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Text Requirements

Text Requirements

Preparing your paper as outlined below will help expedite consideration.

AGU journals consider a number of different paper types. Each of these has different length limits or guidelines.

In submitting, the corresponding author affirms that:

  • All authors have read and approved the paper and will be informed about all reviews and revisions. It is expected that authors will have: (1) made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data, or creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; (2) approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author’s contribution to the study); and (3) agreed to be personally accountable for their own contributions and for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature. AGU will notify each co-author about a submission and all revisions.
  • All author affiliations related to the work are indicated.
  • Any real or perceived conflicts of interest related to this work are declared to the editors in the cover letter
  • Data needed to understand, evaluate, and build upon the reported research must be available at the time of peer review and publication. Additionally, authors should make available software that has a significant impact on the research. For further details, see the Data & Software for Authors guidance.
  • The paper is an original submission and not under active consideration elsewhere. All papers are checked for plagiarism. Papers with significant overlap will be rejected or returned for correction.

 

General guidelines

Please prepare your manuscript following our checklists and templates listed under our How to Submit resources.

Length

For most journals, Research Articles are allowed to be up to 25 publication units (PU), where 1 PU is 500 words or 1 display element (figure or table). The title, authors, affiliations, key points, keywords, text in tables (but not captions) and references are excluded from word counts. Longer papers are assessed an excess length fee. Research Letters for Geophysical Research Letters have a maximum length of 12 publication units. Longer papers are not considered in GRL and will be returned for shortening. For most journals, Commentaries are limited to 6 publication units (recommended length is about 2000 words and 1-2 figures).
Complete information about Publication Fees and length is here.

LaTeX

For LaTeX, use the AGU template. AGU LaTeX templates are also on Overleaf or Curvenote, cloud-based LaTeX authoring systems that allow direct submission to AGU journals. Please DO NOT introduce any extraneous formatting, new commands, macros, or shortcuts, as they are not compatible with our publishing process. Papers with extensive extraneous formatting, macros, or shortcuts (including \def,\newcommands, \renewcommands, and especially those commands with #) will be returned for correction.

Companion manuscripts

AGU will consider papers that are companions or so related that publication and citation should be coordinated. AGU can work with other journals to coordinate publication. If you are submitting companion papers, please indicate this and any information regarding coordination in your cover letter and provide clearly labeled copies of all papers as part of your submission. Please provide regular updates to the editors on the progress of related papers, especially at revision. If there are multiple companions, we strongly recommend that you contact our staff and the journal editors in advance.

Other papers under consideration elsewhere and related to your AGU submission should also be included for the editors and the relation explained in the cover letter. AGU will not publish manuscripts with any references that are not yet published. If the citation of such manuscripts is approved by the editor, AGU will hold final publication until the cited literature is accepted and publicly available.

Sample identification

AGU recommends use of International Geo Sample Numbers (IGSNs) for all samples reported in AGU Journals. IGSNs provide a unique identifier allowing samples to be linked across publications and searched through a central repository. We strongly encourage authors to register samples and obtain IGSNs and use them throughout their manuscript and tables. We recognize IGSNs during our production process and will provide links in manuscript tables to the registered sample descriptions.

Data and software

AGU requires that all data needed to understand, evaluate, and build upon the reported research must be available at the time of peer review and publication. Additionally, authors should make available software that has a significant impact on the research. Additional information can be found in the AGU Data & Software for Authors guidance.

Preparing your manuscript

For submission, we prefer to receive a single file containing your manuscript, figures, and tables; you can use our checklists and templates in Word and LaTeX. Supporting information and large tables should be uploaded separately.

Your manuscript should be arranged in the following order:

  1. Title page including authors’ names and affiliations
  2. Key Points
  3. Abstract and Plain Language Summary (required for some journals)
  4. Keywords
  5. Text (including appendices) and Equations
  6. Acknowledgments and Data Availability Statement
  7. References
  8. Tables
  9. Figures
  10. Rich Media & multimedia
  11. Supporting information (e.g., graphs)
Title page

A title should be specific, informative, and brief. Use abbreviations only if they are defined in the abstract.

Authors are individuals who have significantly contributed to the research and preparation of the article (see specific guidelines above). Group authors are allowed, if each author in the group is separately identified in an appendix or supplement. Other contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria should be acknowledged.

Author affiliations should indicate to the reader where the author was employed or affiliated with at the time of the work. Current addresses or affiliations should be indicated with a footnote. Authors are expected to indicate in the acknowledgements and cover letter any additional affiliations or employment that might be perceived as a conflict of interest related to the paper.

