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Official Journal of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS)

Geoscience Letters Cover Image

About

Aims and scope

Geoscience Letters is the official journal of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society, and a fully open access journal published under the SpringerOpen brand. The journal publishes original, innovative and timely research letter articles and concise reviews on studies of the Earth and its environment, the planetary and space sciences. Contributions reflect the eight scientific sections of the AOGS: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeosciences, Hydrological Sciences, Interdisciplinary Geosciences, Ocean Sciences, Planetary Sciences, Solar and Terrestrial Sciences, and Solid Earth Sciences. Geoscience Letters focuses on cutting-edge fundamental and applied research in the broad field of the geosciences, including the applications of geoscience research to societal problems. This journal is Open Access, providing rapid electronic publication of high-quality, peer-reviewed scientific contributions.


Geoscience Letters accepts three types of manuscripts: Research Letters (concise reports on original research, approximately 3,000 to 5,000 words), Letters to the Editors (brief reports, comments on and/or replies to the published papers in 300 to 800 words), and Reviews (up to approximately 10,000 words). The word counts include figures, which are counted as 200 to 500 words each, depending on the size.

Benefits of publishing with SpringerOpen

High visibility

Geoscience Letters's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Geoscience Letters offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Geoscience Letters and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in Geoscience Letters gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Geoscience Letters are included in article alerts and regular email updates. 
In addition, articles published in Geoscience Letters may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Geoscience Letters

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Geoscience Letters retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.

Open access

All articles published by the Geoscience Letters are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in the Geoscience Letters you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, SpringerOpen can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Geoscience Letters therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1040.00/$1340.00/€1240.00 for each article accepted for publication.

If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

SpringerOpen provides a free open access funding support service to help authors discover and apply for article processing charge funding. Visit our OA funding and policy support page to view our list of research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs, and to learn more about our email support service.  

Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) can cover the article-processing charge for members of the Society upon request.

Indexing services

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by SpringerOpen on SpringerLink.
We are working closely with relevant indexing services including PubMed Central and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Geoscience Letters will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Geoscience Letters is currently indexed in the following services:

  • Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
  • CNKI
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) - GoOA
  • Current Contents/Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences
  • DOAJ
  • Dimensions
  • EBSCO Discovery Service
  • Gale
  • Google Scholar
  • INIS Atomindex
  • Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China
  • Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition
  • Naver
  • OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service
  • ProQuest Agricultural & Environmental Science Database
  • ProQuest Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA)
  • ProQuest Central
  • ProQuest Earth, Atmospheric & Aquatic Science Database
  • ProQuest Environmental Science
  • ProQuest Natural Science Collection
  • ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection
  • ProQuest Water Resources Abstracts
  • ProQuest-ExLibris Primo
  • ProQuest-ExLibris Summon
  • SCImago
  • SCOPUS
  • Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch)
  • Semantic Scholar
  • TD Net Discovery Service
  • UGC-CARE List (India)

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Geoscience Letters operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous Publication of research articles by Geoscience Letters is dependent primarily on their scientific validity and coherence as judged by our external expert editors and/or peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two to three experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. Reviewers will also be asked to indicate how interesting and significant the research is. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Geoscience Letters should adhere to SpringerOpen's editorial policies.

Once your article is accepted, it will be processed by production and published shortly afterwards. In some cases, articles may be held for a short period of time prior to publication. If you have any concerns or particular requirements please contact the Journal.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Geoscience Letters

Articles in Geoscience Letters  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Geosci Lett [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Geosci Lett 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.