This is a message to all field geologists. Those who have done fieldwork in extremely remote places can appreciate the importance of having detailed information regarding the research history, field logistics, and previous sampling methods of a particular field area. Despite playing a fundamental role in traditional peer-reviewed studies, the details of field logistics, sampling strategies, and historical fieldwork often go unpublished or watered down. It is often treated as though geologists simply opened a portal to the sampling site, collected a sample, and returned to the lab. For this reason, Geoscience Frontiers is trying out a new form of publication called the Field Report. These peer-reviewed publications provide an opportunity to share details of the fieldwork that won’t make it into the science-reporting papers.

The goal of these new published articles is to be published in tandem with the traditional science manuscript (regardless of the journal to which it is submitted) but will provide ancillary information that is not published in peer-reviewed article and yet provide important and interesting information regarding the research history, field logistics, sampling methods, and personal narrative. The field report also provides an opportunity to recognise other members of the expedition team that were not included in the science manuscript by including them on the author list.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Geoscience Frontiers (GSF), published by Elsevier, GSF is a peer-reviewed, open access, and free to publish journal that focuses on widely disseminating novel earth and space science research. In addition to being open access and free to publish, GSF also provides free colour figures and no page limit. GSF is expecting an impact factor of ~3.5 (official IF release coming early 2017).

The GSF Field Report must be under three printed pages (~2500 words), should be referenced and include photographs and/or figures. The references for this article will be lodged with Scopus and Google Scholar and the article will be citable just as a normal paper. Although the Field Reports may not attract the number of citations as traditional papers, it provides a way to fully report not just the final conclusions, but the context of the field study.

You can see two recently published field reports in the links below.

Strauss et al., Field report: Exploring the Doonerak fenster of the central Brooks Range, Alaska, USA

Laskowski et al., Field report: Research along the Yarlung Suture Zone in Southern Tibet

We invite Field Report submissions through the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) at ees.elsevier.com/gsf. When submitting field reports, please include ‘Field report:” at the beginning of the title so that it will be directed to the appropriate editor.

Best regards,

Christopher Spencer

Associate Editor

Geoscience Frontiers

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Christopher Spencer PhD

Earth Dynamics Research Group

School of Earth and Planetary Sciences

The Institute of Geoscience Research

Curtin University

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