Transition of HGSS to an interactive journal

30 June 2021

It is our pleasure to announce the transition of the journal History of Geo- and Space Sciences (HGSS) from an open access journal with a traditional review process into an interactive open access journal applying the public peer-review and interactive public discussion concept.

Since its launch in 2010, HGSS followed the traditional single stage publication process. From 1 July 2021 on, all new submissions will undergo a two-stage publication process with the publication of an access-reviewed preprint as the first stage (HGSS Discussions) and a final-revised journal article publication in HGSS as the second stage. Only papers that successfully pass the open discussion involving publicly accessible reviewer comments will finally be published in HGSS. For further information please see: http://publications.copernicus.org/services/public_peer_review.html

The concept of public peer-review was established in 2001 and is applied for most of the journals published by Copernicus Publications. It is designed to foster scientific discussion and to enhance the scientific quality assurance through increased transparency.

For the transition process we will have to put the HGSS review system offline on Thursday, 1 July 2021 as well as Friday, 2 July 2021. During these two days, no review activities and no new submissions will be possible. We will reactivate the review system on Friday, 2 July 2021 regarding review activities. The manuscript submission, however, will remain deactivated until Monday, 5 July 2021.

Manuscripts that are already in review will be finished in the traditional way.