Presidential Address:
Starting on-line journal of BGS for applied and pure geophysics |
by Ahmet T. Basokur (February 1998)
The Chamber of Geophysical Engineers of Turkey took over of the
presidency of Balkan Geophysical
Society (BGS) from the Hellenic Geophysical Union a year ago and
I have completed my first year in the
second executive committee. My predecessor Dr. George Sideris
of Hellenic Geophysical Union, and the
first executive committee members Dr. M. Loucoyannakis, Prof.
E. Lagios and Y. Grigoriou successfully
completed many hard works in the beginning years of the society.
The First Balkan Geophysical
Congress held in Athens proved that the society was well managed.
On behalf of all member societies, I
thank the first president and the executive committee for their
prosperous works. I hope that the second
executive committee will strengthen these activities.
At the moment, the second executive committee has completed the
construction of the BGS web site (http://www.BalkanGeophySoc.gr).
We hope that our home page will open a wide window by supplying
a direct link to all geoscientist. This will also give us a chance
to electronically publish our scientific journal inside our home page.
Our E-journal, Journal of the Balkan
Geophysical Society will appear quarterly in
February, May, August and November. Publishing a journal on the
Internet has several advantages, for
example, speed and low cost. The authors will not wait for a long
time (one and half year in favourable
conditions) to see their manuscripts in the printed form. If the
review process can be accelerated using the Internet then the
Editor can publish the papers in six months after receiving. The
second advantage is that any reader who has Internet access can
read and print the papers without any extra cost. If someone has
a computer and Internet access in the office or at home, then
our journal is much closer than a printed one that is stored in
the library of the company. We should also mention that many small
companies and institutions might not have sufficient budget to
buy several journals published on geophysics. Moreover, the readers
can read or print only the interested papers instead of buying
the complete volume of a printed journal. E-journals are cost
effective for both the publisher and the readers. Still, there
are additional advantages of E-journals such as coloured figures,
and inserting movies and sounds in the near future. The most importantly,
E-journals are not harmful for the environment and they save the
nature and forests. Because, we waste electrons instead of papers
produced by chemical processes that run out a lot of trees. At
this point, more probably you are asking if there is any disadvantage
of E-journals. In reality, there is not. However, the idea seems
to be quite new. Whenever I mention publishing an E-journal, someone
asks if the value of an E-journal would be the same as the printed
one. I can plainly respond that the value of any journal in printed
or in electronically published form, is defined by its contents.
If the published papers are in high quality then the journal will
be a valuable one.
The editor, Gregory N. Tsokas of Thessaloniki University has done
his best efforts to create a valuable journal and now the first
issue has already been published. We hope that you will support
us by submitting valuable papers in future. Surely, our web page
is not constructed only to publish our ournal. First of all, we
should know that the construction of a web site is not sufficient
that someone visits it ithout any reason. Except the students,
nobody have free time to visit many web sites only for curiosity.
The journal is good reason to take attraction of the geoscientists,
but we have to provide additional services. For example, we can
publish books, lecture notes, survey reports and software. The
materials can be prepared in English or in one of the Balkan languages.
We would like to receive such materials not only from the members
but also from all over the world. We also open a page for Exploration
News so that our members will be aware of the company activities.
Member societies should support the executive committee to make
our web pages interesting.
Finally, I hope that our web site will make all geophysicists
more closely than before. I thank again all
colleagues who made contributions to the Balkan Geophysical Society.