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GSA Today articles types: Summary

Type Science Article Groundwork Article Rock Stars Article

6 print pages, cover photo, variable Two print pages, usually no more Two print pages, figures as
Size
number of figures than 1 figure appropriate

Possible topics: Review aimed at Any issue of interest to the society Short piece on a legend of
graduate-level classes, new tools membership including but not geosciences, a person whose
Brief description and methods in geosciences, limited to teaching methods, new contribution influenced
paradigm shifting ideas of broad tools, commentaries on various significantly the evolution of
interest topics knowledge in this field

Figure 1. Summary of types of GSA Today articles.

field in a non-insular way. International contributors are more likely reason for not being counted by the Web of Science is that GSA
to bring to light the details of the life and work of their heroes and Today publishes too small a number of science articles a year,
trailblazers. We encourage the submission of more such articles in which does not allow it to make the cut for the gate keepers of the
the future. Web of Science. Fair enough. This shortcoming is unlikely to
Once a science article is accepted by GSA Today, the authors change any time soon, and many scientists outside of the U.S. are
also have a cover. The cover of the issue will have an image or required to have “WOS” (Web of Science) publications for their
images of the authors’ choice, be it a field shot or a representative promotion packages or for grant proposal eligibility. This short-
figure. This alone is a great perk; many geology departments in coming alone could make GSA Today a nonstarter to an early-
the U.S. are decorated with cover images from papers written by career foreign scientist. However, if this is not an issue (and it is
home authors. GSA Today is one of those journals that would stand not for most North American academics), one can note that in
proudly next to a cover in Geology, Elements, or, of course, one Elsevier’s highly respected database Scopus (www.scopus.com),
tied to a Nature or Science paper. It is great free advertisement for GSA Today consistently ranks in the top 10 of the over 250 jour-
one’s work, and we live in an era where individual researchers nals listed in the field of “Geology” and has been in the upper 98th
cannot and usually do not know or have time to “sell” their work. and 95th percentile (4th to 8th place) in 2020 and 2021, respec-
GSA Today moves pretty quickly through review (although we tively. Its most recent impact factor is 6.9, which is near the top of
are guilty of some exceptions—they do happen). From submission geosciences journals. These numbers have been steady over the
to acceptance, science articles take about 4.3 months on average past decade, and they are impressive. Viewed from the popular
(for the period 2016–2021), and the pdf of the typeset article is Google Scholar database perspective, the numbers look even bet-
then available on the GSA Today site in an average of 30 days. It ter: A GSA Today science article collects on average about 25 cita-
takes only another 2.72 months on average for the accepted paper tions per year on that database. Many of these papers end up hav-
to be published in an issue. So, unless there are major changes in ing many hundreds of citations over a 10–20-year period, which is
the flux of submissions, it’s a pretty fast affair: Eight months from hard to achieve in a topical journal. The message published in
submission to publication on average. those GSA Today articles is getting across and citations do follow.
GSA Today papers (science articles, groundwork articles, or So why not publish in GSA Today? To get started, go to https://
Rock Stars pieces) are not counted in the Web of Science (owned www.geosociety.org/gsatoday.
by Clarivate Analytics), and that is something of a problem. The

www.geosociety.org/gsatoday 5