For the first time, the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors has an official journal, Environmental Engineering Science, thanks to a new publishing model for the association based on a partnership with a well-established private journal.

The monthly, online, peer-reviewed journal, which is nearly 30 years old and published internationally by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., will become the official publication of AEESP beginning next year.

“This collaboration between AEESP and Environmental Engineering Science brings to fruition a long-term effort on the part of AEESP to find improved avenues for promoting environmental engineering and science research,” AEESP President Mark Wiesner said in a statement.

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., will also begin publishing the association’s newsletter, said AEESP’s immediate past president, Joel Burken. He cited three criteria that the association’s board used when choosing a publication to partner with: quality, breadth, and open for affiliation.

“Being such a multidisciplinary field, we’ve never had one unified voice,” Burken said. “We’ve got a wastewater journal, we’ve got an air pollution journal, and we’ve got a chemistry journal that are all published by different associations or different groups. So now we’ve got a broad and unified [publication] that’s also going to include education.”

As part of the new arrangement, the journal’s existing editorial board will maintain its autonomy in selecting research papers to be published, but the publication will have a new news-focused section to feature the latest research and activities coming out of AEESP.

Members of the association can access the journal for free on a trial basis until Feb. 15, 2013, after which they will be offered reduced subscription rates.

“We hope that it’s going to increase the bandwidth for publishing very high-quality research,” Wiesner said of the new partnership. “There are some terrific journals out there already, but by focusing on this and giving us more of a forum to interact and a forum for publishing the whole breadth of research that occurs throughout the membership, we’re hoping this will be an asset seen by all of our members.”