EGU Letters: EGU’s virtual highlight magazine

EGU Letters are short papers (< 2500 words) that highlight outstanding research of broad relevance across the geosciences. They are characterized by both of the following key features:

– Important discoveries and highlights in geoscientific research.

– Solutions to or progress with long-standing and important questions in their research area.

In addition, the reported research findings should be of high interest to the broad geoscience community or to the broader public and media.

Introduced in 2020, ‘EGU Letters’ is not a standalone journal. Instead, they comprise a curated selection of Letters published within individual EGU journals, currently including ACP, BG, ESD, GC, NPG, OS, and SOIL. To date, approximately 50 EGU Letters have been published. The public peer-review process for Letters is conducted within the respective host journals and is overseen by their editorial teams. EGU Letters represent a highly selective subset of EGU publications, accounting for approximately 0.4% of all EGU publications and around 1% of papers published in the journals that currently consider this manuscript type. This high level of selectivity reflects the central aim of the format: to identify and showcase particularly impactful articles of broad interest to the geoscience community.

EGU Letters extend the well-established, multistage publishing process of the EGU journal portfolio. They constitute a third step, following public peer review and discussion on EGUsphere and subsequent peer-review completion and publication in an EGU journal. This approach enables the efficient identification of exceptional contributions without compromising scientific completeness, rigor, or quality assurance. As a result, EGU Letters are expected to reach a level of quality and credibility comparable to, and potentially exceeding, that of similar formats in other high-impact interdisciplinary journals, while integrated within the EGU interactive open-access publishing framework. We will answer questions related to Letter submissions, scope, and editorial handling, discuss the role of EGU Letters within the broader EGU publication landscape, and welcome any suggestions and feedback for their further development.