• General information to authors
• instructions to authors
• article publication charges
• fast track
• proofs
• offprint

General information to authors

The Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences is an open access journal that publishes internationally peer reviewed primary research articles, review papers and short communications in the English language. Research articles and review papers are provided with short Estonian summaries. Papers covering the whole field of Earth sciences, including different geological sensu lato disciplines also geography and oceanography having certain connection with our part of the world, North Europe and the Baltic area in particular, are welcome on fully international basis. The manuscripts submitted should meet the following requirements.

It is essential that the paper be written in clear, proper English (British or American usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Manuscripts requiring substantial improvement of English usage may be returned to the author(s) for revision before the review process. Authors for whom English is not their mother tongue should have their manuscripts checked by a competent linguist or native English speaker before submission. The editors reserve the right to adjust style to certain standards of uniformity.

Submission, review and resubmission processes

1. The manuscripts must be submitted online as outlined in the Instructions to authors.
2. The manuscript will be sent to at least two reviewers and one member of the Editorial board.
3. After receiving reviews, the authors of articles must revise the manuscript according to the comments of the reviewers and return it to the editorial office.
4. If there is a need for re-review, the manuscript will be sent back to the reviewers and the authors must revise the manuscript once more.
5. When the manuscript has been revised by the authors, the Editorial board will make the final decision on the acceptability of the article for publication.

All scientific papers to be published in the journal are peer reviewed internationally. The duration of the reviewing process is variable, depending on numerous factors. However, typically the entire process from the submission of the first version of the manuscript to publication takes 4 to 6 months.

instructions to authors

PUBLICATION TYPES

Research articles should describe results and applications of unpublished original research and describe novel theoretical considerations and ideas. The length of an abstract is up to 1600 characters with spaces (approx. 250 words). Mathematical expressions and citations in the abstract should be avoided. The abstract should be followed by keywords (max seven) with the first key word indicating the discipline of the study. Original research articles should be supported by relevant figures and tables and should be preferably no more than 35 double-spaced pages in length, including figures, tables, references and summary (12 printed pages in maximum). Each page exceeding this volume shall be liable to a fee to the amount of €75 per page.   

Review articles should provide a broad and balanced overview of the current state of a research field, highlight the main methodologies and research techniques in use, and may identify gaps in existing knowledge. The length of an abstract is up to 1600 characters with spaces (approx. 250 words).

Short communications follow the structure of research articles, but their length should be no more than 9 double-spaced pages (15 000 to 20 000 characters depending on the number and size of figures), including figures, tables, references, notes and conclusion. The entire manuscript should fit into four printed pages in maximum. The length of an abstract is up to 1000 characters with spaces.

manuscript elements

The manuscript elements should be in the following order: Title, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Data Availability Statement, Acknowledgements, Appendixes or Supplementary Material (if any), References and Summary in Estonian (not obligatory for foreign authors).

Title
The title should be concise but informative. The arrangement and selection of words is important for indexing purposes. A short running title should be provided.
The name(s), including one forename in full, affiliation(s), full affiliation address(es) and e-mail address(es) of the author(s) should follow the title of the paper.

Abstract
The Abstract (1600 characters with spaces) should be a self-contained summary of the paper, presenting concisely the objectives of the work reported, methodology, results and conclusions. Citations in the abstract should be avoided.

Keywords
The abstract should be followed by keywords (max seven).

Introduction
The introduction should be a review of pertinent work, cite appropriate references, as well as include a clear statement of the object of investigation.

Conclusions
Conclusions should give a short summary of the achieved results followed by possible further steps and extensions.

Data availability statement
Data availability statement should be placed in a separate section before the Acknowledgements and should describe where the research data associated with a paper is available, and under what conditions the data can be accessed.

• If your data are in a repository, include hyperlinks and persistent identifiers (e.g. DOI or accession number) for the data where available.
• If your data cannot be shared openly, for example to protect study participant privacy, then this should be explained.
• Include both original data generated in your research and any secondary data reuse that supports your results and analyses.
• For manuscripts that do not report data, authors can state in their Data Availability Statement that data are contained within the article.

Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section References. The names of funding organizations should be written in full. The institution(s) or person(s) covering the publication costs must be shown in this section.

References
Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences has its reference template available in many of the most popular reference management software products, such as Zotero, Mendeley, Papers etc. These software products support Citation Style Language styles. Using citation plug-ins from these products, authors only need to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their article, after which citations and bibliographies will be automatically formatted in the journal’s style.

References to the literature cited should be indicated at the appropriate place in the text, according to the Harvard (author-year) system, with a reference list in alphabetical order at the end of the paper. All references in this list should appear in the text and vice versa.

References to papers by the same author are sorted according to the number of authors (one, two, three or more). Those of a single author, ordered chronologically, are followed by papers with two authors arranged in alphabetical order according to the name of the second author (and chronologically, if needed). Papers with three or more authors cited in the text as, e.g. Jones et al., should be given in chronological order after those with two authors.

In the reference list the names of the first six authors should be cited followed by et al.