AGU now requires all corresponding authors to register for an ORCID identifier and connect it to your account in our editorial system. We strongly encourage all authors and reviewers to register for an ORCID. Your ORCID identifier will be included in your published manuscript, and we will in turn update your publication list in your ORCID record. Please look for an email message from ORCID and CrossRef to grant permission for this update process. Including your ORCID identifier helps ensure you get credit for your work, improves integrity in publishing, and enables discovery and linking of your publications, datasets, and more.

AGU Journals allow authors to indicate their respective contributions using the CRediT taxonomy. This information will be published with your paper starting in 2018. If a more specific contribution statement is needed, please add a paragraph as part of the acknowledgements.

Authors may now include their personal pronouns in the author bylines of their published articles and on Wiley Online Library. Authors will never be required to include their pronouns; it will always be optional for the author. Authors can include their pronouns in their manuscript upon submission and can add, edit, or remove their pronouns at any stage upon request. Submitting/corresponding authors should never add, edit, or remove a coauthor’s pronouns without that coauthor’s consent. Where post-publication changes to pronouns are required, these can be made without a correction notice to the paper, following Wiley’s Name Change Policy to protect the author’s privacy. Terms which fall outside of the scope of personal pronouns, e.g. proper or improper nouns, are currently not supported.

Key points

Key Points convey the main points and conclusions of the article. Up to three key point statements are allowed, and each is limited to at most 140 characters with no abbreviations. Key Points are not included in the word count.

Abstract

The abstract (1) states the nature of the investigation and (2) summarizes the important conclusions. The abstract should be suitable for indexing. Your abstract should:

  • Be set as a single paragraph.
  • Be less than 250 words for all journals except GRL, for which the limit is 150 words.
  • Not include table or figure mentions.
  • Avoid reference citations unless dependent on or directly related to another paper (e.g., companion, comment, reply, or commentary on another paper(s)). AGU’s Style Guide discusses formatting citations in abstracts.
  • Define all abbreviations.
Plain language summary

A Plain Language Summary (PLS) can be an incredibly effective science communication tool. By summarizing your paper in non-technical terms, you can explain your research and its relevance to a much broader audience. A PLS is required for submissions to AGU Advances, G-Cubed, GeoHealth, GRL, JAMES, JGR: Biogeosciences, JGR: Oceans, JGR: Planets, JGR: Solid Earth, Space Weather, and Reviews of Geophysics, but optional for other journals.  A PLS should be no longer than 200 words and should be free of jargon, acronyms, equations, and any technical information that would be unknown to people from outside your scientific discipline. Read our tips for creating an effective PLS.

Index terms and keywords

Index terms are important for discovery and linking your article. Up to five index terms are allowed and are provided at the time of submission. Use the AGU Index Set. Do not use terms ending in “00.”

Authors may also provide up to six keywords which are not included in the word count. These are free-form terms that can be used to facilitate online searches.

Text

Headings. Except for short manuscripts (such as comments and replies), the text should be divided into sections, each with its own heading.

Sections are numbered with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.). A maximum of four levels of heads may be used, with subsections numbered 1.1., 1.2.; 1.1.1., 1.2.1; 1.1.1.1., and so on. Headings should be sentence fragments and do not begin with a lowercase letter or number. They should not include parenthetical reference citations or table and figure callouts.

Footnotes. Footnotes are used only for author affiliations and tables. Incorporate all other footnoted information into text.

Reference citations. Use name-date format, not numbered references, and enclose citations in parentheses. In text citations are included in the word count.

(Zhu et al., 2016) or

Zhu et al. (2009)

Detailed citation style can be found in AGU’s Style Guide.

Mathematics. Build equations with Mathtype or the Word Equation Editor (if using Word), or in Latex. Do not use graphics for equations. Equations are counted as one word in the word count.

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgments must list:

  • All funding sources related to this work from all authors including any source of direct or in-kind support. List all funding sources including persistent identifiers (e.g. Grant ID, Funder ID) in the GEMS submission form. We use this information to make your paper available to your funders through CHORUS. Funding information must include the funding body and contribution number.
  • Any real or perceived financial conflicts of interests for any author.
  • Other affiliations for any author that may be perceived as creating a conflict of interest with respect to the results of the paper. Further explanations for the editors of conflicts of interests or funding information should be included in the cover letter.
  • The acknowledgments are also the appropriate place to thank colleagues and other contributors. AGU does not normally allow dedications. Do not include honorifics such as Dr etc.; include first name or initial and last name.
  • An optional separate paragraph indicating author contributions beyond that identified in the CRediT taxonomy.
 
Open research (availability statement)
AGU requires a data availability statement. An Availability Statement, located in the Open Research section of the paper, contains information about your data, software, and other research objects (e.g. notebook) and how readers can access these. Details on what the Statement should include along with templates can be found at Data and Software for Authors.
References

All sources cited in text, tables, figures, and supporting information must appear in the reference list. Do not include a separate reference list in the supporting information. References in supporting information must also be cited in the main text and included in the reference list of the main paper so that they will be discovered, linked, and indexed. Every reference must be available publicly online or in print before a paper can be accepted. “Unpublished” or “in press” references are not allowed. Reference text is not included in excess length calculations.

