Copernicus Publications is the largest open-access publisher in the geo- and earth system sciences and the publishing house of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). It is a non-profit operation based in Göttingen, Germany: the Copernicus Gesellschaft was founded in 1988, and the publishing arm has run peer-reviewed open-access journals since 2001. Every one of its roughly 40 journals is fully open access under a CC BY license - there are no subscription or hybrid titles - and 20 of them are published on behalf of the EGU, including Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), The Cryosphere, Biogeosciences, and Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

Copernicus is best known for something else, though: it was one of the first publishers to make peer review public. Most of its journals use interactive public peer review, where your preprint is posted for open discussion before formal acceptance. This guide explains how that works, what the journals cost, and how to submit.

Copernicus journals are scoped by earth-system discipline, so the choice is usually straightforward. The table below maps common paper types to flagship venues.

Around 40 fully open-access journals, nearly all in the earth and environmental sciences:

• EGU journals (20) - the core portfolio, spanning Annales Geophysicae, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, Biogeosciences, Climate of the Past, Earth Surface Dynamics, Earth System Dynamics, Geochronology, Geoscientific Model Development, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, Ocean Science, SOIL, Solid Earth, The Cryosphere, and Weather and Climate Dynamics.
• Other society and partner journals - titles published for other learned societies and institutions, such as the European Journal of Mineralogy, Journal of Micropalaeontology, Archives Animal Breeding, and E&G Quaternary Science Journal.
• EGUsphere - the EGU's open preprint repository, where discussion papers for most EGU journals are now posted during interactive review.

Copernicus is a founding member of OASPA and a member of COPE and STM; all journals follow COPE guidance on ethics and retractions.

Every Copernicus journal is Gold open access: the final paper is immediately free to read under a CC BY license, and authors retain copyright. There are no subscription paywalls, no hybrid options, and therefore no transformative agreements to worry about - although many institutions have central agreements with Copernicus that pay APCs on authors' behalf, so check with your library.

APCs below are 2026 net prices in EUR; Copernicus revises fees periodically and a few journals still price per page (with different rates for LaTeX and Word submissions), so always check the journal's APC page before submitting.

Discounts and waivers: EGU members receive discounts on many EGU journals, and reduced or waived fees are available for authors from Research4Life and economically disadvantaged European countries. Several journals charge no APC at all because institutions fund them directly.

Copernicus journals run a two-stage process that is unusually transparent:

1. Access review - a topical editor performs a rapid initial screen.
2. Public discussion - the manuscript is posted as a preprint (on EGUsphere for EGU journals) and opened for interactive discussion, typically for several weeks. Invited referees post comments - anonymously or signed - and any registered scientist can contribute. Authors reply publicly.
3. Revision and final decision - authors revise in light of the discussion; the editor makes the final decision. The discussion paper, referee comments, author replies, and (for accepted papers) the final revised paper all remain permanently citable online.

This means your reviews are part of the public record - many authors find the process more constructive and accountable than closed review.

1. Pick the journal. Match your topic to the journal scopes above; each journal site lists detailed subject areas.
2. Prepare the manuscript. Use the Copernicus LaTeX package or Word template - available on SciSpace - and the Copernicus author-date citation style.
3. Submit via the Copernicus Office Editor. All journals use Copernicus's own online submission and review system.
4. Engage in the discussion phase. Respond to referee and community comments publicly and on time.
5. Revise and finalize. After acceptance, English copy-editing and typesetting are handled in-house; publication is immediate and open.

Copernicus is a founding OASPA member and follows COPE guidelines on misconduct, corrections, and retractions. Data availability statements are mandatory across the portfolio, and data-focused journals like ESSD require datasets to be deposited in trusted repositories with DOIs. The publisher demonstrated its willingness to act on integrity problems when it terminated the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics in 2014 over compromised peer review.