First Issue of JAERE is Out

The first issue of the new Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics has now been published. A mix of different topics and some big names, though not as many as one might expect for the first issue of a new journal.

First Issue of Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies Now Online

Most of the papers for the first issue of the Crawford School's flagship journal are now online in "early view". All of the papers for the first issue have now been finally approved. It looks like a few more still need to be processed into the journal format (I know that there should be a paper by Bob Costanza and Shuang Liu in this issue). The journal is open access - so no problems or fees for anyone to download the papers.

New Journal: Energy Research and Social Science

Another new journal in the energy space: Energy Research and Social Science. Published by Elsevier and the editor in chief is Benjamin Sovacool. The journal will cover all social science approaches and all energy technologies.

Five New Open Access Economics Journals

Springer and IZA launch five new open access economics journals in the labor economics area. For the moment, at least, the journals are free to publish in too. Hopefully, these won't go the way of the BE Press journals which started out as open access journals and are now difficult to access paywalled journals. Given that they are published by Springer, I don't think so. The worst that is likely to happen is that authors will have to pay to publish in them in the future and/or the journals will close some day but still be hosted on Springer's platform.

Sage Open Drops Publication Fee to $99

As part of what seems to be a race to the bottom in publication fees for gold open access journals, Sage Open announced that it is cutting its publication fee to $99.

Sage Open aims to be the PLoS One of the social sciences and humanites and covers all those disciplines. There don't seem to be any economics articles on there. Not surprising, as the working paper culture in economics makes open access far less important than in many other disciplines.

Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies

This is a new open-access journal published from the Crawford School and produced by Blackwell Wiley. First issue will be in early 2014 but the website is already open for submissions. I'm a member of the editorial board.

Energy Strategy Reviews

A new journal in the energy sphere: Energy Strategy Reviews. The journal claims that it:

"provides authoritative content on strategic decision-making and vision-sharing related to society's energy needs. The journal stimulates the exchange and sharing of knowledge and best practice in energy strategy, planning and implementation."

An interesting graph in the opening editorial shows the number of academic papers produced by each country based on data from Scopus:



China is about to overtake the US. I wonder what caused the big jump in China's share in 2004-5?

Journal of Economic Structures

A new open-access economics journal from Springer. The title is a bit enigmatic but turns out it is the official journal of the Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies. There are so far few quality open access journals in economics with the leading ones being the Econometric Society's Quantitative and Theoretical Economics. And, of course, the Journal of Economic Perspectives is also open access now. There are other open access journals in economics of course but they don't have the reputation of these. And the B.E. journals seem to have become non-open access and were never quite that model anyway. In my opinion, there is less momentum to open access in economics than in biology say because of the strong working paper culture in economics means that most papers do have a free version available on the web and the role of funders in pushing open access is much smaller as funding dollars are much less important in economics.

New Journal: Ecosystem Services

A new journal from Elsevier with an editorial board with a lot of well-known names from ecological economics. From the homepage:

Ecosystem Services, associated with Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP), is an international, interdisciplinary journal that deals with the science, policy and practice of Ecosystem Services in the following disciplines: ecology and economics, institutions, planning and decision making, economic sectors such as agriculture, forestry and outdoor recreation, and all types of ecosystems.

The aims of the journal are:
(1) to improve our understanding of the dynamics, benefits and social and economic values of ecosystem services,
(2) to provide insight in the consequences of policies and management for ecosystem services with special attention to sustainability issues,
(3) to create a scientific interface to policymakers in the field of ecosystem services assessment and practice, and
(4) to integrate the fragmented knowledge about ecosystem services, synergies and trade-offs, currently found in a wide field of specialist disciplines and journals.

S.A.P.I.E.N.S.

Another new journal, though actually it has been published since 2008: S.A.P.I.E.N.S. - Surveys and Perspectives Integrating Environment and Society. This is an open-access journal, which is also free for authors to publish in. It is funded by French MNC Veolia Environnement through their non-profit research foundation. The inaugural issue featured articles by Esther Duflo and Bob Costanza. Costanza, Elinor Ostrom, Rajendra Pachauri inter alia are on the editorial board. It's not yet catalogued in Scopus or the Web of Science but you can find its articles in Google Scholar.

Reviews in Ecological Economics

After two years of publishing Ecological Economics Reviews (EER) as a special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Bob Costanza, Karin Limburg, and Ida Kubiszewski are announcing a move - to Springer - and a slightly different name: Reviews in Ecological Economics (REE). They are confident that this move will strengthen the new REE and increase its exposure and recognition.

They are now inviting submissions to this year's volume of Reviews in Ecological Economics to be published early 2012. The mission of REE has not changed from it prior existence as EER – it will provide authoritative reviews of key topics in ecological economics.  REE will be published annually.

The deadline for submissions is 30th October. Guidelines for authors can be found on the Springer website. Submit papers to Ida Kubiszewski.

Nature Publishing Group Goes Head to Head with PLoS ONE

Nature Publishing Group is launching yet another journal: Scientific Reports. It is an open access journal with the same $US1,350 publication fee as PLoS ONE. Nature recently launched another journal: Nature Communications that charges a $US5,000 open access fee, which is higher than any of the PLoS journals and the highest publication fee that I've seen. It's not a pure open access journal though. The new journal has the same editorial policy as PLoS ONE: "It will not set a threshold of perceived importance for the papers that it publishes; rather, Scientific Reports will publish all papers that are judged to be technically valid and original." The initial editorial board composition suggests that this journal will be less biology focused than PLoS ONE. Actually, they will not accept papers on clinical research, so their niche is a little different to PLoS ONE.

