Eos

About Eos

Overview

Eos is the science news magazine of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the world's largest organization of Earth and space scientists. Published from Washington, D.C., it exists today as a digital science news and perspectives website with a monthly print magazine distributed to AGU members. Its ISSN is 0096-3941. Covering the full sweep of the geosciences — from Earth's deep interior to the atmospheres of other planets, from ocean basins to space weather — Eos is the news organ of a scientific community more than 60,000 members strong, spanning 144 countries.

The name comes from Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn — an apt emblem for a publication whose purpose is to bring new developments to light. With roots stretching back more than a century, Eos has evolved from a stolid compendium of society business into a modern science news outlet, all while remaining the official record and the common forum of the American Geophysical Union.

A Century of Roots: From Transactions to Eos

Eos's lineage begins in 1920, when AGU launched Transactions, American Geophysical Union — a compendium of the union's activities, its meetings, and its research. For nearly half a century, Transactions served as the organization's official record. Then, in 1969, the publication took the name Eos, beginning with volume 50 — a numbering that acknowledged the unbroken continuity with the Transactions era. The first year of Eos under its new name thus carried forward a publishing tradition already five decades old.

The front page of Eos has been redesigned many times since. A cover dated May 8, 1979 announced AGU's new headquarters at 2000 Florida Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., where the organization's offices remain today. A 1994 cover came from the era when Eos was produced as a weekly newspaper, reporting on the union's 75th anniversary. The publication's formats have shifted with the times — from transactions to newspaper to magazine to website — but its institutional role has never wavered.

The Publisher: American Geophysical Union

Eos is published by the American Geophysical Union, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit scientific society founded in 1919 by the National Research Council. AGU operated for more than 50 years as an unincorporated affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences before being independently incorporated in 1972. Its purpose is the advancement of geophysics and the many fields of Earth and space science: atmospheric and ocean sciences, solid-Earth sciences, hydrologic sciences, and space sciences.

AGU's headquarters at 2000 Florida Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. — announced on the cover of Eos in 1979 — was later renovated into an award-winning net-zero-energy building, a physical demonstration of the organization's values. In its early years the union capped membership at just 65 people; by the end of 1952 it counted nearly 5,000 members worldwide, and a century after its founding its members numbered 62,000 across 144 countries. Eos is listed as AGU's main organ — the publication through which the union speaks to its members and the world.

What Eos Covers

Eos publishes timely articles, news items, and other material of interest to the full range of Earth and space scientists. Its stated goal is to forge the interdisciplinary ties that are the unique feature of AGU: items concisely review or synthesize scientific activities, significant geophysical events, major scientific discoveries, or current scientific controversies, placing them in perspective for readers in all fields. Crucially, Eos does not publish original research results — it is a newspaper and magazine, not a research journal.

The editorial standard is accessibility. Because the Eos readership is primarily made up of individuals unfamiliar with the author's specialty, contributors are expected to write in a news-oriented style that a seismologist can follow when reading about oceanography, and vice versa. Coverage spans earthquakes and volcanoes, climate and weather, hydrology and water resources, space physics and planetary science, and the policy and societal dimensions of the geosciences. When a major earthquake strikes, a hurricane makes landfall, or a spacecraft lands on another world, Eos is where the Earth-science community turns for context.

The Weekly Newspaper Era

For a significant stretch of its history, Eos was produced as a weekly newspaper — a cadence that matched its role as the community's bulletin of record. The weekly Eos carried meeting announcements, union business, news of the field, and opinion pieces, landing on members' desks with the regularity of a trade weekly. The 1994 issues covering AGU's 75th anniversary belong to this era, when the publication combined newsprint urgency with the authority of the union itself.

The weekly rhythm eventually gave way to new formats as both the union and the media landscape changed. The newspaper era remains an important chapter in Eos's history — and a reminder that for decades, this was quite literally how tens of thousands of geoscientists learned what was happening in their field each week.

Eos in the Digital Age

Today Eos is primarily a digital science news and perspectives website, complemented by a monthly print magazine for AGU members. The website publishes news stories, features, and opinion pieces on a continuous schedule, reaching far beyond the union's membership to journalists, educators, policymakers, and the scientifically curious public. Its centennial-year coverage in 2019 — a yearlong celebration of 100 years of science since AGU's founding, with each month devoted to a broad theme from Earth's interior to the atmospheres of other planets — demonstrated the site's capacity for ambitious, sustained science storytelling.

The monthly print magazine, meanwhile, preserves the tactile tradition of the publication: long-form features, striking photography and illustration, and the themed issues — such as the December centennial issues with their specially commissioned cover art — that give readers a reason to linger. Together, the website and the print magazine serve two audiences at once: the rapid news cycle online and the reflective reading experience in print.

Editorial Independence and Standards

Eos occupies a distinctive position: it is the official publication of AGU, yet it functions as a news organization covering a scientific field — including, at times, controversies within that field. Its editorial guidance stresses that items should be of interest to a large proportion of AGU members and should be thought-provoking and interesting to read. The publication aims to help readers keep informed about developments in their own and other fields, reinforcing the interdisciplinary character that AGU considers its defining strength.

This dual identity — society organ and science news outlet — gives Eos unusual access to the people and institutions of the geosciences, from the union's own leadership to the researchers presenting at AGU's Fall Meeting, the largest annual gathering of Earth and space scientists in the world. When the union takes positions on matters of science policy or research ethics, Eos is where those positions are explained to the community.

Covering a Planet — and Beyond

The breadth of Eos's beat is one of its great strengths. Few publications are asked to cover, in a single editorial vision, the dynamics of Earth's core, the chemistry of the oceans, the physics of the atmosphere, the hydrology of watersheds, and the exploration of other planets. Eos does this routinely, reflecting AGU's own structure, which spans sections from atmospheric sciences to planetary sciences, from geodesy to natural hazards.

This breadth has made Eos an essential interdisciplinary bridge. A climate modeler, a volcanologist, and a space physicist may share little technical vocabulary, but they share Eos — and through it, a common picture of what is happening across the Earth and space sciences. In an era of increasing specialization, that bridging function is arguably more valuable than ever.

Reading Eos Today

Eos is published online at eos.org, where its science news, features, and perspectives are freely available to all readers. AGU members additionally receive the monthly print magazine as a benefit of membership. The site's archive stretches back through the publication's long history, offering a century-scale record of the geosciences as they unfolded.

For Earth and space scientists, Eos remains the community's newspaper of record. For everyone else, it is one of the most reliable windows into the sciences of the planet — written by and for the people who study it, under the auspices of the organization that has convened them since 1919.

Visit the official Eos website.