Publication Guide
The Geological Society of America (GSA) is the definitive US professional society for the earth sciences. Founded in 1888 in Ithaca, New York, and headquartered in Boulder, Colorado since 1967, GSA serves a global membership across more than 100 countries. Its publishing program is small but influential: rather than thousands of titles, GSA concentrates on a handful of journals that geoscientists know by name - Geology, GSA Bulletin, Geosphere, and the member magazine GSA Today - all hosted on the GeoScienceWorld platform.
This guide covers how to choose among the GSA journals, what each one publishes, the publication-fee and open-access structure (which works differently from commercial publishers' flat APCs), the peer-review workflow, and how to submit.
Which GSA journal fits your paper?
| You're most likely to... | Choose this journal |
|---|---|
| Have a provocative, broadly interesting result you can present in four pages | Geology - GSA's flagship. Publishes about 23 short (four-page) refereed papers per month; strict limits (18,500 characters, 35 references, 4 figures/tables). The highest-impact GSA title (2025 JIF 4.6). |
| Have a comprehensive, data-rich study that needs room | GSA Bulletin - continuously published since 1889; full-length papers across all aspects of the geosciences (2025 JIF 3.6). |
| Want gold open access and multimedia-friendly publishing | Geosphere - online-only and fully open access; encourages animations, interactive figures, and large datasets. |
| Have a tectonics / lithospheric-processes paper | Lithosphere - launched by GSA in 2009, now published open access by GeoScienceWorld on behalf of partner societies. |
| Want to reach the whole GSA membership with a science overview | GSA Today - GSA's open-access science and news magazine; feature articles are invited or proposed to the editors, and there is no publication fee. |
| Work on applied environmental or engineering geology | Environmental & Engineering Geoscience - co-published with the Association of Environmental & Engineering Geologists via Editorial Manager. |
What GSA publishes
- Geology - short-format, high-visibility research letters across every earth-science discipline. Innovative, timely, and aimed at a broad geoscience audience.
- GSA Bulletin - the society's original journal (since 1889), for substantial peer-reviewed studies covering all aspects of the geosciences.
- Geosphere - online-only gold-OA journal for high-quality research from all geoscience fields, with support for interactive and animated content.
- GSA Today - monthly open-access magazine combining a peer-reviewed science article with society news.
- Environmental & Engineering Geoscience - applied journal co-published with AEG.
- Books - the Special Papers and Memoirs series of peer-reviewed scholarly volumes, plus public-science titles.
Lithosphere, which GSA launched in February 2009, is now published by GeoScienceWorld as a collaborative open-access journal - manuscripts go to GeoScienceWorld rather than GSA.
Open access and publication fees
GSA's fee model differs from commercial publishers: subscription titles carry a processing fee for accepted papers, and gold open access is a voluntary additional option. Figures below are from GSA's current fee schedule (USD); always confirm on the GSA fees page before submission.
| Journal | Processing fee (member / non-member) | Gold OA option (member / non-member) |
|---|---|---|
| Geology | 1,750 | 2,800 |
| GSA Bulletin | 2,800 | 2,800 (in addition to the processing fee) |
| Geosphere | 1,750 | 2,750 for the CC BY license (journal is fully OA to read) |
| GSA Today | Free | Fully open access |
Other points to know:
- Waivers - authors who are unable to pay may apply for a fee waiver.
- Color figures - free in all GSA journals.
- Licenses - the paid gold-OA option on Geosphere uses CC BY; check the license terms for other titles when choosing OA.
- Green OA - GSA permits self-archiving; check the per-journal policy for versions and embargoes.
- Read & Publish - GSA content reaches libraries chiefly through GeoScienceWorld subscriptions rather than large transformative agreements; ask your library what is covered.
Peer review
GSA journals use single-anonymized peer review: reviewers know the authors' identities, and reviewers may choose to waive their own anonymity. Typical timelines scale with manuscript length - short Geology papers are often reviewed within weeks, while long GSA Bulletin papers can take four months or more to first decision. Comments and Replies provide a refereed forum for post-publication discussion.
How to submit
- Pick the journal using the decision table above, and check its scope and length limits (Geology's four-page format is strictly enforced).
- Prepare the manuscript following GSA's manuscript-preparation guidelines, using GSA reference style: author-year citations, alphabetized references, spelled-out journal titles, and DOIs where available. Templates are available on SciSpace.
- Submit through the journal's online portal - Geology, GSA Bulletin, and Geosphere each use their own eJournalPress submission site (e.g., geology.msubmit.net); Environmental & Engineering Geoscience uses Editorial Manager; Lithosphere submissions go to GeoScienceWorld.
- Deposit supplemental material in GSA's data repository and cite it in the text.
- Pay the processing fee on acceptance, and decide whether to add the gold open-access option.
Ethics and integrity
GSA follows established publication-ethics practice for its journals, with editor-managed handling of corrections and retractions and a refereed Comments-and-Replies mechanism for scientific disagreement. Supplemental data are deposited in the GSA data repository so results can be checked and reused. Questions about authorship, duplicate submission, or conflicts of interest go to the journal's science editors.
