About GSW

A unique nonprofit committed to earth science research

Our vision is to be the essential resource for and partner to the earth and planetary science community, advancing knowledge, discovery, and insights for all.

As a unique nonprofit collaborative, our mission is to aggregate and disseminate information to advance earth science and to strengthen the sustainability of our society partners.

Our Core Values

We are a values-driven organization, guided by our mission to deliver exceptional products and services creating lasting value and positive impact for our community.
How do we do this?

Listen

We listen with an open mind so new ideas can come forward and flourish.


Respond

We respond with curiosity, purpose, and transparency in dialog with our community.

Collaborate

We collaborate with integrity, leading by example to build trusted partnerships.


Innovate

We innovate with an agile mindset, turning ideas into action.


Founded in Collaboration

GeoScienceWorld (GSW) was founded in 2004 with a mission to enable geoscience societies to better serve their discipline and community through collaboration. The goal of our co-founders was to bring together peer-reviewed society research online in a nonprofit aggregate and to convey cooperative advantages—so that smaller organizations would be uplifted and supported by their larger colleagues. 

Today, we work with societies, institutions, and researchers around the world and provide a single source of access to preeminent scholarly journals and eBooks with specialized and map-based search capabilities and links to a broad scope of curated earth science research.

Through our Society Services program, we provide innovative products and shared services to help societies reduce costs and increase efficiency. Recently, GSW expanded its expertise into open-access publishing in alliance with seven participating societies. Since our founding in 2004, GSW has returned more than $64 million to membership societies to achieve their scientific missions.

39

Society Publishers

2.4k

eBooks

4.6m

GeoRef Records

53

Journals

213k

Articles

A Unique Nonprofit 

GSW’s founding societies envisioned a means to provide shared technologies, economies of scale, and access to global dissemination and institutional sales in order to extend advantages that otherwise might be restricted to commercial deals, which they believed might jeopardize societies’ long-term prospects as independent publishers.

What makes us successful:

  • A founding vision of a nonprofit aggregate to benefit both small and large geoscience societies and the geoscience research community
  • A business model that contributes more than 90% of earnings back to societies
  • An unbiased, independent staff with a mission to sustain all partners
  • Board representation from libraries, industry, the research community, and both small and large societies, all of whom support the founding mission

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at GSW

At GSW, we celebrate and support geoscientists around the world.  Diversity and inclusion are central to our mission to provide high-quality geoscience information for a global research community.  We are committed to developing and advancing a culture of belonging where all individuals are treated with kindness, dignity and respect. We believe this directly aligns with our mission and best meets the needs of our people, partners, and the global geoscience community we serve.