At a glance

• European Geologist is a bi-annual Diamond Open Access publication (free to publish and free to read)
• Articles are peer reviewed by an independent Reviewers Board
• Calls for abstracts for the thematic issues are published twice per year, in June and December
• ISSN: 1028-267X (print) and 2294-8813 (online)

Further information

• Latest issue
• Previous issues
• Scope
• Open-access policy
• Copyright and licensing
• Notes for contributors
• Editorial process
• Editorial Board
• Reviewers Board
• Guidelines for peer reviewers
• Publication ethics statement
• Hard copies
• Advertisement
• Contact

Topic

Climate change – Increasing resilience with geological knowledge 

Editorial by Glen Burridge

Pan-European geological data, information, and knowledge for a resilient, sustainable, and collaborative future by Julie Hollis, Stephanie Bricker, Dana Čápová, Klaus Hinsby, Hans-Georg Krenmayr, Phillippe Negrel, Daniel Oliveira, Eleftheria Poyiadji, Serge van Gessel, Sytze van Heteren, Guri Venvik

How to ensure better consideration and mitigation of the shrinkage–swelling risk of clays? by Steve Gruslin, Tiffany Hennebaut and Mattia Tirone

The European Geologist Journal is an online peer-reviewed publication for professional geologists issued by the European Federation of Geologists.

It is published twice a year and carries technical and professional articles on geological topics and other matters. The European Geologist Journal aims to communicate issues relating to professional geology and EFG activities to the geological community. The European Commission and Parliament are also informed about geology-related matters through this channel. The European Geologist Journal provides a platform to publish work by members of National Associations of the European Federation of Geologists and others and to share knowledge and experience, including work done by Working Groups and Panels of Experts of the EFG. Furthermore, it is used as a means of communication for National Associations about their professional geology activities and the dissemination of best practice. The Journal aims to emphasise the importance of geosciences to society and the benefits of incorporating geoscientific advice in policy and decision making.

The Editorial Board of the European Geologist journal welcomes article proposals in line with the specific topic agreed on by the EFG Council. The call for articles is published twice a year, in June and December. The European Geologist journal publishes feature articles covering all branches of geosciences. EGJ furthermore publishes book reviews; interviews carried out with geoscientists for the section ‘Professional profiles’ and news relevant to the geological profession.

All articles published in the European Geologist journal are made immediately available worldwide under an open-access license.

This means:

• everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles published in the European Geologist journal;
• everyone is free to reuse the published material if proper accreditation/citation of the original publication is given;
• the authors retain the copyright of their work instead of transferring it to the European Geologist journal.

This policy complies with the DOAJ definition of open access. 

What does ‘Open Access’ mean?

Under major definitions of open access in scientific literature (namely the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda declarations), the European Federation of Geologists defines open access as follows:

• peer-reviewed literature is freely available without subscription or price barriers,
• literature is immediately released in open access format (no embargo period), and
• published material can be reused without obtaining permission as long as a correct citation to the original publication is given.

Open access publishing fosters the exchange of research results amongst scientists from different disciplines and facilitates interdisciplinary research. This principle is, for instance, also applied within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 framework programme.

EFG applies the open access principle since 2010, when the European Geologist journal was first published online. Since then, all issues are freely available online. By 2021, European Geologist articles are officially published under the Creative Commons Attribution License. The articles are using the latest version of the CC BY license, which grants authors the most extensive rights.

For further details, please check the section on Copyright and Licensing.

The Editorial Board is appointed by the Board of the European Federation of Geologists on behalf of the Council and consists of at least three EFG Council delegates, the Editor-in-Chief and the EFG External Relations Officer (see EFG Regulation G3 for further details).

The current members of the Editorial Board are:

• Pavlos Tyrologou (Editor-in-Chief), Centre for Research & Technology Hellas and EFG External Relations Officer
• Pierre Christe, Service de l’Environnement, Canton du Vallais
• Vitor Correia, International Raw Materials Observatory
• Isabel Fernández, European Federation of Geologists
• Hans-Jürgen Gursky, University of Clausthal
• Eva Hartai, University of Miskolc
• Michael Neumann, Professional Association of German Geoscientists
• Edmund Nickless, Geological Society of London

Staff and layout editor: Anita Stein

Copy editor: Robin Nagano

Since 2010, European Geologist is an open access publication which is freely available online.

Hard copies may be purchased at a price of 15 € per copy.

• Title followed by the author(s) name(s), place of work and email address,
• Abstract in English, French and Spanish,
• Main text without figures,
• Acknowledgements (optional),
• References.

• Translation of the abstracts to French and Spanish can be provided by EFG.
• The abstract should summarize the essential information provided by the article in not more than 120 words.
• It should be intelligible without reference to the article and should include information on scope and objectives of the work described, methodology, results obtained and conclusions.

