Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

Last reviewed 03/05/2024

Aims and Scope:

Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry is a community-led journal that aims to publish innovative and globally relevant articles in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, which are free to read, free to publish and whereby authors retain full copyright. Regional studies put in the context of a wider globally relevant research question will also be considered. All material is published under a CC BY licence.

We welcome all contributions that use geochemical data and models to study chemical, physical and biological processes on Earth and other planetary bodies. Such contributions can cover, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • Solid Earth processes
  • Earth surface processes
  • Geochemical records of past and modern climate and environmental change
  • Cosmochemistry and planetary science
  • Experimental petrology and geochemistry
  • Economic geology and exploration
  • Biogeochemistry and biogeochemical cycling
  • Aqueous and environmental geochemistry
  • Organic geochemistry
  • Geo/thermo/cosmochronology
  • Atmospheric geochemistry
  • Analytical, data processing, and model developments
  • Forensic geochemistry
  • Data curation
  • EDIA, communication and outreach

Manuscript types:

Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry publishes articles in the following formats.   Authors with contributions longer than the word limit that cannot be shortened should contact the executive editors via contact@agcj.org prior to submission.

Full-length articles: Original research papers presenting advances in knowledge and understanding of geochemical processes, addressing longstanding questions in geoscience and/or environmental science, or describing novel and significant analytical methods. Papers are limited to 12,000 words in length and a combined total of 15 figures and tables. 

Reviews: Papers that present a synthesis of the current state of an area of research or a longstanding question. Papers are limited to 20,000 words in length and a combined total of 20 figures and tables. Although not mandatory, authors of review papers are encouraged to contact the relevant production editors well in advance of submission via reviewandspecialissue@agcj.org, to discuss their plans and fit to scope.

Technical notes: Short contributions that present significant improvements to analytical methods, algorithms, software, or reference material characterizations in all fields of geochemistry and cosmochemistry. Papers are limited to 3,000 words in length and a combined total of 3 figures and tables. 

Comments: Short communications discussing published papers from author(s) not involved in the original study. These can involve challenges or clarifications of any sort. Comments will be subjected to peer review before acceptance and published alongside a reply from the author(s) of the original study. Authors of the original study will only be contacted after successful peer review. Comments and replies are limited to 1,500 words in length and a combined total of 3 figures and tables. Although not mandatory, authors of comments are encouraged to contact the production editors well in advance of submission via contact@agcj.org, to discuss its relevance and timeliness.

Code of Conduct:

All contributing parties to the journal are expected to follow the Code of Conduct which outlines the duties and expected standard of behaviour of all contributors as well as details the conflict of interest, use of artificial intelligence (AI), data retention and future access, ethical research, plagiarism and copyright policies. The code of conduct also outlines AGC’s complaint handling processes.

Peer review:

After initial submission, the manuscript will be evaluated by a Production Editor, who will review whether the manuscript adheres to the aims and scope, originality, global interest, data code and output availability policy and language criteria before assigning it to a Handling Editor. If the manuscript fails to adhere to the above, it will be returned to the authors without review. Manuscripts returned without review will generally be due to failure to adhere to the criteria listed above, yet AGC reserves the right to return manuscripts without review for any reason.

Handling Editors will seek at least two expert reviewers. Conflicts of interests will be factored to the best of the editors’ abilities during selection of Handling Editors and reviewers. Reviewers will be given four weeks to return their review but the four week timeframe is a guideline and—depending on the reviewers’ commitments—it may take longer. AGC recognizes the voluntary efforts by the journal team as well as peer-reviewers to maintain the highest standards of scientific publication hence respects their schedules and commitments.

The identities of the reviewers are anonymous by default in both single-blind and double-blind processes unless the reviewers voluntarily disclose their identities by signing their reviews. 

All contributing parties (editors, reviewers and authors) are expected to adhere to the Code of Conduct in their communications. Reviewers are expected to construct their reviews such that it will help the editors reach a decision about the submission. Editors may return reviews or responses to reviewers comments to relevant parties before sharing further, if the review or response requires moderation in language or tone. 

While reviews will not be published online along with manuscripts, all communications between editors, reviewers and authors having taken place during peer review will be retained should they need to be accessed at any point in the future.

Single or double-blind peer review:

The standard peer review process will be single-blind, meaning that reviewers will be aware of the authors identity while reviewers will remain anonymous unless they choose to reveal their identity.

Authors may however request a double-blind peer review process, meaning that both authors and reviewers will be anonymous to each other. To facilitate this, we request that authors provide an additional, anonymised version of the manuscript during submission in addition to the non-anonymised manuscript. This includes anonymising relevant laboratories where measurements are made in methods sections.

