(by IJDE Editorial Office)

On 8th July 2008, the 2nd Editorial Board Meeting of the International Journal of Digital Earth (IJDE) was successfully held at Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth, CAS in Beijing.

During the ISPRS 2008 Congress in July, many Editorial Board members of IJDE came to Beijing, China. Taking this opportunity, Prof. Guo Huadong, the Editor-in-Chief of IJDE convened the 2nd IJDE Editorial Board Meeting in Beijing. The assistant editor, Prof. Wang Changlin, the IJDE Editorial Board members, Prof. Manfred Ehlers, Prof. Hiromichi Fukui, Prof. John van Genderen, Prof. Jean Sequeira, and Prof. Peter Woodgate, the letter editor, Prof. Yong Xue, and Invited ISDE EC members Prof. John Townshend, Dr. Gabor Remetey-Fül?pp, Dr. Vincent Tao, and Journal reviewer representatives attended the meeting.

Attendees listened to the report by Prof. Guo Huadong regarding to the two published issues of IJDE and the status of papers submitted to the Editorial Office of IJDE for publication so far. Then, Ms. Rachel Sangster, the publisher of Taylor & Francis gave a Publishing and Marketing Report on the journals published by Taylor & Francis, especially on IJDE in the first half year of 2008. Following that, Prof. Wang reported the Launch Ceremony of the Inaugural Issue of IJDE and the good cooperation between the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) and IJDE publisher, Taylor & Francis Group.

IJDE Editorial Board members highly affirmed the successful beginning of IJDE and the achievement IJDE has received. They further analyzed the situation that IJDE faced as a new journal and discussed the development strategies of IJDE, for example, how to improve the IJDE papers’ quality and how to promote the influence of the Journal at a global scale in order to shorten the way for IJDE to be a SCI journal. Attendees expressed that they would very like to contribute more to IJDE assisting this journal to be a more international, scientific and popular journal.

The meeting resolves that the 3rd IJDE Editorial Board meeting will be held during ISDE-6 in Beijing in 2009.