• The main text should be no longer than 10 pages, provided in doc or docx format.
• Figures should be referred in the text in italic.
• Citation of references in the main text should be as follows: ‘Vidas and Cooper (2009) calculated…’ or ‘Possible reservoirs include depleted oil and gas fields… (Holloway et al., 2005)’. When reference is made to a work by three or more authors, the first name followed by ‘et al.’ should be used.
• Please limit the use of footnotes and number them in the text via superscripts. Instead of using footnotes, it is preferable to suggest further reading.

• Figures should be submitted as separate files in JPEG or TIFF format with at least 300dpi.
• Authors are invited to suggest optimum positions for figures and tables even though lay-out considerations may require some changes.

• Video material and animation sequences may be submitted to support and enhance your scientific research and will be published online in the electronic version of your article.
• Please provide the file in one of our recommended file formats (avi, mov, mp4 or mpg format). Use H.264 encoding if possible and do not compress the video. The duration should not be longer than 5 minutes with a maximum size of 150 MB per file, 600 MB in total.
• Since video material can’t be embedded in the print version of European Geologist, please provide text for both the electronic and the print version of the article that refer to this content. The print version will include a web link to the supplementary material.

• Supplementary information includes material that is essential background, but which is too large or specialised to justify inclusion in the print/PDF version of the paper.
• Examples: Tables larger than one page (in general, >50 rows or >10 columns) provided as tabular data files; applications; images; sound clips.
• Supplementary items are published exactly as they are submitted (Excel or PowerPoint files will appear as such online). 

• References shall be listed alphabetically at the end of the manuscript in the following manner:
• Journal articles: Author surname, initial(s). Date of publication. Title of article. Journal name, Volume number. First page – last page.
• Books: Author surname, initial(s). Date of publication. Title. Place of publication.

• Measurements and units: Geoscientists use Système International (SI) units. If the measurement (for example, if it was taken in 1850) was not in SI, please convert it (in parentheses). If the industry standard is not SI, exceptions are permitted.

• A video abstract is an optional submission in which you briefly explain your paper in a short presentation. It will enhance the visibility of your research. Note that video abstracts are subject to peer review.
• Tell a whole story and speak as if you were addressing a class of students.
• Use different techniques, such as animations, to explain your article. You can also make scene shots of your surroundings like your institute, building, environment, etc.
• If you decide to use an interview setting, the person doing the interview should be someone other than the one doing the filming. The person being interviewed doesn’t have to look straight at the camera; a slight angle often works better.
• Use a tripod as this will make your video steady.
• Use enough light during recording, but avoid any bright light coming from behind the person being interviewed (windows, sunlight). A light source coming from behind the camera gives the best results.
• Anyone speaking should not stand too close to walls to avoid shadow and possible echo effects.
• Speak clearly and loudly enough. Use of a microphone is recommended, but don’t place it too close to your mouth to avoid breathing noises.
• Clearly state the names of the spokespersons and provide legends, titles etc.
• Edit your video to improve the recording. You can make use of software such as Adobe Premiere Elements, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Cinelerra and others.

• We invite you to use the following article template to set up your article.

Note

All information published in the journal remains the responsibility of individual contributors. The Editorial Board is not liable for any views or opinions expressed by these authors.

EFG broadly disseminates geology-related information among geologists, geoscientific organizations and the private sector which is an important employer for our professional members, but also to the general public.

• EFG website, www.eurogeologists.eu
• GeoNews, a monthly newsletter with information relevant to the geosciences community. We distribute the GeoNews to direct subscribers, as well as to our National membership associations that distribute it to their own members.
• EFGeoWeek, a weekly publication compiling information from the EFG website, the social media and other publicly accessible media sources relevant for European geoscientists.
• European Geologist Journal, EFG’s biannual journal. Since 2010 the European Geologist Journal is published online on our website and distributed electronically. Some copies of the EGJ are printed for our members associations and the EFG Office that distributes them to the EU Institutions and companies.

By means of these tools, EFG reaches approximately 50,000 European geologists as well as the international geology community.
EFG offers different options for advertising. For the individual prices of these different advertisement options please refer to the table below.
In addition, we propose an advantageous annual sponsorship-package of 3500€ including the subscription of the company logo to our homepage, the GeoNews, the EFGeoWeek and in the European Geologist Journal (2 issues, full page colour ad).

• Increasing visibility of your company profile with a direct link to your website via the different communication tools of EFG.
• Broad distribution of your company’s news in the newsfeed of our homepage and in the GeoNews.
• Promotion of your events, publications or new products relevant to our geologists’ community.
• Ads of your job offers relevant to our members for free in the job section of our webpage.