Earth System Dynamics
Earth System Dynamics
ESD

Manuscript types

  • Research articles report significant advances in the scientific understanding of Earth system science and global change.
  • Reviews summarize the status of knowledge and outline future directions of research within the scope of ESD. Review articles need to be proposed to one of the chief editors for approval prior to submission. Depending on the subject and further characteristics, review articles are also eligible for inclusion in the Encyclopedia of Geosciences. If you are interested in this option, please see the instructions for authors and contact the editors of the encyclopedia.
  • ESD Letters are research articles that report particularly important results and major advances in the scientific understanding of Earth system science and global change in a concise and engaging style. Letters have fewer than 2,500 words in the main text, 200 words in the abstract, and an appropriate number of figures, or tables, and references. For more information, see the instructions for authors. Papers accepted for final publication as ESD Letters will also become "Highlight articles", which have high visibility in EGU. ESD Letters are also eligible for inclusion in EGU Letters. Manuscripts submitted for consideration as ESD Letters are subject to regular peer review with interactive public discussion, and the selection procedure is overseen by the ESD Chief Editors.
  • ESD Ideas present innovative and well-founded scientific ideas in a concise way (no more than two pages, including one figure or table) that have not been comprehensively explored. The manuscript must have a title starting with "ESD Ideas:", and the title should express the essence of the idea. The manuscript should have a brief abstract of three sentences or less summarizing the idea. The main text should not have sections and should not be longer than two pages including a maximum of one figure or table (about 1000 words). The number of references should be 15 or less; these are not included in the two-page limit. Innovative animations may be included as a supplement.
  • Perspectives provide a well-reasoned but potentially subjective view of a field relevant to ESD's scope, or seek to outline a new research direction. These peer-reviewed articles may address existing discussions in the literature, or originate new ones. Any arguments presented in a Perspective should be supported by existing literature, but a comprehensive literature review is not required. Authors are encouraged to submit concise texts, indicatively around 3,000 words.
  • Overview articles synthesize and summarize the findings and conclusions of the papers published in an ESD special issue. Overview articles need to be proposed to one of the chief editors for approval prior to submission. The manuscript title must clearly reflect the relation to the special issue and start with "Overview:".
  • Editorials are non-peer-reviewed manuscripts that are authored by one or more ESD chief editors. They deal with topics relevant to the editorial management of the journal, such as discussing rejection of manuscripts proposing scientifically disproved hypotheses. The manuscript title must start with "Editorial:".
  • Peer-reviewed comments continue the discussion of preceding papers beyond the limits of immediate interactive discussion and are restricted to comments on peer-reviewed, published papers in ESD. They may be longer and submitted later than the comments exchanged in the interactive public discussion. They undergo the same process of peer review, publication, and interactive discussion as articles, and they are equivalent to the peer-reviewed comments in traditional scientific journals. The manuscript title must start with "Comment on:" or "Reply to:".
  • Corrigenda correct errors in papers previously published in ESD. The manuscript title must read as follows: Corrigendum to "TITLE" published in Earth System Dynamics, VOLUME, PAGES, YEAR". Corrigenda are only possible for final revised journal papers and not for the corresponding preprints. Unless there are exceptional reasons dictating otherwise, it is expected that the author list of a corrigendum matches that of the connected published paper. Corrigenda have to be submitted to Copernicus Publications within 3 years from the publication date of the original journal article. Should there be reasons for publishing a second corrigendum within these 3 years, the first one will be substituted by a single new corrigendum containing all relevant corrections.

For manuscripts that are focused on one rather than multiple components of the Earth system, we recommend submission to the following EGU interactive open-access journals: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), Biogeosciences (BG), Earth Surface Dynamics (ESurf), Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS), Ocean Science (OS), Solid Earth (SE), SOIL, The Cryosphere (TC) or Weather and Climate Dynamics (WCD). For manuscripts that are focused on past rather than future climate, we recommend submission to the EGU interactive open-access journal Climate of the Past (CP). For technical papers dealing with the description, development, and benchmarking of numerical models and model components, we recommend submission to the EGU interactive open-access journal Geoscientific Model Development (GMD).