The present editorial 2020 continues the series of status reports in Environmental Earth Sciences (EES) in previous years 2017 and 2019 (Kolditz et al. in Environ Earth Sci 77: 8, 2018, Kolditz et al. in Environ Earth Sci 79: 11, 2020). The year 2020 coming to an end was heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic affecting all areas of life including research work and, therefore, scientific publishing as well (“Introduction”). One bright spot which shows longevity of journals that produce a quality product is that Environmental Earth Sciences (EES) is celebrating its 45th anniversary of publication. To this extent EES continues the tradition to honor the most cited papers contributing to the 2020 Impact Factor (IF) (“Highly and most cited topics”) and provide information on the current status of EES as well as an outlook to 2021 (“Progress report”)

本社论 2020 年延续了 2017 年和 2019 年在环境地球科学 (EES) 中的系列状态报告（Kolditz 等人在 Environ Earth Sci 77:8, 2018，Kolditz 等人在 Environ Earth Sci 79:11， 2020）。即将结束的 2020 年受到 COVID-19 大流行的严重影响，影响了生活的各个领域，包括研究工作，因此也影响到科学出版（“引言”）。环境地球科学 (EES) 正在庆祝其出版 45 周年，这表明生产优质产品的期刊的寿命很长的一个亮点。