Introducing Research Letters in Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology
Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology now offers Research Letters, a new format for brief, timely, scientific communications, launched on the journal’s 40th anniversary.
AGU’s journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology is introducing a new article type – Research Letters. These concise, high-impact contributions aim to communicate timely scientific results in a compact format. Each Research Letter is limited to 12 publication units, with one unit typically amounting to about 500 words or one figure or table.
This new format was inspired by the success of the “Paleoceanographic Currents” series, introduced in 1992, which recognized the value of brief, current contributions that generate significant interest. In today’s era of voluminous publishing, the need for brief, focused submissions has become even more crucial.
Research Letters are well-suited for a wide range of topics within the field, including proxy advances, drilling approaches or sampling strategies that enable more detailed reconstructions. They can also feature critical discoveries in chronology, stratigraphic correlation, or numerical analyses that effectively communicate results in a shorter format.
The format is particularly useful for presenting mechanistic or statistical models, results from climate simulations, and proxy comparisons that help test hypotheses or establish benchmarks. Additionally, Research Letters can provide timely paleo perspectives on current climate events, such as major El Niño episodes, heatwaves, monsoons, ice calving, coral bleaching, droughts, or circulation extremes.
By connecting present-day phenomena to well-constrained paleoclimate analogs, these letters place current events within a broader Earth-system context.
Submissions will undergo the same rigorous peer review as all other articles in the journal. Authors can benefit from AGU’s manuscript transfer process, streamlining the publication journey. The introduction of Research Letters aims to highlight methodological and interpretive advances more readily across the diverse subfields of paleoceanography and paleoclimatology. AGU encourages submissions of concise, self-contained results fitting within the scope of the journal.
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