The EGU open access journal Geoscientific Model Development (GMD) has implemented some radical new policies that apply to papers published in the journal. The changes are highlighted in an editorial recently published in GMD.

The new policies include the requirement that, from now on, authors must provide the actual computer code of their models to the reviewers or editor as part of the review process. Furthermore, authors are required to include a section in the paper itself discussing the availability of their code to the wider community. If the authors choose not to make their code available to the community, then they must describe the reasons for this.

The GMD executive editors hope these changes will improve the transparency and rigour of model development in the geosciences.

GMD, which was founded in 2007, recently received an ISI Impact Factor of 5.030, which is the 5^th highest in the geosciences (out of about 170 journals).

• Journal website
• GMD editorial