Special Issue of Energy Economics

The latest issue of Energy Economics is a special issue on the economics of technologies to combat global warming. I haven't read the papers in detail yet, but there look to be several good overviews of the current state of play on the key issues in this area. Given the slowness with which countries are moving to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, technology policies might end up being more important in driving the transition to a lower carbon future.

The special issue is edited by William Nordhaus and Nebojsa Nakicenovic. I'm going to be reading them in preparation for the lectures I will give later this year in the Crawford course Government, markets and global change. My lectures are on the general topic of energy and the global environment with a particular focus on alternative energy technology policy. The course is a team taught course that uses cases studies to structure the lecture content. We are using a case study on US DOE funding for alternative energy technologies. I imagine these papers would also feed into writing my sections of our IPCC 5th Assessment Report chapter.

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences

A new journal for a new academic society: Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences. I've long thought it strange that there has been no professional society for environmental studies. Well, apart from the International Society for Ecological Economics of course :) This makes academic job searches in environmental studies a bit more challenging than in other fields, for example. Unlike ISEE, the society is limiting itself to academics and students only. It's also focusing on North America, though not limited to it. The Association has its conference next week at the University of Vermont.

Invited to Publish a Chapter in an In-Tech Book

Open Access chapters in books with pay to publish fees seems to be a new trend. I got an invite to contribute a chapter to a book published by In-Tech. The publication fee is Euro 590. The book is available for free online but a hardcopy is mailed to each author. What I found to be even weirder is this statement:

"To preserve the integrity of the review process the identity of the editor will be disclosed upon final chapter submission."

In most cases chapters in edited volumes get very few citations except in some cases of respected handbooks and the like (at least in economics). So there is no reason why I would do this, rather than send my paper to some low-end journal. But if this (open access) was done by a reputable press maybe book chapters would get more citations in future?

Visit these blogs for more info on In-Tech.

New Journal: Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy

Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy (EEEP), is a new journal published by the International Association for Energy Economics, focusing on policy issues involving energy and environmental economics. The first issue will be published in January 2012 and a call for papers has been issued. The editors are Jean-Michel Glachant (European University Institute in Florence, Italy), Paul L. Joskow (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, USA) and Michael Pollitt (Cambridge University, United Kingdom). The remainder of the editorial board has not yet been announced.

2011 Ecological Economics Reviews is Published

The 2011 edition Ecological Economics Reviews has been published. Ecological Economics Reviews is an annual special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences - a special issues only journal. This edition includes my paper "The Role of Energy in Economic Growth".

There are 12 articles in total and there are a lot of Australian authors!

Peter Wood (ANU): Climate change and game theory

Clem Tisdell (UQ): Core issues in the economics of biodiversity conservation

Natalie Stoeckl (JCU) et al.: The economic value of ecosystem services in the Great Barrier Reef: our state of knowledge

David Stern (ANU): The role of energy in economic growth

Barry Shelley (Brandeis): What should we call instruments commonly known as payments for environmental services? A review of the literature and a proposal

Colin Richardson (Imperial C., London) Jerry Courvisanos (U. Ballarat) and John W. Crawford (U. Sydney): Toward a synthetic economic systems modeling tool for sustainable exploitation of ecosystems

David Murphy (SUNY, Syracuse) and Charles Hall (SUNY, Syracuse): Energy return on investment, peak oil, and the end of economic growth

Elisabetta Magnani (UNSW): Environmental protection, inequality, and institutional change

Philip Lawn (Flinders U.) Is steady-state capitalism viable? A review of the issues and an answer in the affirmative

Lisi Krall (SUNY, Cortland) and Kent Klitgaard (Wells C.): Ecological economics and institutional change

Paul Epstein (Harvard) et al.: Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal

Bhim Adhikari (UNU, Hamilton, Ontario) and Karthik Nadella (McMaster U.): Ecological economics of soil erosion: a review of the current state of knowledge

Clearly a key theme is institutional change that might be needed for sustainable development, which is addressed by the papers by Magnani, Law and Krall and Klitgaard. Institutions are of course also prominent in the paper by Wood on game theory and climate change. In particular, Magnani looks at labor market institutions, which were also the focus of the recent book by Tim Jackson.

Ecological Economics Reviews

A while back I did a series of posts that serialized a paper I was revising on energy and growth, starting with this post. The paper has now been accepted for publication in the 2011 issue of Ecological Economics Reviews, which is a special annual issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences edited by Bob Costanza and Karin Limburg (Rated B by the ARC BTW). I just now have to switch my references from the Harvard system to the convoluted method used by Nature, PNAS, PLOS, and ANYAS.

New Climate Change Economics Journal

A new journal published by World Scientific titled: Climate Change Economics has been launched. The aims and scope statement states:

"Climate Change Economics (CCE) publishes theoretical and empirical papers devoted to analyses of mitigation, adaptation, impacts, and other issues related to the policy and management of greenhouse gases. CCE is specifically devoted to papers in economics although it is understood that authors may need to rely on other fields for important insights. The journal is interested in papers examining the issue at every scale from local to global and papers from around the world are encouraged. CCE is also interested in both original research and review papers and welcomes comments discussing previous articles."

The editor in chief is Robert Mendelsohn of Yale University and the editorial board is full of big names in environmental and energy economics:

Carlo Carraro (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Italy)
Larry Goulder (Stanford University, USA)
Charles Kolstad (University of California - Santa Barbara, USA)
William Nordhaus (Yale University, USA)
Richard Richels (Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), USA)
Daigee Shaw (Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, Taiwan)
Thomas Schelling (University of Maryland, USA)
Robert Stavins (Harvard University, USA)
Richard Tol (Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Ireland)
Martin Weitzman (Harvard University, USA)

So this has the potential to be a highly ranked journal.