Prof. Dr. John C. Eichelberger Appointed Editor-in-Chief of Geosciences

We extend our deepest gratitude to Prof. Dr. Jesus Martinez-Frias for his dedicated commitment as Editor-in-Chief of Geosciences over the past 13 years. We would like to extend a warm welcome to our new Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. John C. Eichelberger who assumed editorial leadership over the journal Geosciences (ISSN: 2076-3263) in November 2024.

Homepage: https://www.uaf.edu/acep/about/our-team/john-eichelberger.php
Affiliation: Alaska Center for Energy and Power, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA
Interests: volcanology; igneous petrology; geothermal energy; scientific drilling; natural hazards; Arctic issues

Prof. Dr. John C. Eichelberger’s career spans half a century, and has focused on volcanology, scientific drilling, geothermal energy, natural hazards, and international Arctic education.

Educated at MIT and Stanford, Prof. Dr. Eichelberger was on the research staff at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories from 1974 to 1979 and 1979 to 1991, respectively. In 1991 he became a professor of geology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Geophysical Institute and Department of Geology and Geophysics), where he led the Alaska Volcano Observatory and pioneered cooperative volcano monitoring, science, and education programs with Kamchatka, Russia, and Hokkaido, Japan.

Prof. Dr. Eichelberger then served as program coordinator for volcano hazards at the United States Geological Survey headquarters in Reston, VA, but returned to UAF in 2012 as the graduate school dean and Vice-President Academic of the University of the Arctic.

Prof. Dr. Eichelberger received the UAF Usibelli Research Award in 2005 and the European Geosciences Union’s Soloviev Medal in Natural Hazards in 2015. The Geological Society of America designated him as a Distinguished Lecturer for Continental Scientific Drilling in 2020.

Prof. Dr. Eichelberger founded the Krafla Magma Testbed (kmt.is), Iceland, which is developing the world’s first international observatory for studying an active magma body and applying that knowledge to vastly increasing geothermal energy production and the reliability of eruption forecasting for disaster mitigation.

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. John C. Eichelberger, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views on the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role of its Editor-in-Chief?
First of all, I was honored to be asked! But there are many things I like about Geosciences, following my experience as lead editor of a Special Issue, also available at modest cost as a book.
The process was very efficient, the journal staff very helpful, and it’s been viewed over 60,000 times (published in 2020). I’m especially pleased with how many countries are represented among the editors and authors. This is especially important now, when some scientific journals are restricting publication by nationality of authors. Such restrictions have no place in science. Geosciences’ unfettered global reach with open access at minimal cost is extremely important. Although, in soliciting papers for the Special Issue I found a few authors who wanted to wait and publish in a “more prestigious” journal, as far as I know, their work is still unpublished. As my mentor, W.C. Luth told me repeatedly, “if you don’t publish your work you might as well not have done it”. Now literature search engines with live links, timeliness without neglecting rigorous review, and open access win by far over getting a page that says “your university does not have a subscription to this journal”, followed by an arduous and expensive purchase process. An author may well ask, which is the better way for my paper to be read? The MDPI family of journals pioneered open access and that is the future. “Prestige” takes time, but it is already arriving at Geosciences.

2. What is your vision for the journal?
The scope of Geosciences could hardly be broader, encompassing not only Earth but terrestrial planets and clues on planetary origin from asteroids. Even on our own planet, there remain first order questions that we may not want to admit are not fully solved. For example, how and when did our continents form and is similar material generated on the other basalt-encrusted planetary bodies? What about all the volcanism on Earth that doesn’t fit into the plate tectonics paradigm? What of the other planets that never underwent plate tectonics? How did they rid themselves of excess heat and what were the consequences for their crust and volatile sphere. Meanwhile, we tolerate large uncertainties in parameters of interior Earth, the shallowest of which could be answered by drilling at costs far less than interplanetary missions. Most immediately, we face an atmospheric crisis of our own making. I hope we will see papers on efforts to solve this problem comparable to current efforts of documenting it. Some of this is engineering, but some are clearly science and we should bring down the barrier between science and engineering anyway. Likewise, the distinction between “basic” and “applied” science is not useful. The climate crisis we face ranges from understanding atmosphere, ocean, solid Earth interactions to critical minerals and the whole Earth and human impact of different modes of power generation. This includes information from industries that implement change on a global scale. The private sector needs to be encouraged to share more intellectual property in journals like Geosciences, in order to speed up progress for all. There must also be more educational outreach. In my own country, the number of universities that have tried to eliminate their geoscience departments suggests that even highly educated administrators take their planet for granted. So, the big things to emphasize, in my opinion, are promotion of international, multidisciplinary, public-private sector collaborations, unrestrained open access, and exploration of questions that are either new or which we wrongly thought were answered.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
It would be presumptuous of me to predict the future. Such predictions, beyond recognizing what seems most exciting now, are notoriously wrong. But if the above wishes are correct, we will see more rapid progress in geosciences through broader and more rapid sharing of research results, driven in part by the existential threat of climate change. We have entered, as James Head has said, the era of comparative planetology, which is as important for understanding our own planet as others. I hope we will see more direct, drilling exploration of our own crust. There was an ambitious super-deep drilling program started by the Soviet Union during the Cold War (to 12 km depth), inciting other countries to make grand plans that only West Germany carried through (to 9 km). Now, China may lead the charge, with amazingly deep continuous coring. But perhaps as much or more could be gained from exploring magma bodies that have been intersected at only about 2 km depth. Along with this is the development of extreme sensors that can measure important parameters and dynamics all the way to and into magma. Finally, the amazing developments of microbeam technology have enabled us to read the separate histories of individual crystals in rocks. They can be surprisingly diverse even when coming from the same rock. Not bulk rock samples but individual crystals may reveal the most information about earliest Earth. I’m sure our impressive group of Section Editors can think of other, equally exciting futures.

4. What do you think of the development of the open access format in the publishing field?
Open access is the future. Who wants a paywall in front of their work when they want people to read it?

We wish Prof. Dr. John C. Eichelberger every success in his new position, and we look forward to his contributions to the journal.