On 1 April 2010 the first article of the new open-access science history journal History of Geo- and Space Sciences (HGSS) appeared online on the Copernicus Internet pages.

After the general agreement of the new journal by Arne Richter, at that time responsible for Copernicus Publications, followed a search for suitable and dedicated editors who were experts in various topics of our field and simultaneously interested in science history. Extremely helpful in this search was Wilfried Schröder († 12 April 2011), who had great experience in publishing science history articles and who knew many colleagues interested in history who could be persuaded to join the editorial team. The search was not easy, since it strove to find a balance of colleagues from different countries as well as sufficient coverage of geophysical topics. Finally, colleagues Karen Aplin (UK), Kusumita Arora (India), Maurits Ertsen (Netherlands), Gregory Good (USA), Giovanni Gregori (Italy), Marvin Herndon (USA), Takashi Kikuchi (Japan), Toshio Kutsukake (Japan), Tamara Kuznetsova (Russia), Stavros Papamarinopoulos (Greece), Risto Pellinen (Finland), Pascal Richet (France), Kristian Schlegel (Germany), Wilfried Schröder (Germany), and Vera Schwach (Norway) agreed to join the editorial team. We started at the end of 2009 by advertising our new journal in several newsletters and at conferences and were very pleased to receive the first submissions in February 2010.

During the last 10 years HGSS has developed into a well-accepted journal with good ratings. We publish on average 13 articles on 150 pages per year. We are similarly pleased that eight special issues have been incorporated into our journal.

Of the first 16 editors Toshio Kutsutake, Marvin Herndon, and Vera Schwach left the team, but Florian Bleibinhaus (Austria), Asgeir Brekke (Norway), David Cole (Australia), Hisashi Hayakawa (Japan), Johannes Ihde (Germany), Magnar Johnsen (Norway), Jaime Urrutia-Fucugauchi (Mexico), Sam Silvermann (USA, until 2019), and Hans Volkert (Germany) joined us.

We thank all authors for submitting interesting manuscripts and for their confidence placed in us, and we hope for continuing satisfying collaboration. Moreover, we gratefully acknowledge the efficient and intelligent assistance of the Copernicus editorial support and the excellent work of the copy editors and the journal production team.

Last but not least, I myself would like to thank the whole editorial team for their dedicated efforts to keep our journal at a high level of reputation.

Kristian Schlegel
HGSS executive editor