Announcement: Geoscientific Model Development -New journal for climate model descriptions/evaluation

Dear All,

The message will be of interest to climate and Earth System modelers, whatever the domain of application.

I'm writing to make you aware (or remind you) of the existence of a new EGU Open Access journal devoted to numerical modeling, called Geoscientific Model Development (GMD)

http://www.geoscientific-model-development.net

The journal arose from the observation that despite modelling being central to climate/earth system science, the models themselves are not generally subject to the same level of scrutiny and peer review as the results they generate. Model descriptions are generally (with some exceptions) difficult to publish independent from scientific results, and so are necessarily space-limited when they do appear. Consequently, it is not uncommon that the description of a given model is spread across several papers, and crucial aspects of the formulation may not be published at all. Issues of reproducibility, platform-dependence, version proliferation and the various fudges and corrections often needed in modeling, are rarely addressed in the literature.

GMD aims to change this by providing a place to publish detailed, peer-reviewed descriptions of numerical models, including verification and validation. Model developers can publish an initial description of a numbered version of their model, and address subsequent changes with a sequence of update papers. Thus, a body of citable literature can be developed which provides an authoritative reference for a given version of the model, greatly improving traceability and giving confidence in the provenance of the code. An additional benefit is that the citations generated will at last recognise the important contribution which model developers make to science.

A detailed rationale for the journal is contained in the GMD White Paper, which can be found here: http://www.geoscientific-model-development.net/gmd_journal_white_paper.pdf

GMD has got off to a solid start, but we would especially welcome more contributions from the climate sciences. Perhaps you have developed a numerical model which would reach a broader audience if its description/testing was published? If so, please consider GMD as a suitable home for that paper.

The publication process is typical for an open access journal: papers are initially published in an on-line discussion journal (Geoscientific Model Development Discussions), for a period of eight weeks. Anonymous reviews are solicited as normal, but are also published in the discussion journal. Anyone else may contribute to the discussions, if they wish. After the discussion period, the revision/review process operates as normal, until the paper is finally accepted or rejected by the handling topical editor. A full description of the process is here:

http://www.geoscientific-model-development.net/review/review_process.html

We are pleased to benefit from a distinguished and knowledgeable team of topical editors from across the span of climate/earth system science.  Our topical editors in this field are: James Annan, Olivier Boucher, Volker Grewe, Hugues Goosse, Julia Hargreaves, Wilco Hazeleger, Patrick Jöckel, Michio Kawamiya, David Lawrence, Olivier Marti, Bette Otto-Bleisner, Andy Ridgwell, Rolf Sander, Andrea Stenke, Pier-Luigi Vidale.

Please contact me if you have any questions, or would like advice on preparing your manuscript.

Best wishes,

Dan Lunt
chief executive editor, GMD.

Dan Lunt                         Tel: +44 (0) 117 33 17483
School of Geographical Sciences
University of Bristol            d.j.lunt@bristol.ac.uk
University Road                  http://www.bridge.bris.ac.uk
Bristol BS8 1SS

GEOSCIENTIFIC MODEL DEVELOPMENT - A NEW EGU JOURNAL FOR DESCRIPTIONS OF MODELS OF THE EARTH SYSTEM
http://www.geoscientific-model-development.net