Interactive Public Discussion

In the Interactive Public Discussion following the publication of a paper in eEarth Discussions (eED), the following types of interactive comments can be submitted for immediate non-peer-reviewed publication alongside the discussion paper:

Short Comments (SC) can be posted by any registered member of the scientific community (free online registration). Such comments are attributed, i.e. published under the name of the commentator.

Referee Comments (RC) can only be posted by the referees involved in the peer-review of the discussion paper. They can be anonymous or attributed (according to the referee's preference).

Editor Comments (EC) can only be posted by the editor of the discussion paper.

Author Comments (AC) can only be posted by the contact author of the discussion paper on behalf of all co-authors.

All interactive comments are fully citable, paginated, and archived as a supplement to eED.

Figures and Supplements

Comments can be composed by using either plain text or LaTeX formatting. Complex content without LaTeX commands can be uploaded as a *.pdf file and will be displayed as a supplement to the comment. In any case, figures can directly be included in the comment.

The Interactive Public Discussion comprises two Phases

Phase 1: Open Discussion (8 weeks)

The referees are asked to publish one or more Referee Comments and every registered member of the scientific community may publish Short Comments as defined above. The authors of the discussion paper have the option (but no obligation) to reply by publishing their own Short Comments individually, or by Author Comments collectively on behalf of all co-authors. The authors of a discussion paper are automatically informed by e-mail about the publication of comments in the Interactive Public Discussion of their paper. Publication alert services will also be available to other members of the scientific community. The publication of interactive comments is supervised by the editors, who have the option of censoring comments that are not of a substantial nature and of direct relevance to the issues raised in the discussion paper or which contain personal insults. Authors are advised to follow the discussion of their paper and to notify the editor in case of abusive commenting. The eE editorial board reserves the right to exclude abusive commentators.

To participate in the interactive discussion of a paper recently published in eED, please locate this paper on the eED Website and follow the appropriate links there.

Phase 2: Final Response

After the open discussion no more Short Comments and Referee Comments are accepted, but the contact author and the editor of the discussion paper have the opportunity to publish final Author Comments and Editor Comments, respectively. The final response phase is generally limited to 4 weeks (expandable to 8 weeks) and automatically terminated upon submission of a revised manuscript. Before submitting a revised version of their manuscript for publication in eE (second stage of publication), the authors are supposed to have answered the Referee Comments and relevant Short Comments cumulatively or individually in one or more Author Comments.