Institutional, corporate and library subscribers to Lyell Collection content - welcome! If you're looking for more information about the Lyell Collection and the journals and book series contained within, or tools to help you promote it to your students or colleagues then you're in the right place!
More information can be found below, and look out for the helpful downloads and marketing resources on the right.
The Geological Society offers a range of subscription and access options for institutions, corporations and libraries subscribing to the journals we publish. Please contact us if you require a multi-site, global access license or a Transformative Read and Publish Agreement.
Standard subscription rates for 2025
Please see the frequently asked questions pages - or email us with any queries and questions.
Quick Links:
Online journals |
Lyell Collection Complete packages |
Special Publications |
Engineering Geology Package |
Special Publications Archive |
The Journal of the Geological Society Archive |
Request a trial |
How to subscribe |
Read and Publish |
License terms |
Open Access articles |
Transparent pricing |
MARC records and KBART records |
Accessibility |
Perpetual access to subscribed-to-content |
Pay-per-view |
Digital preservation |
Access for Developing Countries |
Usage statistics |
eBooks
Online journals
The seven current Lyell Collection journals are electronic by default and the online version is the version of record. Journals can be purchased as annual subscriptions giving subscribers online access to all published content including the deep archive.
- Journal of the Geological Society (JGS)
- Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology & Hydrogeology (QJEGH)
- Petroleum Geoscience (PG)
- Geoenergy
- Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis (GEEA)
- Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society (PYGS)
- Scottish Journal of Geology (SJG)
Lyell Collection Complete options
- Lyell Collection Complete Online includes online access to all of the current and archived journals plus Special Publications, Engineering Geology Special Publications, Geological Society Memoirs, Petroleum Geology Conferences, together with the historic collections of Transactions of the Geological Society, Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow and Transactions of the Edinburgh Geological Society.
- Lyell Collection Complete Online + Special Publications Print includes online access as above to current and archived journals and books plus print copies of the Special Publications published in the subscription year.
A subscription to either Lyell Collection Complete package includes online access to all Accepted Manuscripts and In Progress articles published in the journals, Special Publications and Memoirs ahead of final issue or volume publication. Perpetual access is available if the final volume is published within the subscribed-to calendar year.
The Lyell Collection Complete package is recommended by the Geological Society. It has been priced to include all content at a rate which is discounted compared to the purchase of individual components.
(Please note that ebook content is not included in any annual subscription options, and pay-per-view purchases are for personal use only.)
Special Publications
All Special Publication volumes are available online on payment of an annual subscription fee (for the Special Publications alone, or as part of Lyell Collection Complete). An online + print option is also available.
Engineering Geology online package
This package contains content from both the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology (QJEGH) journal and the highly regarded Engineering Geology Special Publications (EGSP) book series. This annual subscription package includes 3,000 fully searchable journal articles and book chapters in one easy to navigate package and provides a clear and complete synthesis of engineering geoscience disciplines. (Engineering Geology Special Publications is an intermittent book series and a new title is not guaranteed every year.) More information.
Special Publications Archive
It is also possible to purchase Special Publication archives of volumes 1 to 500 outright for a one-off fee allowing perpetual access.
500 volumes are available in six separate archives (Volumes 1 to 100, 101 to 200, 201 to 300, 301 to 400, 401 to 450 or 451 to 500). Volumes 1 to 300, 1 to 400 or 1 to 500 are also available to purchase as an archive.
The archives are hosted on the Geological Society’s Lyell Collection, and there is no annual maintenance charge. A list of the Special Publication titles in the various archives can be downloaded here.
Journal of the Geological Society Archive
All JGS volumes are available online on payment of an annual subscription fee (for Journal of the Geological Society alone, or as part of Lyell Collection Complete). It is also possible to purchase content published from 1845 to 2007 outright for a one-off fee allowing perpetual access.
The JGS Archive (1845-2007) includes over 17,000 articles and comprises over 150 years of geoscience research, including historically important content from many eminent scientists. Access the very earliest geological research from the greats such as Darwin, Murchison and Buckland to modern cutting edge research from an international field of authors.
The content published from 1845 to 2007 can be purchased as one archive or three separate archives (JGS Archive part 1: 100 Years of Geology (1845-1945); JGS Archive part 2 (1945-1986); JGS Archive part 3 (1987-2007).
The JGS Archive for content published from 2008 to 2012 is also now available.
Request a trial
Please complete this form for a 30 day trial. Please note that trials are not available to individuals - ask your librarian or administrator to request a trial for your institution or organization or recommend content to them using this form.
How to subscribe
Please contact us to discuss subscription options including Lyell Collection Complete packages, Special Publications or individual journals.
Pre-payment is required on all orders. Once your payment details have been accepted you will be provided with instructions to activate your online access.
Read and Publish
Consortia and individual institutions are invited to contact us to discuss Read and Publish agreements for Lyell Collection Complete. Please see Read and Publish Open Access for more information, a list of current agreements and current Gold Open Access article fees.
GSL offers Transformative Read and Publish agreements through Jisc (for UK HE institutions), to CAUL members in Australia and New Zealand, ZB Med members in Germany, and also to key institutions outside of these consortia.
