ISPRS Launches New Open Access Journal
The ISPRS Council is pleased to announce the introduction of a new Golden Open Access journal, the ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IOJPRS), starting on January 1, 2021 and published by Elsevier. As an independent third journal of ISPRS, IOJPRS will offer additional possibilities for authors to publish their latest results in a high-quality peer reviewed scientific outlet under the umbrella of ISPRS.
The decision to start this new journal followed a careful assessment of its pros and cons over the past 18 months. The most important point was the global development in the direction of open science in general and open access in particular, reflected e.g. in new regulations and initiatives within the European Union such as the so called Plan S. Equally important, the two existing ISPRS journals have been experiencing a rapid increase in the number of submissions and published papers, demonstrating the growth of our field; the two Editor-in-Chiefs of the highly-ranked ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IJPRS) currently work with 19 Associate Editors to handle 1,500+ submissions a year, while the open access ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJ-GI) has been publishing up to 100 articles per month as it approaches its 10th year of existence. The ISPRS Council, in cooperation with all journal Editors-in-Chiefs and Elsevier, conducted a survey to seek the opinion of the community at large and analyzed the findings before reaching the conclusion that the benefits of adding a new Golden Open Access journal would be significant.
The ISPRS Council is delighted to share the news with our community that George Vosselman, PhD, former Editor-in-Chief of IJPRS, has accepted our offer to serve as the first Editor-in-Chief of the new ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
George Vosselman is professor in Geo-Information Extraction with Sensor Systems at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. After graduating in Geodetic Engineering from the Delft University of Technology in 1986, he worked at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, until 1992. In 1991, he obtained his PhD degree with honours from the University of Bonn, Germany. He was appointed professor of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing at the Delft University of Technology in 1993. In 2004 he joined ITC, now a faculty of the University of Twente.
George has been instrumental in adapting ISPRS to the rise of laser scanning, including roles as WG chair (2000-2004) on reconstruction from airborne LiDAR and InSAR, WG co-chair (2008-2012) on point processing, and editor of a well-known standard book (with Hans-Gerd Maas). Moreover, he has made a massive contribution to scientific standards, quality control, and reviewing: he was editor-in-chief of the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (2004-2012), a member of the International Science Advisory Committee (ISAC), and chair of the International Program Committee for the ISPRS Congress 2016. He has over 250 publications to his name, many of which have been cited numerous times. He was also the Director of the very successful ISPRS Geospatial Week, organised in Enschede in 2019.