Author Guidelines

Before preparing a submission for Geomorphica, please make sure that you familiarise yourself with the journal scope and our publication types.

Triple-anonymous process and open reviews. In line with Diamond Open Access Journal ethics, Geomorphica promotes a fair, transparent, and open evaluation process for submitted manuscripts. In order to reduce bias, we have decided to opt for a triple-anonymous review process, whereby the authors, reviewers and associate editor making the recommendation (AE2) are anonymous. The reviewer’s reports, as well as the authors’ responses to reviews, will become public at the same time as the accepted paper is published by the journal.

Make sure to familiarize yourself with Geomorphica's review process.

Integrity, Ethics, and Conduct. The authors must confirm that they have read, understood, and agree with Geomorphica’s Editorial Policies (copyright statement). They must also state that they agree with Geomorphica’s Code of Conduct.

Conflicts of interest. The authors declare no competing or conflicts of interest or the existence of an actual, potential, or perceived conflict. Authors should not recommend reviewers with a known conflict of interest, such as co-authors who published together in the last three years, current and past supervisor of the author(s) or a colleague from the same institution. A short statement noting any conflicts or competing interests should be included in the “comments to the editor box” in the submission form. Personal conflicts will remain confidential but may affect whom the Associate Editor (AE1) invites as reviewers. If any conflict exists or the authors are unsure, they must communicate with the Associate Editor.

Originality. Material submitted to Geomorphica must be original and not published or concurrently submitted for publication elsewhere in any language. Plagiarism or duplicate submission (including partial duplication of manuscripts, figures, tables) will result in the immediate rejection of any manuscript, or, if detected post-publication, in retraction. The authors must disclose if the manuscript is a significantly extended version of a conference paper.

Submission of manuscripts rejected elsewhere. Submission of a manuscript that was rejected elsewhere is possible. To enable a fair, transparent and open review process, the authors must disclose the reasons for rejection to the editor. The cover letter can be used to provide such information. For example, if it was rejected because it did not fit the scope of a journal, then it is sufficient to state the name of this journal and a brief argument why the authors believe that the manuscript fits the scope of Geomorphica. If the manuscript was rejected in peer review, then a statement is needed indicating the main reviewer comments and how the manuscript was modified. The editor will use this information for the evaluation of the manuscript in case a reviewer for Geomorphica also reviewed it previously.

Initial submission. Microsoft Word, OpenOffice or LaTeX can be used to prepare your submission. The initial submission should be preferably pdf files, and final submissions after acceptance have to be docx or LaTeX files. We recommend using Geomorphica templates as this will help the publication process post-acceptance. Final submissions will have to be with the Geomorphica templates.
Since Geomorphica has opted for a triple-anonymous peer-review process, we require two files to be submitted
- the title page of the manuscript, including:
      + all authors, including affiliation and if available ORCID,
      + email address of corresponding author,
      + author contributions statement,
      + acknowledgements
      + data and code availability statement
      + funding statement
      + conflict of interest disclosure
      + permission to reproduce material from copyrighted sources

- the manuscript, which should be anonymized. It should contain line numbers, and a minimum font size of 11. Figures and tables should appear within the text at the appropriate points rather than as separate files.

After acceptance. After an article is accepted, the manuscript should be prepared and uploaded using one of Geomorphica’s templates in Microsoft Word or LaTeX format. These templates can be found on the Templates page. Please note that Geomorphica’s submission system does not directly interface with Overleaf, although the Geomorphica’s LaTeX submission template is available in the Overleaf gallery. After acceptance, figures and reference list (e.g. bib file) must be uploaded separately for article production.

Style guide of Geomorphica. Some guidance on preferred formats for dates and times, units, and abbreviations are given in our guidelines.

Spelling and grammar. Authors must run a complete spelling and grammatical check before submission (e.g., using (free) online tools such as Grammarly). Geomorphica has no preference for British or American spellings, as long as manuscripts are self-consistent throughout. If the level of writing in a submission is such that it cannot be understood by the editor, then the editor may return the manuscript to the authors for correction before it is sent out for peer review.

Corresponding Authors and all co-authors of published papers must provide their Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID). 

Author contributions statement. The manuscript should contain a short statement stating who did what using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT).

All authors whose names appear on the submission must have followed the different steps of the research. Co-authors are required to have played a role in (i) the conception or design of the research and/or in data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation; (ii) the creation of new software/script used in the research; (iii) the writing, revising and final approval of the manuscript. Contributors who do not meet the authorship requirements should be listed in the Acknowledgements section.