We are a founding member of The Society Publishers’ Coalition (SocPC); a group of like-minded, not-for-profit learned societies, community publishers and charities who share the common ambition to see an orderly and sustainable transition to open scholarship. Our Read & Publish agreements follow the following principles:
Article of interest from SocPC members the Royal Society, the Microbiology Society and the Geological Society - “How transformative agreements are actually transforming the subscription system: a society publisher’s perspective,” Insights, 2022, 35: 10, 1–10 by Graham Anderson, Jade Heyman and Maggie Simmons.
Article of interest from Geoscientist magazine - "The Society’s journey towards Open Access publishing" geoscientist.online/sections/news/the-societys-journey-towards-open-access-publishing/
License terms
The Geological Society has adopted the SERU (Shared E-Resources Understanding) approach. Please see terms of use for libraries and institutions for more information. GSL does not issue or require the agreement of a formal license for institutional access to the Lyell Collection. Payment of subscription or archive fees (direct or via an agent) implies acceptance of SERU. Corporate subscribers should contact the Geological Society for a quote and a description of any specific license terms.
Open Access articles
The Geological Society offers authors the opportunity to publish Open Access articles which are free to all and designated by an Open Access logo.
These articles are published under the terms of the CC-BY license.
Transparent pricing
GSL publications are hybrid and include both Open Access (OA) and paywalled content. GSL has implemented a transparent pricing policy to ensure that we do not receive both an article processing charge (APC) and subscription income for OA articles in our journals and book series.
To arrive at pricing for 2024 we calculated the number of non-OA articles over a 3-year rolling period. The percentage change between the periods 2019-2021 and 2020-2022 was used to offset prices prior to any price adjustment in relation to inflation and other economic factors. We chose to use a 3-year period to help iron out short-term fluctuations in content publishing and we cap any changes at +/-10%. For the purposes of this calculation, any OA articles where the APC was waived were counted as non-OA.
Each year we will publish the percentages and article counts on our website. The figures used for the 2024 subscription prices are shown below.
The UK Retail Price Index (RPI) was 13.5% in March 2023, and averaged 13.6% across the first 3 months of 2023. This cost inflation has informed overall subscription rate changes for 2023/2024 which have been capped at 5% where the transparent pricing formula justifies a higher increase.
The Geological Society’s owned and co-owned journals have Plan S Transformative Journal status. Each journal commits to annual OA growth criteria and will move to fully open access when 75% of its research content is published Open Access. More information.
Perpetual access to subscribed-to content
Subscribers since 2008 can request perpetual access to their subscribed-to content published in final volume form. For example a subscriber for the years 2012 to 2024 who does not renew for 2025 can request perpetual access to the content published from 2012 to 2024. This does not include access to articles which were not published in final volume form by 31 December 2024. Please email us to request perpetual access.
Subscriptions prior to 2008 do not entitle subscribers to access Lyell-hosted past content. For 2007 and earlier the print copy was the version of record and electronic access was a free add-on. Electronic access was discontinued when a subscription lapsed.
MARC records and KBART records
MARC records are available for all book series available on the Lyell Collection. KBART records are available for all journal, book series and monographs available on the Lyell Collection. MARC records and KBART files are now also added to the WorldCat® knowledge base regularly to ensure the latest content selections are available to aid discoverability. Please see the list of available files here.
Accessibility
We aim to make our online journal and book content accessible to all our visitors and improvements to the site are made on an ongoing basis. Our commitment to this endeavour reflects the growing customer need for accessibility to our content in order to best support the science and communities we serve. You can find out more here.
Pay-per-view
Individual articles, book volumes and eBooks are available for purchase for personal use (please see our pay-per-view information page).
Digital preservation
 |
GSL has partnered with CLOCKSS to ensure the digital preservation of Lyell Collection content for the future. |
Access for Developing Countries
Not-for-profit institutions from eligible countries, areas and territories can register for free or low-cost access to Lyell Collection content via Research4Life.
Authors at developing and emerging countries are eligible for free Open Access publications in Earth Science, Systems and Society (ES3), the Geological Society's fully open access journal.
Usage statistics
Please see the Lyell Collection FAQs page for usage report instructions.
JUSP for the UK HE and FE sector - Track your usage with JUSP - the Journals Usage Statistics Portal. JUSP gives librarians in the UK HE and FE sector a simple way of analysing the value and impact of their electronic journal subscriptions through accurate and comparable usage statistics. JUSP saves academic libraries time and duplicated effort by providing a single gateway for them to access their usage statistics from participating publishers.
eBooks
Special Publications, Engineering Geology Special Publications, Geological Society Memoirs and the Petroleum Geology Conferences are available online with an annual Lyell Collection Complete subscription.
Selected eBooks are available for purchase in ePub format from the Lyell Collection website. This content is not included in any annual subscription options or archive purchases. Pay-per-view purchases are for personal use only.
A selected number of books (including some titles not previously available electronically) are included in the GeoScienceWorld eBook Collection which is designed for institutional purchase. To find out more about the GSW eBook Collection and to discuss a trial contact GeoScienceWorld direct.
back to top