Editorial Changing of the Guard

Editorial
Changing of the Guard
With this editorial, we would like to convey two important messages to our readers.
First, the change of the Editorial Staff of Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e
Stratigrafia.
Our senior colleague Maurizio Gaetani, who successfully led the journal for over 20
years, decided to dedicate himself to other activities. During these years, Maurizio
certainly had an invaluable role in promoting the quality, distribution and impact of the
journal in our field of science, as clearly reflected by the 2014 ISI impact factor of Rivista
Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia, that has experienced a rise to 0.934. This is a very
good indication that the journal is doing well continuing to publish traditional
palaeontological and stratigraphic data-focused papers, which are usually known to have a
long term, but durable, impact in term of citations. Whether it is a real indicator of the
quality of a journal or not, impact factor is one of the elements that drives the decision of
the authors to submit a manuscript to one journal or another.
As outlined in the title of the Editorial, this is a real ‘changing of the guard’, because
we are pleased to announce that Maurizio Gaetani is handing over the baton not to one,
but to two Editors-in-Chief: Lucia Angiolini and Fabrizio Berra, also from Dipartimento di
Scienze della Terra “A. Desio” of the University of Milan.
Lucia and Fabrizio have been appointed to the team in order to make sure that the
increasing inflow of manuscripts continues to be handled as quickly and efficiently as in
the past. Their expertise areas will cover the main fields of science dealt with by Rivista.
As not all of our readers will know Lucia and Fabrizio personally, their biographies below
will certainly help to bridge this gap.
The second important news is that the new Editorial staff, thus comprising Lucia
Angiolini, Fabrizio Berra and Cristina Lombardo, is planning to turn Rivista into an Open
Access peer-reviewed journal, in the frame of the Riviste UNIMI project.
Rivista will remain an independent journal, trying to find its niche in the world of
palaeontological journals, marked by its quality, distribution and the contribution of
excellent research in palaeontology and stratigraphy.
We will strictly follow Open Access principles, which require that all publicallyfunded publications should be publicly available and authors should be able to publish
their research free of charge. We strongly believe that the distribution of scientific results to
a wider audience is the major target of any scientific journal, especially so for a universitybased journal such as Rivista. Wider distribution of scientific results does not conflict with
quality, but it may represent a chance to improve Rivista, continuing Maurizio’s excellent
record in the last few years. The Editorial staff and the scientific committee will continue to
pursue high standards, aiming at enhancing dissemination and distribution of scientific
literature, quick and efficient handling of manuscripts and easy publication of richly
illustrated papers, at no cost to the authors.
To obtain these results, we ask for your cooperation and understanding as
contributing authors. We hope that the same high quality manuscripts, as those published
in the long history of the journal, will continue to be submitted. We also ask our community
to contribute to the peer review process that is such a critical part of the publication of high
quality papers. We believe that the quality of the published paper is the best way to
increase the scientific impact of Rivista.
We also introduce some minor changes to the way that manuscripts are submitted
to Rivista. A new e-mail address for all the communication with the editorial staff has been
opened (rips@unimi.it), and we will shortly be able to use a new procedure for manuscript
submission directly from the Rivista website. Our new e-mail address is also open for any
suggestion, proposal or criticism that you think could improve our common goal to create a
scientific place for our community, a place that has existed and continuously evolved since
1895.
We would like to encourage our authors, reviewers, readers and the community of
paleontologists, stratigraphers and sedimentologists to keep on publishing, reading, and
citing Rivista even more in its future Open Access Style!
Lucia Angiolini received a PhD in Earth Sciences from the
University of Milan in 1994, where she is now Associate Professor
of Paleontology. Since starting work with Dipartimento di Scienze
della Terra “A. Desio” 15 years ago, Lucia has studied Permian
brachiopods from the Gondwana and the Cimmerian blocks from
Turkey to the Himalayas through Oman, Iran and Karakorum. Her
main areas of expertise include, besides pure taxonomy,
quantitative biostratigraphy, palaeobiogeography based on
multivariate analyses, and Permian correlation between
Gondwanan and Tethyan realms. Since 2006, Lucia has worked
increasingly in multidisciplinary fields investigating biomineralization, palaeoenvironment
and climate change with sclerochronology, isotopes and shell geochemistry.
She participated in 31 field expeditions in Europe, Arabia and Asia and she led 9 in the last
8 years. Her research activity is documented by 85 papers in international scientific
journals; she presented more than 90 abstracts to international congresses and
workshops. She is Secretary of the Subcommission on Permian Stratigraphy (SPS), of the
International Commission on Stratigraphy (IUGS), a member of the Directive Council of the
Società Italiana di Paleontologia (SPI), and Vice-President of the International
Palaeontological Society.
Fabrizio Berra, received a PhD in Earth Sciences in 1994. He
joined the academic staff of the Università degli Studi di Milano in
2002 and is now associate professor at Dipartimento di Scienze
della Terra “Ardito Desio”. There, he teaches stratigraphy and
basin analysis, leading the field activity for MSc and Bachelor
students. His interests focus on stratigraphy, sedimentology and
paleogeography of sedimentary successions, and basin analysis.
He has researched successions of different ages in the
Himalaya, Central Asia (Iran), Sardinia, Corsica and in different
domains of the Alps, with particular attention to carbonate systems. He was involved in the
survey and direction of geological maps in the frame of the Italian National Project of field
mapping at 1:50.000 scale (CARG Project). His interests also include production of 3D
geological models from outcrop data, and forward modelling. His research activity is
documented by more than 50 papers on international journals and more than 100
abstracts in congress proceedings.