Aims and scope

Earth Surface Dynamics (ESurf) is a not-for-profit international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of high-quality research on the physical, chemical, and biological processes shaping Earth's surface and their interactions on all scales.

The main subject areas of ESurf comprise field measurements, remote sensing, and experimental and numerical modelling of Earth surface processes, and their interactions with the lithosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and pedosphere.

ESurf prioritizes studies with general implications for Earth surface science and especially values contributions that straddle discipline boundaries, enhance theory–observation feedback, and/or apply basic principles from physics, chemistry, or biology.

The manuscript types considered for publication in ESurf are research articles, review articles, short communications, and comments/replies.

Earth Surface Dynamics has a two-stage publication process which involves a scientific discussion forum and utilizes the full potential of the Internet to do the following:

  • foster scientific discussion;
  • enhance the effectiveness and transparency of scientific quality assurance;
  • enable rapid publication;
  • make scientific publications freely accessible.

In the first stage, manuscripts that pass a rapid access review are immediately posted as preprints on EGUsphere, EGU's preprint repository, or in ESurfD. They are then subject to interactive public discussion, during which the referees' comments (anonymous or attributed), additional comments by other members of the scientific community (attributed), and the authors' replies are also posted alongside the preprint. In the second stage, the peer-review process is completed and, if accepted, the final revised papers are published in ESurf. To ensure publication precedence for authors, and to provide a lasting record of scientific discussion, EGUsphere, ESurfD, and ESurf are ISSN-registered, permanently archived, and fully citable.