Appeals of editorial decisions:

AGC will only consider appeals of editorial decisions that are based on factually wrong statements made by editors and/or reviewers having had a demonstrably negative influence on the decision. AGC will only consider appeals pertaining to judgement of the editors alone (e.g., out of aim or scope, lack of originality, manuscript not ready for publication) in exceptional cases justified by the authors.

Appeals are first screened for their basis by the Coordinating Editor and may not allow the appeal to proceed. If the Coordinating Editor is satisfied the appeal can proceed, they will assign an appeals team composed of one Production Editor and two Handling Editors (including one ECR) that have not been involved in the manuscript's first evaluation. The appeals team may request further information from the authors if necessary. The appeals team will either uphold the original decision or allow the manuscript to progress to a new evaluation with a new editorial team. If relevant, the decision will also outline any change made to improve the manuscript handling process as a result of the appeal.

Decisions will be communicated to authors, initial editorial team and the Coordinating Editor by the Production Editor leading the appeals team. If appropriate, one or more original reviewer(s) may also be notified. Appeal decisions will be considered final.

Appeals may be raised by third parties post-publication (i.e., neither involved in writing or evaluation of a published article). Such appeals should aim to deal with a clear issue affecting the scientific merit of the article that otherwise does not consist in a violation of the Code of Conduct. In such cases, the Coordinating Editor will first consider the appeal and may not allow the appeal to proceed. If the Coordinating Editor is satisfied the appeal can proceed, they will offer the appellant the option to request a correction written by the authors (see following section) or to write a comment on the original article.

To submit an appeal of editorial decisions, please send an email to appeals@agcj.org.

Corrections and retractions:

Authors may submit or be solicited by a Production Editor to submit a correction in order to correct any error made in their published article that affects its accuracy, reproducibility or any information included within (e.g., metadata).

After submission of corrections, a Handling Editor will be assigned by a Production Editor to assess the correction request for its need and impact on the published article. If the requested corrections are assessed to be having too significant an impact on the manuscript, the Handling Editor may recommend retraction of the original paper along with an invitation to resubmit an updated manuscript. The recommendation will be reviewed by the Production Editor who will make the final decision.

Retractions will be considered for articles for which post-publication claims by any party provide evidence that the findings of a study are unreliable or result from major error, fabrication or falsification of the data. Retractions could also be issued in case of violations of publication or research ethics (e.g., undisclosed conflict of interest, duplicate publication, plagiarism, use of material or data without due authorisations). The retraction process will follow guidelines outlined by COPE which can be found here. If retraction is not requested by the authors themselves, it will only come as a result of an investigation (see Code of Conduct). If retraction of an article is approved by the Executive Editors, notices of retraction will be published as promptly as possible on the AGC website clearly identifying the article and the reasons behind the retraction.

Data, code, and outputs availability policy:

AGC endorses the Statement of Commitment of the Coalition on Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS). Regardless of article type, all data, scripts, and code necessary to evaluate and replicate the findings and build upon the study should be made available. This shall be done via open, FAIR-aligned repositories with a DOI (see Wilkinson et al., Scientific Data, 2016). This includes i) all material (data, scripts, codes, metadata, model inputs, etc…) required to reproduce results and interpretations presented in the contribution that is not already published in the literature; ii) all reference material data required to certify the precision and accuracy of the presented results, and; iii) curated compiled datasets consisting (in part or in full) of previously published data. 

Whenever possible, data should be geolocated and samples should be indexed with an International Generic Sample Number (IGSN: https://ev.igsn.org/resources). IGSNs should be used in conjunction with sample names allocated by the sampling party and not replace them. AGC commits to provide actionable links to IGSNs in published articles. Submissions of datasets without IGSNs should be justified in the cover letter and may be returned to authors for inclusion if missing without adequate justification.

In practice, this will involve:

  • All necessary material to be stored in domain repositories prior to article submission and a DOI to be registered or reserved for the material. Stored material does not need to be made public at this stage, but the (reserved) DOI and a private share link should be provided to AGC during submission so that editors and reviewers can access it during peer review. A list of recommended repositories is given below.
  • All submitted manuscripts should include a Data, code and output availability statement (see templates) outlining how material supporting the findings of the study can be accessed. Manuscripts making no use of any material relevant to this section should simply indicate so in this section.
  • Reference(s) to the material should be included in the reference section.
  • Once manuscripts are provisionally accepted for publication, authors shall make the deposited material open to public view before publication. Article publication will be contingent on deposited material being made public and accessible via the DOI.

If part of the contribution materials cannot be made available to the community for any reasons (e.g., embargo, ethical constraints, corporate non-disclosure agreement, breach of CARE principles; see Carroll et al., 2020), authors should contact the editorial board to discuss potential solutions. In addition, a statement will be required within the contribution stating the reason why the material cannot be made available.