The original titles and publishers in Roman and Slavic alphabets should be retained. The English translation of the title can be provided in brackets immediately after the original title, reference to the original language (other than English) should be indicated in brackets at the end of the reference. Example: Rubel, M. 1970. Брахиоподы Pentamerida и Spiriferida силура Эстонии (Silurian Brachiopods Pentamerida and Spiriferida of Estonia). Valgus, Tallinn (in Russian).

If material is available online, the address and date of access should be given.

Authors are required to include Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for all references where available, ensuring accurate and efficient access to the cited sources.

References should be presented as follows:
(a) Book
Tritton, D. Y. 1988. Physical Fluid Dynamics. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Book by DOI
Torsvik, T. H. and Cocks, L. R. M. 2017. Earth History and Palaeogeography. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316225523

Book chapter
Cairns, A., Carel, J. M. and Li, X. 2016. Port and harbor design. In Springer Handbook of Ocean Engineering (Dhanak, M. R. and Xiros, N. I., eds). Springer, Cham, 685–710. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16649-0_31

(b) Article in journal
Reintam, L. 2003. Current primary pedogenesis on Devonian sandstone in southern Estonia. Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Geology, 52, 28–41.

Article by DOI (with page numbers)
Brewer, C. A., Hatchard, G. W. and Harrower, M. A. 2003. ColorBrewer in print: a catalog of color schemes for maps. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 30(1), 5–32. 
https://doi.org/10.1559/152304003100010929

Article by DOI (before issue publication and without page numbers)
Dong, T. Y. and Goudge, T. A. 2022. Quantitative relationships between river and channel-belt planform patterns. Geology. https://doi.org/10.1130/G49935.1

Article in electronic journal by DOI (no paginated version)
Höhle, J. 2021. Automated mapping of buildings through classification of DSM-based ortho-images and cartographic enhancement. International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation, 95, 102237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2020.102237

(c) Article in collection
Cooper, R. A. 1992. A relative timescale for the early Ordovician derived from depositional rates of graptolite shells. In Global Perspectives on Ordovician Geology (Webby, B. D. and Laurie, J. R., eds). Balkema, Rotterdam, 3–21.

(d) Conference paper
Ainsaar, L., Meidla, T. and Hints, O. 2019. Carbon isotopic composition of Ordovician carbonates in Baltoscandia: shallow marine facies shifting the δ13Ccarb values in different ways. In Contributions: 13th International Symposium on the Ordovician System, Novosibirsk, Russia, 19–22 July 2019 (Obut, O. T., Sennikov, N. V. and Kipriyanova, T. P., eds). Publishing House of SB RAS, Novosibirsk, 7–8.

(e) Organisation’s publication
CMEMS. 2021. Baltic Sea anomaly time series of sea surface temperature. https://marine.copernicus.eu/access-data/ocean-monitoring-indicators/baltic-sea-anomaly-time-series-sea-surface-temperature (accessed 2021-10-18).

(f) Organisation’s website
International Organisation of Palaeobotany. https://palaeobotany.org (accessed 2020-05-04). 

(g) Thesis
Vandekerkhove, E. 2021. Impact of climate change on the occurrence of late Holocene glacial lake outburst floods in Patagonia: a sediment perspective. PhD thesis. Ghent University, Belgium.

(h) Patent
Ortoleva, P. 2002-01-31. Methods and systems for simulation-enhanced fracture detections in sedimentary basins. Patent, US20020013687A1.

(i) Report
Savitskaja, L., Viigand, A. and Jashtshuk, S. 1995. Aruanne ordoviitsiumi-kambriumi veekihi põhjavee mikrokomponentide sisalduse ja isotoopkoostise uurimisest joogivee kvaliteedi hindamiseks (Report on the Microcomponent and Isotopic Composition of Groundwater in the Ordovician–Cambrian Aquifer System for Estimating Drinking Water Quality in North Estonia). Geological Survey of Estonia, Tallinn (in Estonian).

Estonian summary
The manuscript should include also a summary in Estonian (not obligatory for foreign authors).

notations and abbreviations

Notations must be clear, compact and consistent with standard usage. All notations and abbreviations should be defined in the text. Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract.

Equations should be numbered consecutively with equation numbers enclosed in parentheses at the right margin of the page. In the text, reference to an equation should be in the form of an equation number enclosed in parentheses.

The lettering (upper- and lowercase letters, italic, bold) should follow the usage in the text. Different parts of a figure should be marked by uppercase letters. The size of symbols and lettering should not be smaller than 1.5 mm.

illustrations

Illustrations should be prepared in their final format (i.e. no enlarging or reducing will be necessary) and fit into the print area of the journal. The maximum size of an illustration is that of one journal page (176 mm × 263 mm) or of one column (85 mm × 263 mm). All illustrations must be clearly numbered and provided with self-explanatory legends. The appropriate place for each illustration in the text should be indicated. The text, tables and illustrations should not repeat one another.

Photographs (digital or scanned) should be saved as .tif or .eps files at a resolution of at least 300 dpi.

Colour illustrations should be in RGB and CMYK mode (resolution at least 300 dpi). Authors will be asked to cover the full cost for reproduction of colour artwork at a rate of €35 for one printed page. Colour figures online will be published free of charge.

