Beyond the first decade: The next phase for ESPI

Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts (ESPI) was launched at the start of 2013 and has now celebrated its 11th birthday. ESPI was led for the first three years by Frank Wania (2013–2015) and for the last eight years by Kris McNeill (2016–2023). We are delighted to announce that ESPI has its third Editor-in-Chief, Elsie Sunderland. We thought that this occasion would be a good opportunity to look back at some of ESPI's accomplishments and to look forward to where ESPI is going in the future.

From the beginning, the primary goal of ESPI for all of us involved with the journal was make it a place where we would want to publish our own work. This meant of course that we wanted to make it a home for high-quality papers in the environmental chemical sciences, with a clear scope and with high standards. Beyond that, we wanted to provide a pleasant experience for our authors. This meant building trust that their manuscripts would be handled quickly and professionally by a team of outstanding associate editors. It has been extremely gratifying to see the growth of the journal and its community of dedicated authors, reviewers, and readers over the past decade plus. The editorial board and staff have been instrumental in achieving these goals.

One of the initiatives that we have been most proud of is the Emerging Investigator Series (https://rsc.li/espi-emerging), which has highlighted and promoted the work of more than 40 early career researchers. Another important initiative was the launch (along with our sister journals Environmental Science: Nano and Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology) of double-anonymized peer review, which was part of our efforts to reduce bias in peer review. Another of ESPI's legacies is that it spurred the launch of four more members of the Environmental Science family of journals: Environmental Science: Nano (2014), Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology (2015), Environmental Science: Atmospheres (2021), and Environmental Science: Advances (2022).

Over the past 11 years, ESPI has established itself as a leading journal in several areas. Some of these include organic and inorganic pollutant fate, biogeochemical cycling, and atmospheric chemistry. Going forward ESPI will continue to grow as an interdisciplinary journal that emphasizes fundamental environmental and earth science research that can be applied to address some of the world's most pressing global environmental and health issues. For example, we welcome papers that emphasize the impacts of climate change on ecosystem processes, contaminant cycling and health, and studies at the intersection of environmental chemistry and socioecological problems.

We would like to see growth of the journal in key areas of the world. High quality submissions from the Global South are especially welcome given the sparsity of environmental data in many important areas. We would also like to use the journal to discuss key issues and questions such as how different global populations and sociodemographic groups are benefiting from international treaties on chemical pollutants and conservation measures.

We look forward to the rest of 2024 and beyond with the hope that this journal can be a venue for you to discuss and better understand how the Anthropocene is affecting fundamental earth system processes, chemical cycling, and human and ecological health. We begin the new year with gratitude for the authors and readers of ESPI, and a renewed charge to better understand the world and move us toward environmental stewardship in this time of global uncertainty.

Elsie M. Sunderland, Harvard University

Kris McNeill, ETH Zurich

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