Role of corresponding author. The corresponding author acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that the submitted manuscript meets the scientific and ethical standards of Geomorphica, as well as the originality of the submitted material. The corresponding author is the sole in charge of communicating with the journal and the Editorial Board. Before manuscript submission, the corresponding author must ensure that all co-authors have approved the manuscript, including the text, illustrations and tables, supplementary materials, list and order of authors, reference to funding agencies, and the Acknowledgement section. 

Changes to authorship. The corresponding author must ensure the correctness of authors names, affiliations, and addresses at the submission stage. Changes of authorship (e.g., adding authors, deleting authors, changes in corresponding author, changes in the sequence of authors) are possible only during the stage of revision of manuscripts. The corresponding author must justify any change to authorship by emailing the Editor-in-Chief, explaining the reasons for changes; the written approval of each author of the manuscript is also mandatory. Changes to authorship are not possible after acceptance of a manuscript. Approval of changes to authorship during the revision stages is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

Authorship issues. In the case of an authorship dispute at any stage of the editorial process, Geomorphica and the Editor-in-Chief will not be in the position to adjudicate. If authors are unable to clarify the dispute themselves, Geomorphica reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process.  In case of published papers, the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board may ask authors to retract or withdraw a manuscript. Any other issue related to authorship must be discussed with the Editor-in-Chief.

Use of AI and authorship. Geomorphica supports the use of new technologies in any field of the geomorphological research, but for sake of transparency and integrity of authorship, the use of AI and AI-assisted text generators in writing papers and at any stage of the research is not allowed. Please use softwares with human control and do not list AI as co-author of a manuscript. In the case Ai or AI-assisted technologies are mandatory in any step of the research (but not in writing the manuscript), please contact the Editor in Chief before submitting your contribution.

Author name change. An author who has changed their name for reasons such as gender transition or religious conversion may request for their name, pronouns and other relevant biographical information to be corrected on papers published prior to the change.  The author can choose for this correction to happen silently, in which case there will be no note flagging the change on either the pdf or the html of the paper, or alternatively they may do so by a formal public Author Correction.

Abstract. The English-language abstract should be no more than 200 words and should not include references within the text.

Additional language abstract. After an article is accepted, authors are encouraged to include, in addition to the English version of the abstract, up to two additional language translations of the abstract to be included in the typeset paper, also with a maximum of 200 words each. Please note that the additional-language abstract may undergo a technical review at the discretion of the Editor. Geomorphica does not guarantee reviews of additional language abstracts, so it is the responsibility of the authors to ensure correct translation.

Non-technical summary. To make your research accessible for everyone, Geomorphica encourages the inclusion of a non-technical summary with the initial manuscript. In principle, a non-technical summary should explain the essential methods and results of your article so that someone unfamiliar with your field of research would understand it. The target audience may include journalists, government staff, other researchers, people involved in civil protection and disaster management, and the public in general. Your non-technical summary should be one or two paragraphs (about 200 words total), covering the following main points:

What is the current issue or problem that your research addresses, and why are you researching it? Try to consider why this topic is important to the larger community.

Without excessive use of jargon, how did you go about collecting and analyzing the data and results?

What are the main conclusions of your study? Ultimately, what will the impact of your research be? What societal benefits may be realized?

Keywords. Provide up to 5 keywords representative for your manuscript.

Figures and tables. Figure width should not exceed 180 mm in width and 200 mm in height. The minimum size of the text on the figures should be equivalent of 10 pt text. Authors should provide figures for publication at a minimum of 300 dpi resolution.Make sure that all figures are suited for color-blind people by using Coblis.

Tables in the main part of the manuscript should be created in Word's table environment and embedded in the manuscript. Extensive tables with data should be stored in a repository.

References. Where relevant, DOIs or URLs for the references cited must be provided. Geomorphica requires references and citations in the APA reference style.

Example in-text citation:

(Koppes & King, 2020)

Example reference:

Koppes, M. & King, L. (2020). Beyond x,y,z(t); Navigating New Landscapes of Science in the Science of Landscapes. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 125, e2020JF005588. https:// doi.org/10.1029/2020JF005588

Geomorphica strongly suggests that authors consider ensuring that their citations are inclusive and conscientious. Citation Diversity Statements are not required, but efforts should be made to cite widely if relevant, such as citing non-English works, non-academic, policy documents.

The reference list should contain all references cited in the main text, and should not contain anything that is not referenced in the main text. Post-acceptance, if authors choose to submit their article as a .tex file, the corresponding .bib file should also contain only the references that are cited in the main text. The aux2bib tool in bibtools can be used to ensure that a bib file exactly matches a tex file.

Data & code availability and reproducibility. Scientific results must be reproducible. Authors are requested to make data and codes freely available wherever possible. Links to repositories for both data and code can be shared during submission, and made public post-acceptance. The title page must include a "data availability" statement. Statements along the lines of “please contact the authors for data access” are not acceptable for data which could be distributed digitally. If the data are not available, the data availability statement should explain why.

