BEIJING, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- China has started publishing the world's first big data journal on earth sciences, the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said Tuesday.

The journal, titled Big Earth Data, publishes research papers on big data related to the earth and encourages authors to store and share the data with the public.

Big data on the earth is a new area of geoscience and information science and a new tool for understanding the earth.

The journal is managed by the International Society for Digital Earth, which was founded by China and is headquartered in the country. It is jointly published by the society, the CAS institute and several other organizations.