Aims and scope

Geochronology (GChron) is a not-for-profit open-access open-review journal providing a unified outlet for high-quality basic and applied research in geochronology, independent of technique used or timescale considered. Geochronology publishes research in all aspects of geoscience that aim to determine times or rates of geologic events and processes: basic research into fundamental physics and chemistry of geologic dating methods; novel applications across the full range of geosciences; and developments in standardization and intercomparison, statistical methods, data management, and computational infrastructure. Geochronology aims to encourage and sustain innovation in geochronology by providing a centralized communication platform that transcends specific fields of application and focuses on the common theme of quantifying geologic time.

Geochronology considers the publication of research articles, review articles, short communications, and comments/replies.

Geochronology has a two-stage publication process that involves a scientific discussion forum and utilizes the full potential of the Internet to ensure the following:

  • foster scientific discussion;
  • enhance the effectiveness and transparency of scientific quality assurance;
  • enable rapid publication;
  • make scientific publications freely accessible.

In the first stage, manuscripts that pass a rapid access review by one of the associate editors are immediately posted as preprints on EGUsphere, EGU's preprint repository, or in the discussion forum Geochronology Discussions (GChronD). They are then subject to interactive public discussion, during which the referees' comments (anonymous or attributed), additional comments by other members of the scientific community (attributed), and the authors' replies are also posted alongside the preprint. In the second stage, the peer-review process is completed and, if accepted, the final revised papers are published in GChron. To ensure publication precedence for authors, and to provide a lasting record of scientific discussion, EGUsphere, GChronD, and GChron are ISSN-registered, permanently archived, and fully citable.

As all EGU journals Geochronology has very high standards regarding transparency and publication ethics. For full details please refer to the general obligations for editors.