Authors should archive data and code in public repositories when appropriate forums exist. Physical samples should be adequately catalogued with curation to insure access for the long-term. Examples of open-access, DOI citable repositories for data and code include Figshare, Zenodo and Pangaea. Code repositories like GitHub do not guarantee long-term archiving, nor do they directly assign DOIs to a given version of the content; this may cause problems when authors make changes to the repository that are not documented in the publication. Fortunately, it is easy to archive a GitHub repository in Zenodo for a DOI-citable version.

Authors must document the theory, methods and procedures used and explain the source for data and codes to generate the results. Documentation may include: (1) What each script does; (2) In which order the scripts should be run; (3) What the software/system dependencies are.

Supplementary material. Supplemental pdf odt or docx files containing text and figures can be uploaded into the journal submission system for review. All other supplementary files (e.g., data tables in .xlsx or .csv format) should be uploaded to a relevant separate repository. 

A license allows another person to use data under certain conditions set by the rights holder. A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. Authors might also consider applying open-source licenses to their software that comply with the Open Source Definition. These licenses allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared.

Authors may use any license of their choice for the preprint, but we recommend a Creative Commons CC-BY license. Before selecting a license, consult the terms of any grant or funding  related to the publication, as some programs enforce specific licenses for preprints.

Suggesting reviewers. The authors should suggest potential peer reviewers in the Comments to Editor box in the online submission form. Where appropriate, list reviewers who should not be contacted due to conflicts of interest or other reasons. Authors can help the journal improve the diversity of Geomorphica’s reviewer pool by including members of underrepresented groups (considering for example gender, career stage, location) in their lists of suggested reviewers. Authors should suggest recommended reviewers in the relevant subject area. Where a submission focuses on a specific geographical location, we recommend that the authors offer at least one reviewer based in that region (assuming that the reviewer has a reasonable degree of expertise in the subject area). This effort ensures a broader diversity of reviewers and increases the impact of the scientific work.

Responding to reviewers and editors. Authors should ensure that revisions to manuscripts are more than sufficient to answer the level of recommended changes to prevent multiple rounds of review/reviewer fatigue. The response letter should fully represent changes made to the manuscript. The response letter should not be terse or vague, even if the recommendation is “Minor Revisions”.

Authors should ensure that their response is respectful. Any personal or abusive attacks are unacceptable and will be escalated to an independent appeals committee and will be grounds for outright rejection by the editor. Politely explaining why that the reviewer is mistaken is, of course, accepted. Please consult the Code of Conduct for more guidance.

Authors should be cautious of any implicitly biasing and racially/gender-specific coded language. To avoid misaddressing the reviewers and editors, we strongly recommend writing in a passive, gender-neutral style (e.g. “the reviewer says ...” rather than “he/she says”).

Authors should respond to reviewer comments by making visibly tracked edits to the reviewed manuscript, and use the response letter to guide the editor, and the reviewers upon re-review, to the changes and explain the rationale for responses to reviewer comments. In the response letter, avoid duplication (e.g. citation of changed texts) and minor details as much as possible to keep it concise. Remember to keep all files anonymized.

Geomorphica considers for publication manuscripts that have been hosted elsewhere as preprints. A preprint is an author’s original version of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review at a journal, which is deposited on a public server. 

However, since we have opted for a triple-anonymous review process, we do not encourage submitting manuscripts to preprint platforms like ArXiv, EarthArXiv or ESSOAr in order to ensure that the author’s identity will stay unknown. If the manuscript is published in Geomorphica, it will be available free of charge for all, thus removing the need of a preprint.

Geomorphica permits the archiving of postprints – accepted manuscripts, which include modifications based on referees’ suggestions before copyediting and proof correction, or final published and copy-edited manuscripts – on any channel of the authors’ choice. If uploading an accepted manuscript, once the manuscript is published, the authors should update the archived accepted version with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the journal website.

Once an article has been accepted, Geomorphica will only publish the typeset, formatted version of the paper – not the pre-typeset postprint. The authors are free (and encouraged) to share the typeset version of records on platforms like ResearchGate, institutional repositories, and personal websites. After acceptance, the corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy of all content in the proof, including co-authors’ names, addresses, and affiliations.

Geomorphica considers submissions containing material that has been published in a conference proceedings paper or submitted to the authors’ funders, university or employer as a research activity report or thesis. However, the submission should provide a substantial extension of results, methodology, analysis, conclusions and/or implications over the conference proceedings paper; the final decision on what constitutes a substantial extension is made by the handling editors.