Comptes rendus Geoscience ranks as a prominent international journal in the field of geosciences. Of all the Comptes rendus journals of the French Academy of Sciences, it ranks as one of the best. According to SCImago journals, it ranks 25th out of 226 titles in the Earth and planetary sciences. Comptes rendus Geoscience is referenced in all international publication databases and offers a means to quick publication of high-level scientific works in all domains of the Earth sciences, the solid Earth as well as its fluid envelopes (that is from inner core to atmosphere and ocean). It benefits from the global visibility of its electronic version on Science Direct.
A main objective is that Comptes rendus Geoscience should publish original papers and not “average” ones. The editorial team and the Academy of Sciences wish to encourage innovative work, thought-provoking papers that may generate debate, also papers arising from earlier-career scientists. Another key objective is to invite review or frontier papers from outstanding scientists and to promote thematic issues on a theme (a meeting) of particular interest.
An important experiment undertaken since 2013 is that authors have their papers reviewed prior to submission, a process we call pre-submission. The corresponding author (hereafter simply referred to as “the author”) will first contact an associate editor with a title, an abstract, and the names of four potential reviewers (but NOT a full paper). These reviewers must have been contacted by the author and must have indicated their willingness to review in case the pre-submission of the paper is accepted. The editor (or associate editor) will ensure that the subject and the choice of reviewers are appropriate (in case the associate editor does not feel able to accept two reviewers from the list proposed by the author, she/he will communicate with the author to find suitable replacements). The editor will inform the author whether the pre-submission is accepted and will indicate the names of the reviewers who are to be contacted by the author for a review of the full paper. The author will then submit, no later than two months after acceptance of the pre-submission (otherwise the paper will be considered as withdrawn), the full paper directly to these reviewers (who will also receive confirmation from the editorial office). The reviewers are to send their reviews both to the editors and to the author. The author will then decide whether to revise the paper as a function of the reviews, and finally send the paper (both original version submitted to the reviewers and version finally submitted to the journal, with all changes clearly marked), together with the reviews and a letter explaining how they have been dealt with, to Comptes rendus Geoscience. Evidently, the reviews and responses will have to be soundly argued. The names of the reviewers will be published (in an acknowledgement from the editor) if the paper is accepted. The editorial team may of course contact directly and confidentially the reviewers (and vice versa) for additional information, or contact additional reviewers that may remain anonymous.
In this system, reviewers are proposed by the authors but have to be accepted by the editors. Since their names will be published, reviewers commit themselves (a guarantee of quality), without endorsing the final paper; the decision to accept the paper and therefore publish remains with the editor, and the paper itself is the authors’ responsibility. The choice of reviewers will follow a code of good practice: colleagues having published with the author(s) in the previous five years, or having participated or planning to participate in a significant joint research project or proposal, or working in the same department would not qualify. We expect that authors will carefully avoid suggesting the names of inappropriate reviewers. As written above, the editors may need to resort to anonymous reviewers at any time. And reviewers may wish to submit confidential comments directly to the editors, though open comments are preferred as often as possible.
Upon receiving the papers and the reviews, the associate editor, together with the editorial team when needed, will decide on accepting or rejecting the paper in less than one month. The decision will generally be either acceptance with no or minor revision, or rejection (but with no option for major revision — major revision will be treated as rejection, in order to allow authors to resubmit later if they wish to do so). Papers may be rejected by the editorial team on the sole basis of their lack of interest, originality, or because they are out of the scope of Comptes rendus Geoscience.
In order to attain these goals for Comptes rendus Geoscience, we have assembled a team of associate editors that covers as broad a range of disciplines of the geosciences as possible (please note that palaeontological matters are mainly treated in another section, Comptes rendus Palevol). When needed, editors will work on a paper as a team, possibly asking for advice from an external invited associate editor or reviewer. Together with the associate editors, the chief editor's role will be to guarantee the quality and impartiality of the reviewers, to encourage debate whenever it is warranted, and to avoid that articles be barred for “school of thought” or dogmatic reasons.
The upper limit to the length of an article is 10 pages, without or with little resort to supplementary material (base data and observations may be necessary in some cases that will need to be justified). Comptes rendus Geoscience particularly encourages thematic issues on a given theme with a guest editor, and the editorial team will invite “frontier” papers, as well as synthetic review papers on specific questions. These will be managed by two associate editors, whose names will be published along with the paper. Also, comments and replies are an opportunity (going through the same review/submission process).
Papers will continue to be submitted in English, as has already been the case for several years. The authors will be asked to have checked the quality/understandability of the text prior to submission. French language will be exceptional (again as has already been the case for some time) and papers submitted in French will include an abridged English version of one printed page, referring to the major illustrations and references of the full paper. This option will be reserved for outstanding papers whose authors have demonstrable difficulty in providing an English version of their paper.
The use of colour will be limited to the electronic online version of the paper to reduce costs. All figures should be readable when printed in black and white or grey tones. Authors are strongly encouraged to propose high quality original photographs for use as cover of the journal.
In summary, papers submitted to Comptes rendus Geoscience will benefit from high quality, fair evaluation, and will be published rapidly. This should contribute to improve the visibility of the journal and attract more high-quality papers, more authors and more readers, in short to serve better the community of geoscientists and users of the science they produce.
Vincent Courtillot, editor-in-chief, with associate editors James Badro, Sylvie Bourquin, Michel Campillo, Philippe Cardin, François Chabaux, Marc Chaussidon, Marguerite Godard, Amaëlle Landais, Isabelle Manighetti.
Please go to the website of Comptes rendus Geoscience: http://ees.elsevier.com/geoscience/.