If you wish to include any previously published figures or tables, written permission (for both the print and online formats) must be obtained from the copyright holder prior to submission, except for publications with open access licences. Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure/table caption.

Supplementary online material

Large data tables, figures, photos and long descriptions, which do not fit into the printed version of the paper, can be published as online supplementary material. The journal uses the Estonian geoscience data repository SARV (http://geocollections.info/doi) for depositing such data. Each individual data file will receive a persistent and unique DOI number, its metadata will become available through the DataCite service (http://datacite.org), and it can be cited within the paper and by any other publication using the DOI number. The authors are encouraged to use this option, or any other research data archive that is connected to DataCite and provides DOI numbers for research data.

In order to ensure long-term usability of research data, the data files should be prepared in simple and open formats. For any tabular data plain text format should be used (tab-delimited text or comma-separated values; Microsoft Excel or OpenDocument spreadsheet files can be provided in addition to these if necessary). In case of long texts, images and combined data, pdf should be used. For DataCite metadata indexing, the following mandatory information needs to be provided with each data file: (1) creators’/authors’ names (may be different from article authors) and (2) dataset title. Additionally key words, abstract, geolocation data and other properties may be specified for each individual dataset. Please consult the associate editor O. Hints (olle.hints@taltech.ee) for details on metadata fields, and specific data types and formats.

All supplementary data files should be included at the first submission. The files should be ready for publication – these are not edited by the journal copy-editor. The data should be cited in appropriate places in the article text and a section ‘Supplementary online data’ added before the list of references, listing all data files associated with the paper.

submission

Manuscripts for the Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences should be submitted online. The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. To submit your manuscript, register and log in to the submission website. If you have problems with our article submission system, please contact hedi.tonso@eap.ee.

Please take the time to read and follow the instructions, as doing so will ensure your paper matches the journal’s requirements.

The attachments sent through the submission system should include:

• the covering letter (.doc, .docx, .rtf);
• the text files of the paper in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf);
• the PDF file of the paper (text, illustrations and tables in one file);
• original files of illustrations and/or tables (.xls, .xlsx, .tif, .eps, .psd, .ai).

A covering letter must be included with each manuscript submission. It should be concise and explain why the content of the paper is significant, placing the findings in the context of existing work. It should explain why the manuscript fits the scope of the journal.

Covering letter is required to include the statements:

• Author(s) confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal.
• All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to (journal name).
• Author(s) must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state “The author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest.”

orcid

The journal recommends that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID). Registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work. As the ORCID remains the same through out the lifetime of the account, changes of name, affiliation, or research area do not effect the discoverability of an author’s past work and aid correspondence with colleagues.

The journal recommends that all authors include an ORCID within their submitting author data. ORCID numbers should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

Authors will also need to follow these instructions on the ORCID website: https://support.orcid.org/hc/en-us/articles/360006896394-Auto-updates-time-saving-and-trust-building.

article publication charges

When submitting an article to the Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences of Sciences, the corresponding author agrees to pay the article processing charges. The charges (standard article publication fee or ‘fast track’ fee, the excess page fee and cost of colour illustrations) are payable by the author, their institution, or funder of the research.

The invoice with the bank details will be sent to the corresponding author. Prompt payment is advised, as the article will not be included in the production cycle until payment is received. Payment should be made in Euro to the bank account of the Estonian Academy Publishers.

To partly cover publication costs of papers, the Estonian Academy Publishers charges a standard article publication fee of €600 per publication of papers up to 12 printed pages. For all papers longer than 12 printed pages, an additional charge of €75 will be requested for each extra page. Cost of Short communication publication fee (max. 4 printed pages) is €300. Cost of ‘Fast track’ publication is €1200 for both, standard article and short communication. Authors will be asked to cover the full cost for reproduction of colour illustrations at a rate of €45 for one printed page. Colour illustrations online will be published free of charge.

Description	EUR
Research and review article publication fee (max 12 printed pages)	600
Short communication publication fee (max 4 printed pages)	300
Excess page fee (1 printed page)	75
Colour illustrations (1 printed page)	45
‘Fast track‘ publication fee (incl colour illustrations)	1200

No handling fee is applied to the manuscripts rejected by the publisher.

The standard publication fee of articles up to 12 printed pages will be waived by the Estonian Academy of Sciences to the authors whose work was supported by Estonian granting agencies or other Estonian funding bodies and the authors have explicitly stated this information in the Acknowledgements. Requests for waivers of publication and/or excess page fees should be presented in the covering letter.

fast track

After the final decision about manuscript acceptance the authors have a possibility of applying for ‘fast track‘ publication. If this application is accepted, the paper will be included in the next issue. Due to the extra publication costs, the authors will be asked to pay ‘fast track‘ publication fee. ‘Fast track‘ publication fee includes colour figures.

proofs

The author (or the corresponding author) will receive a PDF file for correcting printer’s errors. No changes may be made and no new material inserted in the text at the time of proofreading.

offprints

Payable offprints of an article (minimum 10 copies) can be ordered from the Editorial office at proof stage.