Authors must include formal citations to the data/software described in the Availability Statement. Additionally, please cite data and software created by others used in your research to ensure proper credit for that work. If the data or software is described in a separate data or software paper, please include both that paper and the deposited data or software as separate citations. Additional information can be found in the AGU Data & Software for Authors guidance.

AGU’s Publications Style Guide offers examples and style information.

Reference availability

In order for reviewers and readers to assess any paper fully at the time of publication, AGU does not accept citations to in-preparation or submitted/under review-manuscripts. The Editorial Board can, in exceptional circumstances, allow citation of submitted/under review works which are intimately associated with the manuscript submitted to this or other AGU journals. An example would be a companion manuscript submitted to this or another AGU journal where the intent is to have them published together so that cross-citations can be fully updated before publication. Authors willing to cite submitted/under review works must, at submission time, (1) upload a PDF copy of the unpublished work(s), and (2) use the ‘cover letter’ field to justify to the editor why an ‘under review’ reference is required. In the event an exception is granted, the submitted/under review work(s) will have to be accepted or published in its respective journal(s) by the time of acceptance of the manuscript.

Tables

Every table must have a unique title. Explanatory information and definitions should be included in a footnote to the title.

Column heads. All columns (except the first one) must have headings.

The data supporting the table must be preserved in a repository, included in the availability statement, and cited in the references section. When the table represents a summary or aggregation of the underlying data, provide the workflow or script that generated the aggregation. Additional information can be found in the AGU Data & Software for Authors guidance.

Additional information on table formatting is available in AGU’s Publications Style Guide.

Figures

AGU recommends that figures be prepared in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, EPS, PS or PDF. Figures should be embedded in the main manuscript for submission but uploaded separately at resubmission or revision (because separate files are needed for production). For revision, each figure file must be complete and contain all parts of a single numbered figure. Do not include figure captions or figure titles (e.g., “Figure 1”) as any part of the figure. Separate files for different parts of a figure cannot be accommodated.

Each figure should also have a caption in the text. These can be placed near the figure at submission.

  • Indicate latitude and longitude on maps.
  • Use lowercase letters (a, b,c...) to label parts of the figure; do not use Arabic or Roman numerals. Combine all figure parts into a single figure whenever possible.
  • When possible, include the figure label in the top left corner of each plot.
  • Do not include information in a figure that could easily be included in the caption.
  • Cite each figure in numerical order in text.
    • Figures in the main body of the text should be numbered consecutively, not by section.
    • Appendix figures should be numbered separately from the body and should begin with the letter of the appendix (e.g., figure A1 for the first figure in Appendix A).
  • Data supporting all the figures must be preserved in a repository, included in the availability statement, and cited in the references section. Software used to generate the figure should be described in the paper, included in the availability statement, and cited in the references. Additional information can be found in the AGU Data & Software for Authors guidance.

    Figures larger than a typical PDF page (e.g., a large map) should be included as a supplement.
Rich media & multimedia

We encourage use of rich media such as movies, sound clips, animations, and so on. Multimedia may be included as part of the primary manuscript, or as Supporting Information. Upload multimedia components at submission using the appropriate file type. Please contact journal staff with questions.
Specific information required to embed multimedia content during the post-acceptance production & proofing process can be found on Wiley's Embedded Rich Media page.

Copyrighted material

Authors who use figures or other material (e.g., graphics,) from another author or copyright holder must obtain permission to do so. This includes any figures redrawn but basically unaltered or with only slight modifications. Permission is not needed for material that originated in AGU journals or is in the public domain.

Permission must allow for the distribution of the material in any and all media in current and future formats.

Obtaining permission can be a lengthy process, so please make sure that you have the necessary permissions before you submit your manuscript to AGU.

Permission(s) should accompany the revised manuscript when submitted. Articles will not be published until permissions are received at AGU.

Supporting information

Supporting text and images/figures should be included in one .PDF file, except where limited by file type or size. Movies, .zip archives, and other files can be uploaded separately. Authors should download and make use of our templates. Supporting text can include methods or other information about samples. Discussion or interpretations should be in the main text only. Data and software should not be included in the supporting information.

All supporting information will be reviewed with your manuscript. References cited in supporting information must also be included in the main text so that they will be discovered, linked, and indexed. A separate list in the supporting information is not necessary. Reference text does not count toward length limits.

Please see Supporting Information Guidelines for more information.
https://www.agu.org/Publish-with-AGU/Publish/Author-Resources/Text-requirements
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