FOREWORD

Dear friends and colleagues,

during the last 4 years the process of reviewing statutes and bylaws of IAG has deeply involved also the IAG Services and, among them, those Services which are related to the determination of the gravity field, like BGI, IGeS, ICeT, GFZ and NIMA with these already existing centers in mind and with the contribution of new Centers, namely the 2^nd IGeS Center at NIMA (St. Louis) and the new International Centre of Global Earth Models (ICGEM) at GFZ we have created a new unified Service for the Gravity Field namely the International Gravity Field Service (IGFS).

Lately, from the Sapporo General Assembly, a new Center is being structured and is in the process of entering into IGFS; namely the DTM Centre (CeDiT) at the Montfort University (U.K.)

As part of this effort of unification and, continuing a period of good cooperation between BGI and IGeS, we have decided to start merging the two bulletins in one publication; the brand new "Newton’s Bulletin" (N.B.).

Just to remind you of the preceding rules and to report the new ones, let us confirm that the N.B. will be essentially composed of two parts, one where we publish reviewed papers, in the spirit of IGeS Bulletin, namely the review concerns the correctness and uptodateness of the approach and not its novelty in theoretical matters, and one part where the "information" concerning new data set, the internal life of the centers and international events, gravity field related, is reported.

The mode of publication will be mixed; basically the N.B. will be put on-line and built as soon as the material arrives in an appropriate form.

In addition a certain number of CD will be published and distributed on the basis of a request covering the mail expenses; finally a small number of paper journal will be produced for libraries and agencies/individual scientists from areas of the world where internet connection is difficult.

As for the addresses where to send the material, the editorial board is done purposely half by BGI and half by IGeS and you can address whatever center you prefer exactly as you would have done before. The Editorial Board will then take care of unifying and homogeneizing the material, also concerning the reviewing process when applicable.

Finally let me recall that the N.B. in electronic form will be readable at the address "bgi.cnes.fr" or "www.iges.polimi.it" from which it can be downloaded too.

With that let me wish to all geodesists the best wishes for Happy New Year and good luck to the new born Newton’s Bulletin

 

Jean-Pierre Barriot

Fernando Sansò