Editorial

In our initial statement last year we stressed a few objectives that we considered crucial for the future development of the Latin American Journal of Sedimentology and Basin Analysis and we have been actively working in that regard since we took charge as part of the editorial team in order to make some of them possible. Some really good news have risen in the past months concerning the evolution and current situation of LAJSBA that we want to share with the Latin American sedimentological community.
Probably the most important news is that the Latin American Journal of Sedimentology and Basin Analysis is now fully available online via the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO, www. scielo.org.ar). Back issues have been uploaded in the past few months and actually this will be the first issue published online prior to the printed version. This step is crucial in several ways. Online availability is sometimes a pre-requisite for the inclusion of the journal in indexing and reference services as well as in the better rating of the journal (e.g. the inclusion of LAJSBA in the Núcleo Básico de Publicaciones Científicas Argentinas is, among other things, conditioned to the journal being online and updated). The inclusion of LAJSBA in SciELO also increases the visibility of the journal worldwide. Many of us have been gladly surprised to see how well ranked in search engines articles published in LAJSBA appear, giving more visibility to the journal and to the AAS as publisher. Finally, the online publishing of articles will help to reduce the delay time between acceptance and publication as the final printing and distribution of LAJSBA can be a very prolonged process. The availability of the journal online will be completed in the future with the uploading of the volumes of the former AAS revista, a step that might take some time (especially due to the lack of electronic versions of the early issues) but will eventually ensure the full availability of all the periodic material published by the Asociación Argentina de Sedimentología. We share this feeling with the AAS Board as the way forward in scientific publishing and we are really pleased to see how things are going in this field.
Another important aspect in the promotion of the Latin American Journal of Sedimentology and Basin Analysis at a global scale is the inclusion of the journal in indexing and reference services that are widely used by the Earth Science community. In this sense we are pleased to inform that LAJSBA is now in review process by the American Geological Institute for its inclusion in GeoRef database and by Elsevier in order to be incorporated into Scopus and other indexing services as GEOBASE. Needles to say is how important this inclusion will be in the future of LAJSBA, as this will benefit authors and might be a surplus in their decision to submit their contributions to our journal.
The last significant issue that we stressed last year as key in the evolution of LAJSBA was the implementation of an online editorial system that, as we have pointed, will reduce considerably the time involved in the editorial treatment of manuscripts, combined with a reduction in paperwork and the achievement of a smoother transitions between all the steps involved, from manuscript reception to final publication. We are happy to inform the sedimentological community that the Latin American Journal of Sedimentology and Basin Analysis has been selected to go into a test stage for the implementation of the Open Journal System (OJS) through the Centro Argentino de Información Científica y Tecnológica (CAICYT – CONICET). This governmental office will set up a web portal (Portal de Publicaciones Científicas y Técnicas – PPCT) that will provide LAJSBA, and 14 other scientific journals, with the platform for the development of the OJS, together with trained resources that will assist the Editorial Board in the design of an optimized editorial process. Our idea is to adjust the OJS, a system that has been adapted by numerous journals throughout the scientific world, to match our current editorial process that has proven efficient and widely accepted by the sedimentological community. The implementation of the OJS through the CAICYT is particularly convenient as it carries no costs to the publisher (Asociación Argentina de Sedimentología) and will allow us to set a standard for editorial processes that will benefit the authors, reviewers, editors and publisher in equal proportions. We will keep the community posted with the latest developments in this subject via email or through our website and suggestions on how to improve the editorial process are more than welcome from all the community.
To conclude, and after a very rewarding year in charge of the editorial team, we would like to thank reviewers and authors for their constant support and for contributing to the production of a quality journal that is still a reference for publication of sedimentological work in Latin America. From here, and in the light of the latest outcomes, we would like to encourage, once again, sedimentologists from all Latin America to submit their contributions to the Latin American Journal of Sedimentology and Basin Analysis in order to sustain the consolidation of our much appreciated journal.

Gonzalo D. Veiga Editor

Alfonsina Tripaldi Associate Editor