Prof. Dr. Urs Klötzli Appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of Section “Mineral Geochemistry and Geochronology” in Minerals

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Urs Klötzli has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the “Mineral Geochemistry and Geochronology” Section of Minerals (ISSN: 2075-163X) as of October 2024.

Prof. Dr. Urs Klötzli is a professor of geology in the Department of Lithospheric Research at the University of Vienna in Austria. He gained his master’s degree from the University of Berne (Switzerland) in 1988 with a thesis on geochronological investigations in the Ivrea–Verbano Zone (Italy, Switzerland). In 1991, he concluded his doctoral thesis with a dissertation on the negative ion thermal ionization mass spectrometry of boron, also at the University of Berne. He then moved to Vienna, setting up a new geochronology laboratory centered around classical U-Th-Pb dating methods. In 2001, he received the ‘venia legendi’ (habilitation) for geology, with a special focus on geochronology, and was then appointed associate professor. His research interests then shifted in the direction of in situ dating, and he established an LA MC-ICP-MS laboratory focusing on zircon and phosphate U-Pb and Th-Pb dating. More recently, he has been deeply interested in the petrochronology (the combination of mineral dating and petrological investigations) of phosphates using thermo-barometric and diffusion modelling techniques, as well as experiments on natural and synthetic materials. Apart from this more methodological research, Prof. Dr. Klötzli has worked on various geochronological problems mainly in the European Alps, but also in the Carpathians and in Thailand, Turkey, Iran, and Cameroon.

Prof. Dr. Klötzli is currently the deputy director of the Department of Lithospheric Research in Vienna. He has published more than 250 peer-reviews articles, book chapters, and conference contributions and has supervised numerous bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD students both in Vienna and abroad.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Urs Klötzli, who shared his vision for the Section with us as well as his views on the research area and Open Access publishing: 

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?
I am a strong proponent of the absolute free accessibility of research results in open access journals. MDPI's Minerals is offering fully open access, meaning that publications are freely accessible to anyone, i.e., the general tax-paying public, and so it allows us:

1. to increase the visibility and impact of our mostly publicly funded research;
2. to reach out to a broader audience, especially to researchers in developing countries or those who do not have access to traditional, non-open access journals.

Most appealing to me is the highly professional way the review and publishing process is handled by MDPI. I have long-term experience with the publication activities of professional societies and this sometimes has been a very unnerving process. Professional publishers surely do a better job in this respect.

I do not share the fear of some colleagues that the publication of research results by commercial publication companies reduces the quality of the science. I thus see myself as promoting Minerals as a viable journal which publishes the highest quality science and reducing its negative association within the community of 'low-quality science' in favor of the share-holders’ profit. 

2. What is your vision for the journal?
I see the journal as a means for researchers/scientists to rapidly publish their high-quality research results from numerous scientific fields dealing with minerals sensu lato. This broadness has to be maintained. We see in our daily work that too strongly specialized reporting, i.e., by means of journals, blogs, conferences, etc., lead to a reduction in the broadness of our scientific knowledge base and views. This has to be counter-balanced.

We should maintain a guiding hand on the thematic coverage of the journal so as to avoid too much topical diversion while still keeping in mind the scientific development of the field, i.e., identifying emerging research fields and giving these enough room for publication.

We should ensure that all authors of submitted manuscripts have equally contributed to the research. For instance, my experience in the field says that seldom do more than five researchers contribute significantly to a given manuscript. Logical exceptions are big research groups which publish as one body.

As a Section Editor-in-Chief, I hope to positively influence the review process and its quality by having stricter control of submissions and reviewers. I would like to see a more rigorous pre-review screening of submitted manuscripts to be established in order to reduce or even avoid sending out very-low-quality manuscripts for review. This cannot be done in splendid isolation but only in collaboration with reviewers and MDPI staff—providing easy and rapid access to researchers in countries in the Global South via a rigorous open access policy.

Transparent peer-review process: MDPI already promotes transparency in its peer-review process, sometimes offering an open peer-review option, where reviewers’ reports are made available. This can help foster trust in the quality of the review process and reduce the skepticism of some scientists. I would like to see Minerals offer or even make open peer-review mandatory.

I would like to foster Special Issues on specific topics: MDPI journals often feature Special Issues that focus on current and emerging research trends. Publishing in a relevant Special Issue can place our work in a more relevant context than in normal issues. This can potentially increase the influence of our research work within the field. I see such thematic Special Issues as a very important supplement to classical textbooks. The latter are, in many aspects, (somewhat) outdated, as the most up-to-date research results cannot be included. So, for advanced students and professional researchers, Special Issues are a very important source of up-to-date information. In this respect, it might be possible to create special post- (and/or pre-)conference issues reporting the results of specific topical meetings. But these publications quite often take a long time to appear, so actually the research results can already be somewhat obsolete. This is especially true for research areas which heavily depend on analytical work and progress in analytical infrastructures. Minerals can potentially overcome the above drawback with its fast submission–review–publication cycle.

I do not think that Minerals needs many, if any, topical changes. But I do think that we have to keep an open eye so that research trends are (a) identified and (b) actively incorporated into Minerals’ portfolio. 

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
I am certain we will progress into smaller analytical volumes, more sophisticated theoretical and experimental modeling, and into an even deeper understanding of underlying and relevant physio-chemical processes. We will see far more interdisciplinary research and thus the combination of different and diverse datasets to provide geologically relevant answers. This is especially true for applied research (keywords: commodities, resources, recycling), which gains far more insight from pure science research. Big data and AI will certainly also be important, although at present a useful prediction of the future in this respect is not possible, at least not in my humble view. 

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?
As I said above, I am a very strong proponent of free and unbureaucratic access to publicly funded research results. This is important insofar as the general public is increasingly skeptical about science and scientific research and often questions the importance of (expensive) scientific research that has no immediate benefit to the public. This, in part, is due to the lack or the reduced availability of research results and our imperfect communication of these to the general public. I am thus of the opinion that open access should be promoted intensively. This definitely helps to simplify and increase our outreach to the general public, especially in institutions like schools and legal and governmental bodies.

We wish Prof. Dr. Urs Klötzli every success in his new position, and we look forward to his contributions to the journal.