The Mercator Scientific Newsletter

Greetings,

Let us first introduce you with the newsletter and its objectives. Next, we will give you technical details on the paper's format.

The Mercator-Ocean Newsletter exists since April 2001. It is being published electronically, 4 times a year, on January, April, July and October 1st. Its purpose is to provide a periodical forum for the circulation of ideas and research results among the operational oceanography community. It is a scientific journal addressing specialists on the covered topic. In the early days, it was dedicated to scientific and technical papers dealing with the Mercator-Ocean systems only. It has now evolved towards scientific papers opened to the International operational oceanography community with the support of the GODAE and MERSEA projects. Its format resembles the WOCE newsletters, i.e. short papers dedicated to operational oceanography and its latest challenges and progress. Each issue is dedicated to a specific scientific topic. The articles are of limited length -contributions should not exceed a total of 5 pages, including figures. Each Newsletter starts with a "news" feature (a 1 page paper, including figure) reviewing the state of the art in the chosen newsletter's topic.

The editorial board is being constituted with the following people: Pierre Brasseur (LEGI, Grenoble, CNRS), Eric Greiner (Mercator, CLS, Toulouse), Fabrice Hernandez (Mercator, IRD, Toulouse), Pierre-Yves Le Traon (Ifremer, Brest), Gille Larnicol (CLS, Toulouse), Nathalie Verbrugge (Mercator, CLS, Toulouse) and Laurence Crosnier (Mercator, Toulouse). The editorial board meets 4 times a year, in Toulouse, to decide ahead about the next topics, as well as to gather a list of authors susceptible to write about the chosen subjects. The reviewing process is done by at least 2 anonymous reviewers.

With the opening of the Mercator-Ocean Newsletter to the international community, we expect to reach a broader public with readers spread all around the world. Each new Newsletter's issue is currently being downloaded around 200 times per month and readers have responded positively. We expect that an international orientation will further increase the newsletter's visibility.

In summary, the format of the Mercator-Ocean Newsletter is as follows:

Each issue has its own specific topic
The papers are short (4 to 5 pages, including figures) and are written in English
They are written in English
Each Newsletter starts with a "news" feature (a 1 page paper, including figure) reviewing the state of the art in the chosen newsletter's subject

The format of the paper should be the following:

Papers are under Word format, ASCII text. Note that a special formatting of the text is not required. There is no need to adopt any particular layout
Figures are included in the paper's text, and need to be provided separately as high resolution postscript format (150 dpi at least)
Papers must be sent to Mercator (, ) one month before the publishing date
The reviewing process is done by at least 2 anonymous reviewers

Best regards,

The editorial board

Pierre Brasseur
Eric Greiner
Fabrice Hernandez
Pierre-Yves Le Traon
Nathalie Verbrugge
Laurence Crosnier

Contact

Laurence Crosnier ()
Nathalie Verbrugge ()
Tel.: 00 33 5 61 39 38 17