--- name: brycewang-stanford/communications-earth-and-environment source: https://app.decimal.ai/s/brycewang-stanford-communications-earth-and-environment@1/SKILL.md source_sha256: 4107c8cc6033 --- # Communications Earth & Environment (communications-earth-and-environment) ## Journal positioning Communications Earth & Environment is the Nature Portfolio open-access journal that publishes high-quality research from across the earth, environmental, and planetary sciences. Its defining expectation is a **solid, complete, and broadly framed advance**: the work must be technically rigorous and represent a meaningful step for its field, but it need not clear the flagship-Nature bar of transformative significance that `nature-geoscience` and `nature-climate-change` demand. A result that is sound and useful to its specialist community but framed only for that community — with no articulated interest for the wider earth-and-environment readership — is a weak fit. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current author guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live Communications Earth & Environment submission guidance. ## When to trigger - The author names Communications Earth & Environment and wants a fit/framing check for an earth or environmental science paper. - A solid, complete result is being weighed against more selective Nature Portfolio venues (`nature-geoscience`, `nature-climate-change`) and needs a realistic-tier decision. - A specialist contribution must be re-framed to articulate broad earth/environment relevance for an open-access, cross-disciplinary readership. - The author needs the journal's reporting/data-availability expectations and a credible alternative route. ## Scope & topic fit - Solid-earth and planetary science: tectonics, geochemistry, geophysics, volcanology, and planetary processes when the advance is complete and broadly relevant. - Climate and atmospheric science: variability, change, dynamics, and palaeoclimate, with rigorous analysis appropriate to the claim. - Oceanography, cryosphere, and hydrosphere processes, including observation- and model-based studies. - Environmental science and human–environment interactions: pollution, land use, biogeochemistry, and sustainability framed for an earth-system audience. - Natural hazards, surface processes, and Earth-observation studies with a generalizable finding rather than a single local report. - Methods, datasets, and syntheses that meaningfully advance how the field observes or models the Earth system. ## Method & evidence bar - The study must be **complete and self-contained**: a finished advance, not a preliminary fragment promising follow-up work. - Technical rigor is judged at the specialist level — appropriate sampling, statistics, error characterization, and reproducible processing — even though significance need not be flagship-tier. - Modeling work needs stated assumptions, evaluation against data or established baselines, and uncertainty/sensitivity treatment. - Observational and field studies need defensible design, representativeness, and clear separation of signal from noise. - Claims of novelty or improvement require honest comparison with prior work, not a strawman. - Data and code underlying the conclusions are expected to be openly deposited per Nature reporting and data-availability policy. ## Structure & house style - Nature Portfolio open-access format with a brief, significance-forward abstract; re-check current article types and length expectations on the live guide. - The introduction must state the field gap and why the result matters beyond the immediate specialty, addressing a broad earth/environment readership. - Main display items should carry the central argument; specialist and supporting detail moves to supplementary information. - Methods must be detailed and reproducible; a reporting summary and data/code-availability statements are required per Nature policy. - Writing should be accessible across earth and environmental subfields, avoiding jargon that locks out adjacent readers. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the Nature Portfolio anchors, then cite the current Communications Earth & Environment page you checked. - Search the live site for "Communications Earth & Environment submission guidelines" and follow the current version. - Re-check article types, abstract/format expectations, the reporting summary, and the data/code-availability policy. - Confirm open-access terms, licensing, and any transparent-peer-review options. - Re-check competing-interests, funding, author-contribution, and AI-use disclosure. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] The advance is solid and complete, not a preliminary fragment awaiting follow-up. - [ ] Significance is framed for a broad earth/environment readership, with specialist detail in SI. - [ ] Methods, statistics, and error characterization meet specialist-level rigor. - [ ] Modeling assumptions, evaluation, and uncertainty/sensitivity are explicit. - [ ] Novelty/improvement is shown by honest comparison with prior work. - [ ] Data/code are openly deposited and the Nature reporting summary is addressed. ## Common desk-reject triggers - A sound result framed only for one specialty, with no articulated broad relevance. - Incomplete or preliminary work presented as a finished advance. - Opaque modeling with no evaluation, baseline, or uncertainty treatment. - Observational study with weak design, unrepresentative sampling, or signal/noise confusion. - Missing or non-compliant open data/code where Nature policy requires it. - Over-claiming flagship-level significance the evidence does not support (or, conversely, under-framing so the broad interest is invisible). ## Re-routing decision - Transformative, agenda-setting significance in solid earth → `nature-geoscience`. - Flagship climate-impact or climate-policy significance → `nature-climate-change`. - Short, high-immediacy geoscience letter → `geology` or `geophysical-research-letters`. - A documented, reusable dataset is the actual product → `earth-system-science-data`. - Broad multidisciplinary advance beyond earth science → `science-advances`. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Communications Earth & Environment [Topic tags] <2–3 closest earth/environment topics> [Completeness] [Broad relevance] [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```