A new “Agora” for non-traditional scientific output in the field of space weather and space climate.
- Détails

The Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate (JSWSC), published by EDP Sciences, announces the launch of a new supplement titled “Agora”. The Agora, a term which denoted in ancient Greek an assembly place for various aspects of public life including intellectual exchange and debate, will be the place for the space weather community to discuss, evaluate and distribute non-traditional scientific output in the field of space science and space climate, such as public outreach papers and historical accounts.
The first articlepublished in the Agora section analyses magnetic storms recorded in 1848 and 1872 in the old Clementinum (Prague) and Greenwich (UK) observatories. These events were marked by spectacular auroras recorded by several authors.
In an Editorial published recently in JSWSC, the Editors explain the importance of publishing this type of scientific output, and the need to design a new way to evaluate it.
“The decision to create a supplement to the JSWSC came from our difficulties to evaluate some articles. All Education and Public Outreach papers and papers on historical observations resulted in tense discussions within the Editorial Board, with final decisions always frustrating for some of the editors,” write the Editors. “In consequence, papers in a new supplement should not be subject to the same review process as in the regular issue of JSWSC.”
The creation of a supplement to the journal was discussed with the Associate Editors of JSWSC. These discussions resulted in the specification of the characteristics of the supplement which would accommodate publications fundamentally different from the journal’s regular research, technical, and review papers. Agora will publish papers on Education and public outreach, Historical space weather events and observations, Commentaries, Meeting reports and Project reports.
The articles for the Agora supplement will be internally reviewed by at least four editors, among them the Editors in Chief and the Editorial Advisor. In order to meet the needs of potential contributors, the new articles in the supplement will be indexed similarly to regular JSWSC papers, will receive a DOI and will be citable. However, the supplement will clearly be marked as evaluated by members of the editorial board as opposed to external peer reviewers.
As with all other articles published in the gold open access Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate, Agora articles are published as soon as possible after acceptance, in the current volume. They are also collated in a special Agora collection accessible at: https://www.swsc-journal.org/agora. All articles published in JSWSC are freely accessible to all and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0).
About EDP Sciences
EDP Sciences is a not-for-profit publisher with nearly 100 years of history. Established in 1920 by the French Physics Society and several renowned scientists and industrialists including Louis de Broglie, Jean Perrin and Marie Curie, EDP Sciences is still owned by learned societies and has a mission to participate in the dissemination of important research that accelerates scientific progress and cross-fertilisation of ideas of the society in general. EDP Sciences publishes over 70 scientific journals in the physical sciences, applied mathematics, materials and engineering, life and environmental sciences, health and biomedical sciences. It also publishes open access conference proceedings and books. More information about EDP Sciences.
About the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate
The Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate (JSWSC) is an international multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open access journal which publishes papers on all aspects of space weather and space climate from a broad range of scientific and technical fields. Visit JSWSC online to read the instructions for authors and submit your paper; sign up for email-alerts or to recommend the journal to a colleague.