Climatic Change (journal)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Climatic Change is a scientific journal that has been asking hard questions about the planet's shifting conditions since 1977. Stephen H. Schneider founded it at a moment when climate science was still finding its institutional footing. The journal he created was unusual from the start: it was built around cross-disciplinary work, drawing researchers from fields that did not always talk to one another. What drove Schneider to create a dedicated venue for this kind of research? And how did a biweekly publication come to sit at the center of one of the most consequential conversations in modern science?

• 2. Schneider's Founding Vision

  ›

  Stephen H. Schneider established Climatic Change in 1977, at a time when the scientific community had no dedicated peer-reviewed venue solely focused on climate. His decision to build a cross-disciplinary journal was a deliberate choice. Climate change touches atmospheric physics, ecology, economics, policy, and dozens of other fields. A journal confined to a single discipline could not hold all of that. Schneider's founding premise was that understanding climate required pulling those threads together in one place. The journal has been published by Springer Science+Business Media, one of the major scientific publishing houses, giving it the distribution and indexing infrastructure to reach researchers across every relevant discipline.

• 3. Scope and Structure

  ›

  Climatic Change covers all aspects of climate change and variability, not just physical science. That breadth is the journal's defining characteristic. A single issue might carry work on atmospheric modeling alongside research into social vulnerability or economic adaptation. Publishing on a biweekly schedule means the journal moves quickly by academic standards, releasing new work frequently enough to keep pace with a fast-moving field. The editors-in-chief who currently guide the journal are Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University and Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University. Their institutional affiliations at two prominent American universities reflect the journal's ongoing connection to academic research at the highest level.

• 4. Reach Through Indexing

  ›

  Peer review establishes a paper's credibility within the scientific community, but indexing is what makes it findable. Climatic Change is abstracted and indexed in major scientific databases, which means work published there can be discovered and cited by researchers who may never have encountered the journal directly. For a cross-disciplinary publication covering climate change, that visibility matters enormously. A paper on climate variability written by an ecologist needs to reach atmospheric scientists; a study on adaptation policy needs to reach economists. The indexing infrastructure surrounding Climatic Change is what makes that kind of cross-field circulation possible, and it is a direct extension of the founding goal Schneider set when he launched the journal in 1977.