Published: 1 January 2011
Citation: Polar Research 2011, 30: 5935 - DOI: 10.3402/polar.v30i0.5935
Polar Research 2011. © 2011 Helle V. Goldman. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Photo by: Ann Kristin Balto, Norwegian Polar Institute
Polar Research is now an open access journal, freely available to anyone with a computer and connection to the internet. Now readers around the world will have free access to the latest scientific articles on climate, biodiversity, polar history and other diverse topics that are investigated in the polar regions. Doing away with a regular print edition has slashed the journal's carbon footprint. As Polar Research's Chief Editor for the last 12 years, I've shepherded the journal through several significant transitions, but none compares to this milestone in the publication's 28-year history.
Publishing in Polar Research entails no author fees, and there are no charges for colour illustrations or supplemental material. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, allowing authors to distribute and post the final version of their work for any non-commercial purpose, under the condition that the original source is credited. Publishing in Polar Research makes it convenient for contributors and their institutions to comply with mandates requiring open access to the results of publicly funded research. At the same time, authors will benefit from the same rigorous standards of peer review and the same high-quality editorial service for which the journal is known.
On behalf of the Editorial Board, the Editorial Advisory Panel and the Norwegian Polar Insititute, I take great pleasure in welcoming you to the journal's new website. From my vantage point at the headquarters of the Norwegian Polar Institute—370 km north of the Arctic Circle—I look forward to seeing how this bold step will help Polar Research better serve the polar scientific community and others with a stake in Arctic and Antarctic research.
Helle V. Goldman
Editor-in-Chief