For 16 years of serving Geophysical Prospecting as Editor-in-Chief: Thank you Tijmen Jan Moser

As a young researcher, I was very interested in diffraction signal processing, and I recall attending many sessions and workshops dedicated to this topic during 2005–2009 at various conferences. At almost all these events, there was one individual who caught my attention with his depth of knowledge and dedication to the topic of diffraction. Yes, this was Tijmen Jan Moser who inspired many presenters and authors at these events.

Tijmen Jan has been Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of Geophysical Prospecting for over 16 years and has served the journal through several ups and downs. Throughout his tenure as EiC, he has managed to ensure that submitted manuscripts were all fairly ‘judged’ in order to meet the technical quality the journal's readership desires. Geophysical Prospecting is a ‘flagship’ journal of EAGE (European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers) and has served its membership and the broader geoscience community as an authoritative source of new research. During his tenure, the journal has steadily grown its impact factor.

As the successor to Tijmen Jan as EiC of Geophysical Prospecting, I had a chance to have a short interview with him, during which I gathered some key information and thoughts about his tenure. Tijmen Jan began his education at Utrecht University. Following graduation, he joined several organizations, including Amoco, IFP, the University of Bergen, the University of Karlsruhe, Norsk Hydro, the Geophysical Institute of Israel, Charles University in Prague and Fugro-Jason. He is currently an independent consultant. He was particularly fascinated by ‘ray-based methods’. Though now he shows more interest in its ‘failed baby’, ‘diffraction’, as he recently stated in a book that he authored with Enders Robinson (Moser and Robinson, 2024): ‘What Huygens could have written on diffraction’.

He began serving the journal first as a reviewer, then as Associate Editor and then moved up quickly to Deputy Editor; on the request of Aldo Vesnaver, former EiC, he was appointed to the EiC role in 2008. At that time, the journal was facing several challenges.

Prior to Aldo Vesnaver (2006–2008), Roy White (2004–2006), Gerhard Diephuis (2002–2004) and Klaus Helbig (1969–1985) also served the journal as EiC. Klaus Helbig was Tijmen Jan's PhD supervisor. During a conversation I had with Tijmen Jan, I jokingly told him that he should let Klaus continue to retain the honour of being the longest serving EiC of the journal, given that he had been his PhD supervisor. My suggestion, in jest, worked, and Tijmen Jan served one year less than Klaus Helbig!

The voluntary position of EiC involves many serious duties. Tijmen Jan told me that he took over 4000 decisions during his tenure and managed numerous disputes about the fate of some of the manuscripts! Today, he feels disappointed that the level of challenge amongst our community seems to be reducing somewhat, and he encourages authors and reviewers to stay active and take a stand about their work when and where needed.

I asked Tijmen Jan about what he thought were the good and tough times during his tenure, and he was not shy to mention that year 2000 was particularly tough. He did not detail why, and I left it there. The period of the Covid-19 pandemic apparently turned out to be a good time for the journal since everyone had time to write up, review and take part in the editorial process. Tijmen Jan thinks ‘machine-learning’ solutions are a trending topic in the journal, but in his view, artificial intelligence should not rule out human and geophysical intelligence.

When I asked what his main ‘take-aways’ are for authors and reviewers, Tijmen Jan told me he did not see these individuals as different from each other but as rather members of the same community. They overlap, and they are both committed to advancing our shared interest in geoscience. I asked him if he could name a few outstanding contributions (from his perspective) in the journal, and he mentioned the work of Hagedoorn and Diephuis (2008) in the volume on seismic transmission, Gelius and Asgedom (2010) on diffraction-limited imaging and beyond – the concept of super resolution, Helbig (2012) on what Kelvin might have written about elasticity, Bardan and Robinson (2018) on the inverse problem for the Goupillaud-layered earth model and dynamic deconvolution and the recent work by Thomsen (2022) on a logical error in Gassmann poroelasticity. He was particularly proud of two special issues on Challenges of Seismic Imaging and Inversion Devoted to Sergey Goldin (‘Tribute to Sergey Goldin,’ 2013, and references therein) and Advances in Seismic Anisotropy (see Ivanov et al., 2019, and references therein).

As for recommendations, Tijmen Jan wishes that the journal's readership and impact factor will continue to grow with more quality submissions and editorial work. He wishes the re-establishment of relationships and dialogue with sister and competitor journals, more submissions from EAGE events and engaging junior researchers in the editorial and review process. I personally particularly welcome the latter.

Geophysical Prospecting has come a long way to become a top journal for the exploration geophysics community, building very much ‘on the shoulders of giants’ like Tijmen Jan Moser and his predecessors. Thank you, Tijmen Jan, for your commitment, dedication and personal interest for serving our geoscience and especially the geophysical prospecting community.