About the journal

Aims and scope

UCL Open Environment is a new, open and transparent open access journal where high-impact disciplinary and interdisciplinary research is published that showcases radical and critical thinking on real-world issues, with the overall aim of benefitting humanity. 

The journal welcomes submissions across all aspects of environment-related research and the generation of new knowledge. 

Articles will be judged on the merit and scientific validity (sound scholarship) of the work and the Editorial Board are inviting submissions from people at any research or knowledge-based organisations (including NGOs, Think Tanks, IGOs/UN) and at all career stages, including early career researchers, mid-career professionals, and senior scholars.  

Aims
It is the aim of the journal to:

1. Rapidly disseminate and publish scientifically sound work that offers new knowledge

2. Increase the value and seek greater benefits from publications by creating an open and transparent environment, including open refereeing

3. Promote opportunities for cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research and learning.

Scope
The journal’s scope includes environment-related studies linked to:

1. Past, present, and future environmental processes and characteristics viewed from a theoretical, observational, or experimental perspective

2. The planet’s environments, including those in which people live

3. Interactions between the environment and people’s wellbeing and health, including the impacts and management of pollution or disease mediated via the environment

4. Policies, decisions, behaviours, mechanisms, and approaches to the way the environment and its resources are managed, including those dealing with the evidence linked to global challenges such as Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss and overall Environmental Degradation as well as to international endeavours related to the One Health, Planetary Health/Limits and Sustainable Development

5. Research methods and approaches, the development and management of databases and the development and work of networks.

The journal accepts articles within the multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge space created by two axes, one spatial and one temporal:

• Temporal: From the past (including what we can learn from the past) through to the present and out into the future (as far as we can make projections about the future,) and
• Spatial: The global to local reach of societal challenges and the solutions that can help ensure that humanity can live within constraints of planetary systems.

Inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinarity is the main but not only guide. For example, where a narrow disciplinary article that is within scope of the journal has particular features (such as being best placed in an open publishing environment rather than any other format) it may also be considered for submission. The Editorial Board may approve papers for peer review and request immediate revisions prior to any peer reviewer comments to aid peer review effectiveness. Where such requests are made, the Handling Editor will clarify the decision to revise as an open comment.

Articles accepted for full publication will be ones where the Editorial Board has decided that the submission has had two favourable reviews and authors have addressed points raised by reviewers and/or members of the Editorial Board. Experience suggests only a few submissions will move to full publication after one round of reviews. In general, the Editorial Board may decline papers for full publication where:

1. The paper does not meet the scope of the journal set out above
2. The paper lacks any conclusion and discussion about the research, particularly where any conclusions are not evidenced well or backed up by the data
3. Small or niche research findings, especially papers that aim to provide no or very small updates to current or previous research projects
4. Commercial content; marketing a product
5. References mainly being to the authors’ own papers (excessive self-citation)
6. The paper is not comprehensible for peer review
7. Reviewers identify issues with the submission that its authors cannot address to the satisfaction of the reviewers and/or the Editorial Board.

You can read more about the aims and scope of the journal in this letter from the Editor-in-Chief, here.

Pre-submission enquiries are encouraged, please contact the Editorial office at uclopen.environment [at] ucl.ac.uk for further help and advice.

Indexing

We are committed to the responsible use of metrics and strongly encourage all readers, authors, reviewers, and Editors to read through our statement about the use of metrics across the journal, available online at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/site/editorial_policy/#METRICS.

Articles that have been editorially accepted for publication following peer review in UCL Open Environment are indexed in the following:

• PubMed Central
• CAB Abstracts - CABI (agriculture, crop science, natural resources, animal and human sciences)
• Global Health - CABI (public health, food science and nutrition)
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Dimensions
• EBSCO
• Google Scholar
  
• Baidu
• OCLC
• Portico preservation service
• UCL Discovery

Preprint articles, and all corresponding versions of it, that are under peer review in UCL Open Environment are also archived and indexed in the following:

• Dimensions
• Google Scholar
• Baidu
• Portico preservation service

Article publication charges

UCL Open Environment levies an Article Publication Charge (APC) to all non-UCL authors once the article has been editorially accepted for publication (not for submission). The APC price is set as low as possible to cover only the open access publication costs of the article, including professional typesetting, copyediting, publication, and indexing. Waivers are available for authors who genuinely cannot pay these low fees, please enquire with the Editorial Office by emailing uclopen.environment [at] ucl.ac.uk. 

Submitting authors are required to declare that they have read and understood the terms of submitting and will be charged the APC upon editorial acceptance of an article. Once and article is editorially accepted, the corresponding author will be notified that payment is due and will be required to arrange payment. Article-processing charges are based on word counts (of the manuscript main body), irrespective of the article type.

APC waivers

UCL Press offers automatic waivers and discounts for Article-Processing Charges (APCs) for articles whose corresponding authors are based in low-income countries, as classified by Research4Life (https://www.research4life.org/access/eligibility).

Group A (free access) will receive a full waiver

Group B (low-cost access) will receive a 50% discount on the full APC

Please request this waiver or discount at the point of submission by emailing the Editorial Office at uclopen.environment [at] ucl.ac.uk.

University College London authors

A University College London (UCL) authored article is defined as an article where the corresponding or first author is a current UCL staff or student member.

Any UCL author who is research council funded (for example UKRI or COAF) will have the APC funded via UCL Library Services Open Access (read more about this here). Any UCL author not funded by a research council will have the APC covered by UCL Press.

Open access policy

All preprint and editorially accepted version of record articles published in UCL Open Environment are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) 4.0 international license agreement and published open access, making articles immediately and freely available to read and download. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access. The CC-BY license agreement allows authors to retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of the work. Further information regarding this can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 and the author contributor agreement terms and conditions for publication in UCL Open Environment can be freely accessed online at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ucloe/site/author-contributor-agreement/.

Peer review

UCL Open Environment operates a preprint server post-publication open peer review model whereby the names and affiliations of reviewers are published alongside their review reports. Submissions approved for preprint status to undergo open peer review are generally acceptable for official publication in the journal once at least 2 peer reviews have been provided and the Editor is satisfied any comments raised during peer review have been adequately met. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the journal it is likely submissions will require more than 2 peer review reports by a range of experts across a multitude of subjects. Further information about how peer review works in the journal can be found here https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ucloe/site/how-it-works/.

Journal information

ISSN: 2632-0886

Frequency: UCL Open Environment publishes on a continuous process, or “As and When Ready” to publish.

Time to publication: expect on average 25 weeks from submission to publication.

Homepage: https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ucloe

Published by / Journal ownership:

UCL Press
University College London (UCL)
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
UK

UCL Press website: https://www.uclpress.co.uk

UCL Press email: uclpresspublishing@ucl.ac.uk

Journal X/Twitter: @uclopen_env

Journal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ucl-open-environment

UCL Press Journals Editorial Policy: https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/site/editorial_policy