The AMS Journal Earth Interactions (EI) focuses on interdisciplinary science that examines interactions between different Earth systems, inclusive of human influence and impacts. We spoke with EI’s chief editor, Sonali McDermid, about new developments at the journal and in the field.
What is the mission of Earth Interactions?
Earth Interactions aims to be a preeminent source and venue for interdisciplinary and integrative research on Earth systems science. In particular, work published in EI will expand our understanding of how Earth’s vital processes and systems, natural and human, shape each other and drive global environmental change.
Why should someone submit a paper to EI?
You can expect the following when you submit to EI: a thoughtful review process with substantive engagement from the Editors; a review process that explicitly considers interdisciplinarity, i.e., how different disciplines are represented in your manuscript; transparent and open communication on timelines to review and status updates; and help to promote your paper upon acceptance. Earth Interactions is open access, and there are no APCs (author charges) for manuscripts submitted during 2025!
What kinds of submissions are you looking for?
We are looking for submissions that consider the interface and/or interaction between different Earth system components and processes. For example, previously published papers consider land management-atmosphere interactions, ocean-atmosphere interactions, natural disasters/climate extremes and human responses, human-driven changes in biogeochemical cycling on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, to name a few. While the specific topics published have varied widely, nearly all papers demonstrate knowledge and tools stemming from more than one Earth science discipline and often (though not always) consider human impacts, past, present, and future. We recognize that this work takes time and sometimes appears more incremental — a new process-based model module or representation, or a novel dataset for a specific or particular domain — which may be easily overlooked in more disciplinary journals or not in the scope of more globally focused venues. We strive to serve as a place for this important, foundational kind of work.
While many topics are relevant, we are right now particularly interested in Earth system science publications focused on natural or nature-based climate solutions; climate intervention; and climate, ecology, and public health.
What has been your mission as Chief Editor?
I came to Earth Interactions in 2020, and the journal really resonated with me as I was also taking on leadership roles in my home academic department of Environmental Studies at NYU, which is also highly interdisciplinary. I found myself thinking quite a bit about how conventional disciplinary academic structures — while crucial to build strong intellectual foundations — felt insufficient to tackle complex modern (environmental/climate) challenges. For example, the timescales of tenure and even grants may not allow for the needed exploration to build knowledge of multiple fields/tools/disciplines, and the incentive structure may not create space for that as well.
My mission as an Editor is to create a space for this kind of work in academic publishing and journals, which takes time and considerable effort to do well. Furthermore, it can be difficult to review papers that combine multiple tools and approaches, and reviewers can (understandably) focus on details they know and feel comfortable with, thereby “missing the forest for the trees” or not seeing what makes the work novel.
I want to foster a review process that better considers these things, where Editors are in dialogue with each other about each manuscript and where they encourage the reviewers to consider merits beyond specific disciplinary perspectives and approaches. We have now built such processes into our review process, by asking reviewers to answer simple questions on how a manuscript combines information on multiple Earth system components and/or why a manuscript may be considered interdisciplinary and useful to many different perspectives and fields.
The journal has been doing some retooling lately. What does the future look like?
Per the above, we have updated EI’s scope to better reflect the wide range of research we’d like to feature. We have also modified the review process to ask reviewers to answer simple questions on how a manuscript combines information on multiple Earth system components and/or why a manuscript may be considered interdisciplinary and useful to many different perspectives and fields. We are adding Editors to our roster from across a wide variety of fields (and are interested to add more — please contact me!). We are now soliciting a small number of Perspective pieces to help signal new and emerging and urgent areas of Earth systems science work. And finally, AMS is waiving APC charges during 2025 while keeping open access. We hope that all these changes will signal our commitment to Earth system science research in the review process and lower the barriers to entry for potential authors, particularly early-career.
What do you find exciting about the field right now?
I’m excited about how Earth systems science research will evolve, particularly in this new era of AI, and how this can advance our understanding of coupled natural and human processes that have been thus far enigmatic or difficult to understand or capture by conventional, disciplinary tools and approaches. I’m also interested to see how such work can help us support timely and thoughtful action on some of the most pressing environmental problems, including climate and ecosystem change, biodiversity loss, and water resource depletion (among others).
Interested in submitting your work to Earth Interactions? Learn more here.