Such restrictions could include cases where data disclosure could induce privacy, confidentiality, or legal concerns.  In such cases, it should be specified in the Data, code and outputs availability statement that data is available upon request and identify the group to which requests should be submitted. The reasons for restrictions on public data deposition must also be specified. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

Other cases could arise if the required material was made available by a third party and is not located in a FAIR-aligned repository and/or with a persistent identifier. Following COPDESS guidelines, AGC considers that third-party materials cannot be legally distributed by the authors. If authors do not have the rights to distribute required material, they must include all necessary contact information in the Data, code and outputs availability statement to gain access. If permission is required to use a third-party material, authors must include its source and verification of granted permission in the Data, code and outputs availability statement, as well as provide proper acknowledgment in the article. Furthermore, authors are asked to submit information from the data owner that data will be available post-publication, in the same manner as that by which the authors obtained the data.

Finally, regardless of potential material disclosure issues, all material should nevertheless be made privately available to editors and reviewers so that any claims can be verified prior to editorial decision and potential publication.

List of recommended domain repositories:

The list below is provided via recommendation from COPDESS and is non-exhaustive. AGC will accept data deposited in other repositories provided they align with the COPDESS selection criteria outlined below:

  • Compliance with basic FAIR and TRUST principles, ideally also the CARE principles 
  • Offer DOI minting; long-term preservation policy 
  • Private review link; DOI reserved / data embargo 
  • Basic geochemical data curation and review

EarthChem Library https://earthchem.org/ecl/

Astromaterials Data Archive https://repo.astromat.org/

DIGIS Geochemical Data Repository for GEOROC https://digis-repo.georoc.eu

GFZ Data Services https://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/

PANGAEA https://www.pangaea.de/

Pre-Print and self-archiving:

Submitted manuscripts that are available elsewhere on preprint servers or self-archived and publicly available will be considered by AGC. AGC will only not consider manuscripts if they have been published or currently being considered by another journal.

Authors should however inform the editorial team in the cover letter at the time of submission and provide a link to the preprint as well as any relevant related information. If and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the preprint must be updated to include a reference to the published article, including url and doi links.

Language: 

Single manuscript: Submitted manuscripts are expected to be written in English. No translation or language editing services will be made available other than comments offered by reviewers and editors. We welcome the submission of manuscripts with abstracts written in more than one language. Note that the authors are responsible for the additional language abstracts being true to the meaning of the main English language abstract.

Special Issue: We recognise that on occasion, a body of scientific work could generate significant impact if published in any language other than English. For this reason, the Executive Editors will consider special issues consisting of articles fully written in languages other than English along with an English version.

Name change policy:

We recognise that authors may change names for a wide range of reasons, which may lead them to wish to update their publication record. AGC will put in place post publication processes that will either allow updating the author name of the published article and metadata or acknowledge the author name change but retain the record via publication of a correction.

AI policy:

Following the COPE guidelines the Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are not permitted as authors on the publications. Application of any AI tools to write the manuscript, produce the images or any graphical content, data collection, or analysis should be disclosed. The disclosure should provide full details on the impact that the use of AI tools had on the manuscript.  AGC may refuse publication of any manuscript that does not appropriately disclose the use of AI tools.

Authorship and CRediT attribution:

AGC expects authors to ensure the author list comprises of and is limited to those having made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation parts of the study. As a general rule, all those who contributed materially to the work should be included in the author list unless they express their preference to only be listed in the acknowledgements. Other substantive contributions should be reported in the acknowledgement section. All authors are expected to be familiar with the full content of the submitted manuscript prior to submission, and have approved submission in advance. Exceptions to this policy, such as addition of a deceased or otherwise uncontactable author, should be requested during the submission process and are at the discretion of the production editor.

Furthermore, no one listed on the author list should have contributed less than any other person who is not a member and would like to be. To certify due consideration has taken place, each submitted manuscript should briefly outline the respective contributor roles of each author according to the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT, see https://credit.niso.org/).

Parachute science:

Parachute science is a research practice that uses data or samples from low resource regions or countries that are foreign to the authorship team, without giving proper acknowledgment of the local resources, infrastructure or expertise. Such practice is unfortunately too frequent in the geochemistry community and limits the ability for researchers from lower resourced countries to develop long-term mutually beneficial collaborations.

AGC encourages all submitted contributions to carefully consider the inclusion of local researchers at all stages of study development. In particular we stress our wish to see local sample and data providers represented as part of author list using appropriate contributor roles (see CRediT attribution). Furthermore, submissions focused on particular geographic areas should also suggest at least one local researcher as reviewer in order to maximise the diversity of reviewers.