Formats and Publishing Criteria

Authors should read this section before making a submission to GEUS Bulletin, especially if this is your first submission.

Topics covered in this page include:

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Journal remit and readership

GEUS Bulletin publishes geoscience research papers with a focus on Denmark, Greenland and the wider North Atlantic and Arctic regions. The journal serves a broad geoscientific readership from research, industry, government agencies, NGOs and special interest groups. We welcome submissions that fit this remit.

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Article types

GEUS Bulletin publishes two main categories of articles: (1) short-format articles (up to c. 6 pages), brief accounts in a rapid-communication style that are of immediate interest to the geoscience community, and (2) regular articles with fewer restrictions on the total word count and number of display items.

Articles can be submitted anytime at www.geusbulletin.org/submit.

We also publish special issues, including monographs, map descriptions and thematic issues. Submissions to these sections are strictly by prior arrangement with the editorial office.

Short-format articles

Short-format articles provide brief accounts of new research, a case study, literature review, method or data set, early publication of which may be of interest to scientists in this or a related field. Authors can choose one of the following types of short-format articles:

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE | SHORT – to document new results from a research project.
  • REVIEW ARTICLE | SHORT – a mini-review of literature on a topical subject.
  • DATA ARTICLE | SHORT – to document a new or revised data set. These articles should be accompanied by a (DOI) link to the data set in a recognised data repository. Manuscripts submitted to this section must be prepared using the submission template.
  • METHOD ARTICLE | SHORT – to document a new or revised method, experiment, instrumentation network, software or model. Manuscripts submitted to this section must be prepared using the submission template.

These short articles are limited to 3000 words and a maximum of four mid-sized (half-page) display items (figures and tables). This roughly corresponds to c. 6 pages of typeset manuscript. Authors can submit supplementary files to document technical but essential information regarding methods (sample collection, preparation, analyses and statistical treatment of data), and additional figures and tables that add deeper context and additional documentation of the results.

We request a review turnaround time of two weeks for these submissions, though the actual return time depends on the reviewers’ availability.

Read more about how to format your submission, including additional information on word and display item limits in our guidelines: preparing an initial submission.

Regular articles

These articles document original research or a literature review and are ideal for submissions that require extra space or additional figures and tables that would otherwise exceed the limits of a short-format article.

Authors can choose one of the following types of regular articles:

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE – to document new results in detail.
  • REVIEW ARTICLE – a literature review on a subject of interest to the geoscience community.

These formats are not limited to a specific number of words or display items. However, they typically do not exceed c. 30 pages of typeset manuscript and should be well structured and written concisely. Authors can submit supplementary files to document additional explanatory text, figures or tables that provide useful, though not essential, information. Any information or data that are essential to understanding the line of argument and conclusions developed in the manuscript should be presented in the main text.

We request a review turnaround time of four weeks for these submissions, though the actual return time depends on the reviewers’ availability.

Read more about how to format your submission, including additional information on word and display item limits in our guidelines: preparing an initial submission.

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Special issues

We welcome proposals for special issues. These may include a:

  • MONOGRAPH – a substantial, single-volume work that documents new research or collates and reviews published research. It often covers many years, decades even, of data collection and should offer a comprehensive, long-term overview of a topic.
  • MAP DESCRIPTION – A descriptive text to a published geological map produced by GEUS and covering Denmark or Greenland. Manuscripts typically follow a standard structure, as detailed in the optional submission template. Descriptions of other maps (special sheets or maps not produced by GEUS) may be submitted as a DATA ARTICLE | SHORT or RESEARCH ARTICLE.
  • THEMATIC ISSUE – a collection of articles on a theme proposed by a guest editor or editors. These may consist of both short-format and regular articles. Typically consists of at least five published articles.

Note that the MONOGRAPH and MAP DESCRIPTON formats are not limited to a specific number of words or display items. However, manuscripts should be well structured and written concisely. We request a review turnaround of six to eight weeks for these submissions. The actual return time depends on the reviewers’ availability and the size of the manuscript submitted.

Contact a member of the editorial team or email [email protected] to learn more.

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Publishing criteria

At GEUS Bulletin, our editorial team believes that the role of a scientific journal is to provide the professional services and resources needed to read and publish peer-reviewed scholarly research. This includes managing the peer-review process, encouraging transparency and ethical reporting of scientific results, and providing a modern, user-friendly and reliable platform for publication and long-term preservation of the scientific record.

We do not set arbitrary editorial restrictions on an article’s perceived ‘novelty’ or ‘impact’. We do not prioritise articles for publication based on the perceived popularity of a certain topic, nor do we penalise articles for focusing on a single study site without seeking a larger, regional or global application of their findings.

We do, however, require that the following criteria are met before an article is published on our platform:

  1. An article should fall within the journal’s remit.
  2. An article must document fully the methods used. This includes any field methods and sample collection, software, laboratory analyses and statistical treatments of data.
  3. Articles must contain a clear rationale for the study. This includes a clearly formulated research question, aims and objectives.
  4. Conclusions must always be supported by the data presented and the methodology described.
  5. Articles must be written in clear (UK) English and follow a logical structure.
  6. An article must not have been published before in a peer-reviewed journal or be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

There are additional requirements for the METHOD ARTICLE | SHORT, DATA ARTICLE | SHORT, MONOGRAPH and MAP DESCRIPTION formats. See our review guidelines for further information.

In submitting an article to GEUS Bulletin, authors agree to our policies on authorship, and intellectual property. In publishing an article in GEUS Bulletin, authors consent to publishing their work under the conditions described in the journal’s policies on open access and copyright and licensing.

Manuscripts are rarely rejected because of poorly written English or structural issues, alone. However, a published article must be understandable, with well-written English and a logical structure.

Where relevant, our editorial team will explain how a manuscript falls short of these criteria and recommend steps that the corresponding author might take to rectify them.

Related information is available in the following pages: editorial process and peer review, preparing an initial submission and reviewer instructions

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