Aims and scope

The Cryosphere (TC) is a not-for-profit international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of research articles, short communications, and review papers on all aspects of frozen water and frozen ground.

The main subject areas are the following:

• ice sheets and glaciers;
• permafrost and seasonally frozen ground;
• seasonal snow cover;
• sea ice;
• river and lake ice;
• remote sensing, numerical modelling, and in situ and laboratory studies of the above;
• interactions of the cryosphere with the Earth system;
• perspectives on all elements of the cryosphere research landscape, including disciplines outside the natural sciences;
• planetary ice bodies.

The Cryosphere has an innovative two-stage publication process which involves interactive scientific discussion of preprints and utilizes the full potential of the Internet to do 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 editors are immediately posted preprints, either on EGUsphere, EGU's preprint repository, or on The Cryosphere Discussions (TCD). They are then subject to interactive public discussion, during which the referee's comments (anonymous or attributed), additional comments by other members of the scientific community (attributed), and the author's 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 TC. To ensure publication precedence for authors, and to provide a lasting record of scientific discussion, EGUsphere, TCD, and TC are ISSN-registered, permanently archived, and fully citable.