This year, to mark Peer Review Week, UCL Open Environment sat down with Deputy Editor, Dr Yasemin Aktas (University College London, UK) for a brief conversation on open peer review.

With growing academic workloads and time devoted to other things, securing peer reviewers is becoming increasingly difficult, especially when hearing reports about canvassing large numbers of reviewers who do not necessarily possess the correct level of subject expertise in the articles field. How do you select reviewers for each submission?

Expertise in the topic is key, although in a cross/interdisciplinary context such as the UCL Open Environment where submissions tend not to follow the conventions of singular scientific domains, it is increasingly less straightforward to identify key expertise needed for an informative peer review. Luckily crossdisciplinarity is increasingly the norm in the academic world and we are very lucky to have incredible scholars who can advise not only in the rigour of the submissions from the viewpoint of a single discipline, but more widely.

The Editors role is in dissecting submissions to ensure all their scientific aspects are looked into and their ability to synthesise the review reports to pass judgement on the submitted works' rigour as a whole beyond disciplinary boundaries, is also a defining factor.

Can you explain some of the benefits of open peer review?

Peer-review is traditionally a complete black-box which happens behind the scenes, between the authors, reviewers and editors, but is entirely obscure to everyone else. The community, academic or otherwise, who uses the paper must therefore postulate the authority and rigour of the peer-review process that led to the published, final version of an academic outcome, although the process is not visible and therefore cannot be put to test. During this process, the academic exchange is a monologue, rather than a lively and productive dialogue - which itself is the basis of all scientific and academic growth.

Open peer-review makes the process transparent, empowering both reviewers and the authors to be more challenging and rigorous in their approaches. Equally important, the exchange becomes a public record underpinning the decision-making process for everyone else's scrutiny and learning.

It is clear that we need to change our understanding and ways of publishing for a more equitable and transparent academia. UCL Open Environment has been one of the pioneers of implementing open science principles and our reviewers' community is key to its success.

About UCL Open Environment

UCL Open Environment is a fully non-commercial, Open Science scholarly journal, publishing high impact, multi-disciplinary research, on real world environmental issues, with the overall aim of benefitting humanity. Published by UCL Press (University College London, UK), submission is open to anyone at any institution and from anywhere in the world. Unlike typical, single disciplinary journals, UCL Open Environment is the only dedicated multi-disciplinary environmental Open Science journal that publishes broadly across all environment-related subjects.

Read more about the journal at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ucloe

Find us on:

UCLOE Peer Review Week Open Peer Review