Rejected from Earth-Science Reviews? Where to Submit Next

Earth-Science Reviews rejections split into route-now and fix-first cases. Route-now means the manuscript is scientifically useful but aimed at the wrong review or empirical venue. Fix-first means the next journal will see the same synthesis problem.

The highest-leverage question is simple: is the rejected manuscript a review that needs a better home, or an empirical paper that never belonged at a reviews-only venue?

This route map prevents the common mistake after Earth-Science Reviews rejection: sending a manuscript to another prestige venue without deciding whether it is a review manuscript or an empirical paper.

Across our Earth-Science Reviews pre-submission reviews, the main decision fork is whether the manuscript is genuinely an integrative Earth-science review, or whether it is primary research, a narrow mini-review, or an annotated bibliography using a review label.

Primary empirical research submitted to a review-only journal. This is the fastest rejection pattern. The paper may have strong new zircon ages, seismic inversions, sediment cores, paleoclimate reconstructions, geochemical datasets, hydrologic model results, or planetary observations. That does not make it an Earth-Science Reviews paper. If new data carry the manuscript, route to Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Nature Geoscience, Geology, GRL, or the relevant specialist empirical journal.

A bibliography without synthesis. We often see long manuscripts that cover many papers but never resolve what the field now knows, where evidence conflicts, which methods are trustworthy, or what future work should stop doing. Earth-Science Reviews needs synthesis. If this was the rejection reason, adding 40 more references will not help. Rebuild the manuscript around an argument, evidence map, conceptual model, or decision tree.

A topic too narrow for a broad review venue. A careful review of one basin, one formation, one fault segment, one proxy, one volcano, or one model family may be useful but not broad enough for Earth-Science Reviews. The next move may be a regional geology journal, Quaternary Science Reviews, Gondwana Research, Basin Research, Tectonophysics, Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, or another specialist venue.

Unbalanced field coverage. Reviews fail when they overweight the authors' own studies, one school of thought, one geographic region, English-language literature, one model class, or one method family. In our Earth-Science Reviews readiness checks, this is often visible from the figure plan and reference distribution before reading every paragraph. A stronger resubmission needs explicit inclusion logic, evidence weighting, and figures that show the field rather than the authors' corridor through it.

The practical rule is: empirical papers should move; review papers with synthesis defects should be rebuilt.

Reviews of Geophysics is not the easy fallback after Earth-Science Reviews. It can be the right next target when the manuscript is a broad geophysics or Earth-system synthesis with clear AGU-community relevance and enough authority to serve as a field overview.

Choose Reviews of Geophysics when:

• the topic is geophysics, climate, ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere, solid Earth, or Earth-system process
• the manuscript integrates evidence across subfields
• the review has a clear critical argument, not just a topic tour
• the author team has enough field authority for a review article
• the paper would be useful to AGU readers outside the narrow specialty

Pause before choosing it when:

• Earth-Science Reviews rejected the paper as too narrow
• the paper lacks synthesis methodology or evidence weighting
• the review is dominated by one region, method, or research group
• the manuscript's central value is new data, not synthesis

If Earth-Science Reviews rejected the paper for insufficient synthesis, Reviews of Geophysics will usually make the same critique faster and harder.

If the Earth-Science Reviews rejection says the manuscript is not a review, do not fight the category. Route the paper by its actual contribution.

The cover letter should change accordingly. Do not present a primary empirical manuscript as a review simply because Earth-Science Reviews was the first target.

The next cover letter should not sound like a lightly edited Earth-Science Reviews letter.

For Reviews of Geophysics:

This manuscript synthesizes evidence across a broad geophysical problem, identifies where competing interpretations diverge, and provides an integrated framework useful to Earth-system readers beyond the immediate subfield.

For Quaternary Science Reviews:

This manuscript reviews Quaternary evidence across geology, geomorphology, paleoecology, dating, and paleoclimate studies, with a synthesis that clarifies what the field can infer and where uncertainty remains.

For Gondwana Research:

This manuscript provides a solid-Earth synthesis centered on continental evolution, tectonics, crustal processes, or resources, with regional evidence integrated into a broader geodynamic framework.

For Earth and Planetary Science Letters:

This manuscript reports a concise empirical result about Earth or planetary processes, with a clear mechanistic implication and evidence suitable for a letters-format audience.

For Nature Geoscience:

This manuscript presents a geoscience result with broad conceptual significance beyond the immediate dataset, region, or method community.

If the paragraph sounds dishonest, the target is wrong or the manuscript needs more work.

Run this checklist before uploading the next version:

• [ ] The manuscript is clearly either a review or an empirical paper.
• [ ] The abstract states the synthesis question or the empirical finding without ambiguity.
• [ ] If it is a review, the structure integrates evidence rather than listing topics.
• [ ] If it is systematic, search scope, inclusion logic, and evidence weighting are explicit.
• [ ] If it is narrative, the introduction still defines the field map and contribution.
• [ ] Figures synthesize the literature, not just decorate the text.
• [ ] Coverage is balanced across regions, methods, schools of thought, and time periods.
• [ ] The cover letter is written for the new journal's audience, not for Earth-Science Reviews.
• [ ] Any Elsevier transfer or redirect is evaluated as a fit suggestion, not an automatic path.

Before submitting elsewhere, run an Earth-Science Reviews resubmission readiness check to catch the review-only fit and synthesis defects that often follow rejected manuscripts to the next journal.