Online + Open Access Publishing
Online + Open Access Publishing of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) combines the advantages of traditional publishing with those of free-access publishing on the Internet for the benefit of transparency and quality of scientific discussion and publication and the dissemination of knowledge and the impact of scientific work worldwide.
Competence + Creativity
The EGU is the largest scientific association in Europe for the geosciences and planetary and space sciences encompassing more than 60 000 scientists worldwide, and a publisher of scientific journals for more than 20 years. This guarantees the most up to date publications and the highest standards in editorial competence and quality of production.
Moreover, the EGU is a signatory of the Berlin Open Access Declaration of 2003.
Full Peer Review + Interactive Public Discussions
The EGU has extended the traditional peer review process by adding the concepts of an “Public Peer Review”, i.e. the comments of the reviewers, anonymous or attributed, are published together with the article on the web, and of “Interactive Public Discussions”, i.e. after having passed a rapid access peer review process manuscripts submitted to EGU two-stage-journals will be published first of all in the “Discussions” part of the website of that journal being then subject to interactive public discussions initiated by alerting the corresponding scientific community. The results of the public peer-review and of the interactive public discussions are then used for the final evaluation of the manuscript by the Editor and, eventually, for its publication on the website of the actual journal.
Traditional Styles + Online Evaluation & Production
In principle, manuscripts may be submitted in any style and by any method; if necessary, the Editorial Office will produce an e-version of both the text and the figures and illustrations. For evaluation and public discussion the manuscript is then lay-outed in a one-column, landscape and fit-to-screen style, while the final paper is lay-outed in the traditional two-column, portrait format. The editing, lay-outing and formatting and the transformation to PDF is performed with only one software - pdf LaTex. This is great advantage to manuscripts submitted in LaTex, while manuscripts submitted in WORD or WORD compatible formats are transformed to LaTex first. HTML/XML files for the web are directly derived from the LaTex files. HTML/PDF can be directly uploaded onto the web, and PDF can be directly submitted to the digital printing machines. Therefore, printing of present and past articles is done on-demand within hours which saves additional costs for stockholding or for copies not been sold and printing "color" is at no extra charge for authors. A web-based online editorial support and production office keeps evaluation and production costs to a minimum.
Full Citation + Maximum Impact
All articles accepted for publication in an EGU journal are edited and formatted in the traditional journal style with their traditional citation and an online citation (URL address), which is directly derived from their traditional citation. Since the article files on the web are used as is for the digital printing process (print-on-demand), EGU journals are distributed both online and in print totally alike, enjoying therefore also the advantages of traditional publications as, e.g. being indexed in Current Content and the Science Citation Index or being archived in the so-called Copyright Libraries of the world. Moreover, as open access publications they enjoy the widest dissemination in mirror-archives worldwide, the highest impact factors and, even more, the best immediacy indices.
Online Publication First + No Page Budgets
Although EGU journals are published in the traditional annual volume-and-issue way no page budgets exist for these issues or for the annual volumes. Thus, any article accepted for publication is immediately published online together with its received-, revised-, accepted-, and publication-date. This reduces the time from acceptance to publication to days and sometimes even hours, which is of valuable importance, in particular, for special issues and proceedings.
Personalized Copyright + Free Circulation
Most papers, comments, figures and other material published in EGU journals are copyrighted by the author(s) and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – Share Alike License. This allows everybody (1) to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work published and (2) to make derivative works under the following conditions: (I) Attribution: he/she must give the original author credit; (II) Non Commercial: he/she may not use the work for commercial purposes; and (III) Share Alike: if he/she alters, transforms, or builds upon this work, he/she may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
Minimum Subscription Fees + Free Online Access
With regard to subscription charges, the EGU is applying a cost-sharing-model: for its assistance during the evaluation and the production, the publication on the web, the distribution to an ever increasing number of mirror-servers and e-publication archives, and for personalized alert services the EGU levies service charges to be paid by the author. Therefore, the online access is free of charge for libraries and scientists alike. The costs for printing and distribution incl. all extra costs, such as e.g. for colour illustrations, are included in the subscription fees for the printing versions of the journals. Since digital printing is applied the costs even for colour printing are extremely moderate. In this way the overall subscription fees for EGU journals, i.e. online + print, are normally very low compared to subscription fees for journals published by commercial publishers.
