Ambio - The first 50 years
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EDITORIAL
Ambio - The first 50 years Bo So¨derstro¨m
Published online: 21 November 2020
Ambio will commemorate 50 years of publication all through 2021. This editorial begins by announcing how we will celebrate our first 50 years and concludes by looking back on some of our achievements so far.
UPCOMING CELEBRATIONS 50th anniversary collection of thematic articles The evolution of scientific themes published in Ambio from 1972 to 2019 based on the most commonly used keywords is visualized in Fig. 1. The clusters of keywords suggested four major themes: (1) air and water pollution and their effects on biota; (2) acidification and eutrophication with a particular geographical focus on countries in northern Europe; (3) climate change effects on species and ecosystems, and 4) human-environment relations, environmental protection and conservation of natural resources. A separate keyword analysis—where different keywords were colour-coded by time—showed a clear gradient from keywords often used in our first two three decades of publishing in the upper part of Fig. 1 (themes 1 and 2), and keywords more frequent after the turn of the millenium in the lower part, particularly in the lower left part (themes 3 and 4). One of the main activities planned for our 50th volume is that we will highlight some of our most influential papers over the years in a collection of anniversary thematic articles. The editors used the keyword analysis in Fig. 1 to identify themes that will serve as the chapters in our 50th volume (described below and summarized in Table 1). Environmental problems such as decomposition of the ozone layer and acidification of lakes and forests were topical issues in the 1970s until the 1990s. Other challenges
such as environmental contaminants and eutrophication of water bodies, in particular of the Baltic Sea, became a prominent research theme already in the 1980s. During the past 30 years, agricultural land-use, climate change impacts, and biodiversity conservation have been recurrent topics. Since the turn of the millenium, urbanization and the Anthropocene have risen in importance, a testament to the pervasive effects we humans have on our environment. With the themes decided on we had the delicate problem of selecting which articles – among the more than 4000 published – that best represent the different themes. One often used criterion to determine the scientific impact is the number of citations an article has received. According to Web of Science (from Clarivate Analytics), 15 articles have been cited more than 400 times (Table 2). The most cited Ambio article of all time – ’’The Anthropocene: Are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature?’’ written in 2007 by Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen and John R. McNeill – has 1112 citations in Web of Science and 3055 citations in Google Scholar. Many of our authors have repeatedly chosen Ambio as the most suitable and visible outlet for their research. Frequent publication within Ambio is another criterion for selecting articles and authors to commemora
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