ESD launches new manuscript type ESD Ideas

ESD Ideas – the EGU journal Earth System Dynamics (ESD) is launching a new article format for highly innovative scientific ideas. The format invites the publication of exciting and well-founded scientific ideas without a comprehensive analysis of all of its aspects.

"In Earth system science subjects can generally not be comprehensively addressed with only one method and by one group. Instead a variety of methods and expertise has to illuminate a topic until we begin to really understand it," says chief editor Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. Chief editor Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research adds that "On the other hand, especially in an interdisciplinary environment, a colleague can have a brilliant idea for which she or he does not have the means for a comprehensive analysis. ESD Ideas are put out by a scientist to initiate research with a broad range of methods". Like all ESD articles, ESD Ideas undergo a rigorous peer-review process.

ESD Ideas present scientific ideas in a concise way on one or up to two pages (including one figure or table). The number of references should be limited to 15, which are not included in the two-page limit. The format is meant for presenting a single idea that is likely to initiate further analysis and research within the interdisciplinary readership of ESD. An ESD Idea must be innovative and well-founded but does not have to be comprehensively explored. Supplementary material should be very limited or absent. An ESD Idea may be presented in innovative animations that present results in a scientifically illuminating way. Submissions of ESD Ideas will only be sent out for review if the chief editors consider the content highly innovative and well-founded.

Earth System Dynamics (ESD) is an international scientific journal within the family of the open-access journals of the European Geosciences Union and is dedicated to the publication of studies that take an interdisciplinary perspective of the functioning of the whole Earth system and global change. It has an ISI Citation Index of 3.6 and a fast acceptance time of less than seven months.