Jökull - 01.12.1983, Page 4

After a slow start we ended up receiving enough
contributions to fill not one but two issues of
Jökull. Sigurður Þórarinsson was, in his modest
way, flattered by this response, and took part in
reviewing some of the papers. Sadly, however, the
first of these two volumes had only reached the
page-proof stage when Sigurður so unexpectedly
passed away. We hope that these volumes will
remain a worthy tribute to him and that they give
a cross-section of the many projects that Sigurður
suggested, stimulated or helped completion of dur-
ing his very active life.
All the papers in these volumes of Jökull have
been referreed, but the reader will note that some of
them may contain conclusions that are contro-
versial or different from the conclusions of other
papers on related topics in the same volumes.
However, we believe that it is very much in Sigurð-
ur Þórarinsson’s spirit to provide a forum for
various novel points of view, trusting that the most
correct ones will be recognized as such in due
course.
Because of the relatively large number of manu-
scripts to be processed in 1982—83, and the fact
that many authors did not take the trouble to
follow the style of Jökull, it has not been
practicable to achive complete standardization of
all papers to the desired Jökull format. However,
in the future these criteria will be more strictly
enforced, and prospective authors of papers for
Jökull should on the whole not submit their manu-
scripts for consideration until complete and
decently produced to the prescribed format, as
presented in the Instructions to Authors.
Papers submitted to Jökull should not be written
in jargon or shorthand intelligible only to a narrow
group around the writers. The readership of Jökull
has a very broad spectrum including scientists in
many disciplines, undergraduate students, and a
large number of laymen interested in the earth
science. Further, care should be taken with the
English; a paper conforming to, say, Scandinavian
rather than English grammar will always look
faintly ridiculous and cast a shadow on the quality
of the work being reported. We know that Ice-
landic earth science research has a lot to offer the
outside world, and if Jökull is to be the prime
vehicle for the publication of results from this
research, clarity in their expression must not be
compromised to expediency.
The editors once more wish to extend their
thanks to the Ministry of Education for its continu-
ed financial support of Jökull. The Science
Institute of the University of Iceland is thanked for
providing facilities for the various editional functi-
ons, and we also wish to record our appreciation of
the strenuous efforts of the staff at Leturval Ltd.
and Oddi Ltd. in maintaining the consistently
high technical standards of production of Jökull.
Helgi Bj'ómsson
Leó Kristjánsson
Magnús Hallgrímsson
2 JÖKULL 33. ÁR