of Open Access 2020, a new initiative to boost open access, in March and celebrated 15 years of interactive open-access publishing together with our publisher Copernicus Publications, in April. Over the summer, two of our youngest journals, Earth Surface Dynamics and Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems, received their first impact factors.

The 17 EGU–Copernicus peer-reviewed open-access journals also experienced significant growth in 2016. We published over 3300 final-revised papers, corresponding to some 53,500 pages, a growth of about 10% compared to the previous year. These papers were downloaded over 645,000 times. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics continues to be the largest EGU journal, with close to 900 peer-reviewed papers published in the journal last year. It is also the journal with most PDF downloads per paper: each manuscript published in the journal in 2016 was downloaded 180 times on average.   

About 23,300 scientists published their work in EGU publications in 2016, 10% more than in 2015. The over 1600 editors and close to 8900 referees who contributed their work in 2016 were instrumental in ensuring the quality of the research published in EGU journals. Across all publications, the time from submission to peer-reviewed publication was of only about 170 days on average.

This year, 2017, started with an unfortunate event: in February EGU and Copernicus Publications detected a case of scientific malpractice by a topical editor of three of their journals, which was promptly dealt with. In contrast, April brought reasons to celebrate: at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, we commemorated the 10^th anniversary of The Cryosphere and the 20^th anniversary of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

The EGU is grateful to all authors, editors and reviewers who comply with the principles of our publication ethics and have helped make the journals a success. The EGU is especially grateful for the work of the executive and chief editors who have stepped down in the past few months. In addition, we extend a warm welcome to those who have now joined the journals’ editorial boards.

Finally, a special thanks to the team at Copernicus for their attentive work and for the regular software updates that ensure smooth functioning of the publications.

• EGU–Copernicus peer-reviewed open-access journals