Biogeosciences: a new and innivotive journal of interest to the MarBEF community

Jean-Pierre Gattuso¹ and J�rgen Kesselmeier², Editors-in-chief of Biogeosciences

¹ Laboratoire d'Oc�anographie de Villefranche, CNRS-Universit� de Paris 6, B. P. 28, F-06234 Villefranche-sur-mer Cedex, France. email: bg-chief-editors@copernicus.org

² Max-Planck-Institut f�r Chemie Abteilung Biogeochemie, Postf. 3060, D-55020 Mainz, Germany. Email: bg-chief-editors@copernicus.org

Biogeosciences is a new international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications and review papers on all aspects of the interactions between the biological, chemical and physical processes in terrestrial or extraterrestrial life with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. The objective of the journal is to cut across the boundaries of established sciences and achieve an interdisciplinary view of these interactions. Experimental, conceptual and modelling approaches are welcome.

Biogeosciences specifically covers the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function, both in present and past ecosystems. It will therefore be of interest to MARBEF partners involved in theme 2. The editorial board comprises several editors from institutions participating to the MARBEF consortium.

Biogeosciences is an open access journal and is therefore available without any cost to all colleagues at all times as long as they have access to the Internet. EGU and ourselves, as editors-in-chief, are fully committed not to change this policy. We also believe that open access is a fantastic endeavour but is not enough and want to make sure that every scientist will able to publish in Biogeosciences. This can only be achieved by keeping the publishing costs for the authors as low as possible. The service charges are modest, starting at 20 or 22 euros per page depending on how the manuscript is submitted, as a Text or Word file, respectively. They cover all costs, including colour figures or any kind of supplementary material, such as databases, photographs or videos. We believe that these low costs are, by far, the lowest as compared to all other journals. Service charges are waived during the launching phase (2004 and 2005).

The two-steps, fully transparent, review process is another innovative feature of Biogeosciences. It provides a much more thorough quality control than in other journals. Upon submission, manuscripts are quickly evaluated by one of the editors to ensure that they are within the scope of the journal and have at least a minimum quality. If a manuscript successfully passes this access review, it is immediately published on the web in Biogeosciences Discussion (BGD) and sent to two or more referees. From then on, the paper is open to discussion to any member of the community. Eight weeks later, the editor considers the referees' reports, the comments from the community as well as the replies from the authors, and decides whether the manuscript is rejected or accepted for publication in Biogeosciences (BG), with or without revision. If the manuscript successfully passes peer-review, it is published in BG and posted on the web together with the initial discussion paper, referees' reports, and comments from the community and replies from the authors.

This innovative review process has many benefits over the traditional one: it enables discussion (which is quite poor in traditional journals) and leads to a strict quality control. The full transparency leads to a better quality of submissions (because authors want to experience a public review process as smooth as possible), to more thorough and thoughtful referees' reports (because they will be published, anonymously or not), to full accountability of the handling editor (who is named in the final paper), as well as to unlimited input from the community. These benefits have clearly been demonstrated during the past three years of operation of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the highly successful sister journal of BG.

We invite you to take part in, support and benefit from the current move towards open access journals by considering Biogeosciences to publish your best papers on biodiversity and ecosystem function. Additional information can be found on the journal web site (http://www.biogeosciences.net).