Journal Guide

After proofs are corrected by the authors, articles appear online (fast-track articles on the Ingenta website of the journal) and are immediately citable through their final DOI, without having to wait for pagination. There is a double benefit in this procedure: (i) more rapid publication and citation for the author; (ii) regular articles are not delayed by the publication of special or thematic issues, nor are the early papers of a special issue delayed by slower ones. The latter point was quite relevant in 2008, which has seen the publication of two special issues, one devoted to diamonds, the other dedicated to the memory of Werner Schreyer (with a breadth of coverage that is a fitting reflection of the breadth of interest of this outstanding scientist and strong early supporter of the journal). For the first time in the journal's history, these special issues were graced with thematic covers, a practice that will be maintained in future. Speed of publication is a key issue for authors. In spite of a record number of pages and two special issues, the articles in volume 20 (2008) were published online an average of 9 months after submission, and appeared in print 2 months later, thereby confirming the decisive improvements of 2007. This means that well-organized authors who revise their copy speedily can expect publication online within 5-7 months from submission. With an impact factor steadily above 1.2, this should make the EJM an appealing vehicle for important scientific results.

Geoscientific Model Development (GMD) is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and public discussion of the description, development and evaluation of numerical models of the Earth System and its components. Manuscript types considered for peer-reviewed publication are:*Geoscientific model descriptions, from box models to GCMs;*Development and Technical papers, describing development such as new parameterisations or technical aspects of running models such as the reproducibility of results;*Papers describing new standard experiments for assessing model performance, or novel ways of comparing model results with observational data;*Model intercomparison descriptions, including experimental details and project protocols.*More details can be found in Manuscript Types and the Journal White Paper (compiled by the Executive Editors)."I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature.".

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) is an international and interdisciplinary journal for the publication of original research concerning natural hazards. New perspectives for the understanding and tackling of natural hazards will arise by considering the subject form a broad base where the separate geosciences merge. NHESS serves the community of geoscientists concerned with natural hazards and also those interacted in publishing communications regarding interdisciplinary problems arising from difficulties encountered in the tackling of the mitigation of risks associated with natural hazards.

Ocean Science aims to be one of the leaders in the modern generation of "Open Access" or free-to web journals. Much of the literature about such journals is available on the web and links to many of the main sources are given below. One of the aims of open access publishing is to make scientific developments available to people, rich or poor, all over the world as cheaply as possible. This aim underlies many of the initiatives and statements, such as those of Budapest, Berlin and Bethesda.A second, related, aim is to use computer developments and the web to push down the cost of scientific publication. This is a topic discussed in publications from the Wellcome Trust and the House of Commons Committee in the UK. In each case they are concerned by the power of existing publishers to control the market and the reluctance of scientists to move to Open Access Publishing.One concern of the scientists is that the new journals might have a lower scientific standard than traditional ones and that their important "citation index" is low. However Nature (2001) reported that on-line journals were soon obtaining high citation scores and that is the experience of the EGU. Open Access also allows us to introduce new systems of submission and reviewing. There are concerns about the effectiveness of the present review system - the reviewers lack of experience in some key area maybe allowing publication of papers with significant errors. There have also been concerns that referees have sat on papers so that publication is delayed and authors have lost priority of publication.To tackle these problems, Ocean Science is using the two-stage publication scheme developed by Copernicus Publications and the European Geosciences Union. After a brief review by the Topic Editor to check that they are suitable, submitted articles are published in Ocean Science Discussions. This publication can be cited in questions of priority.The paper is then formally reviewed in the traditional way by at least two reviewers. The reviews are published and other scientists and the authors can make and publish their own comments to help the review process. Finally all of these comments are used to decide whether the paper needs revision or whether it can be published directly in the full review journal Ocean Science.No doubt the "Open Access" model will develop further in the future. We plan to be closely involved in such developments. At the same time we want to use the new technology to encompass both integrated views and detailed studies within the same high quality ocean science journal.