Biogeochemistry - Synthesis and Emerging Ideas

Editor: Sharon Billings (sharon.billings@ku.edu)

To complement traditional articles published in Biogeochemistry and those published in the Biogeochemistry Letters section, we also consider contributions representing a more theoretical and/or synthetic approach as part of the Synthesis and Emerging Ideas section. We invite authors to submit papers that will advance the field of biogeochemistry by challenging fundamental concepts, describing new tools, or offering novel hypotheses prompted by extant literature or new datasets. Review papers that summarize existing knowledge without offering new, emergent questions or hypotheses are not appropriate for this section. Rather, we are especially interested in manuscripts that synthesize existing knowledge to generate new questions, ideas, theories, and discussion and that have the potential to initiate new research trajectories. 

Synthesis and Emerging Ideas papers should be prepared (and will be reviewed) with the same intellectual rigor as other papers published in Biogeochemistry. However, the review/acceptance process will focus to a greater extent on the potential value of the presented ideas for re-focusing biogeochemists’ lines of reasoning. When reviewing and selecting papers we will attempt to select works that have particular promise for advancing biogeochemical thinking and research by defining hypotheses for the community to test or outlining refined questions of interest with a newly acquired lens.

Papers for the Synthesis and Emerging Ideas section should be submitted through the online Editorial Manager system as for other papers, but authors must indicate using the drop-down menu that they wish the paper to be considered for this special section. Alternatively, authors may submit an idea via a cover letter to the section, and the editors will respond quickly with a decision as to whether the paper meets the criteria of the section.