Submissions
Before submitting please ensure you have followed the author guidelines and have read through the below information and statements, before submitting. Information gathered when registering with our journal submission system is used for publication purposes, including peer-review, typesetting and copyediting and online publication.
Submission statement of intent
By submitting to UCL Open Environment, you confirm that:
- The article is considered under review for possible publication on the condition that it is submitted solely to UCL Open Environment and that the article, or a substantial portion of it, is not under consideration and has not already been published under another publisher’s imprint.
- You agree to the UCL Open Environment Author Contributor Agreement Terms on behalf of yourself and all of your co-authors (if any) and understand that these terms apply to the article when published:
Author Contributor Agreement Terms
- You have read through the journals Editorial policies carefully to ensure the submission follows the required ethical standards for publication, as outlined on the UCL Press editorial policy pages:
Editorial policies
- You are either the the sole author of the article submitting to UCL Open Environment or, where you are a co-author of the article, you are authorised by all of the article’s co-authors to submit the article on the basis of the UCL Press Author Contributor Agreement Terms:
Author Contributor Agreement Terms
- That all figures, images, or other materials included in your manuscript are either original to you the author(s) or are cleared by the copyright holder for reproduction in the journal with full copyright permission. Where permission is required, you confirm that you have secured the right to reuse the material for publication in this open‑access journal and have cited the source in accordance with the journal’s referencing style, as outlined in the UCL Press Author Contributor Agreement Terms:
Author Contributor Agreement Terms
Any breach of the UCL Press Journal Author Contributor Agreement terms or the declarations made in this checklist may lead to withdrawal of the manuscript from consideration or retraction of the published article.
Preprints
New submissions are first posted online to the UCL Open Environment preprint server for open peer review. It is important to note here that all preprint articles are deemed under review for the journal and declared as not yet peer reviewed.
Once you have submitted your manuscript, a journal Editor will assess it to check for suitability against the journals aims and scope, completeness, and basic scholarly integrity in line with our publishing policies.
If your submission is approved for peer review, the PDF file will be uploaded as a 'preprint article' and designated 'under submission to the journal and pending open peer review'. At this stage, the preprint article is assigned a Crossref DOI and made available under a CC BY 4.0 attribution licence.
Acceptable use of AI-assisted technologies in articles
Please refer to UCL Press's Principles on the use of AI-assisted technologies in articles here.
Broadly, the use of AI-assisted technologies and tools should not replace key authoring tasks and applying AI technology should be done with transparency and human oversight. All the work should be reviewed and edited carefully, because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete or biased.
Authorship and author consent
All listed authors must have made a significant contribution to the article in the manuscript and have approved all its claims. Where necessary to clarify this, authors are required to include an authorship statement in their manuscript to outline how each author contributed to the paper, after any acknowledgements in the article – please note that this information should be removed from the main manuscript file for peer review.
UCL Press adheres to the statement of authorship as outlined by the ICMJE statement (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html), and considers an author of an article to have:
- made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
- drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- made final approval of the version to be published; AND
- agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
For suspected and incorrect authorship, UCL Press journals will refer to the UCL Press Journals Editorial Policy as outlined at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/site/editorial_policy and follow COPE guidelines.
Further information can on the UCL Press editorial policy pages:
Editorial policies
ORCiD
We strongly encourage authors submitting to UCL Open Environment to provide their ORCiD identification number during submission. ORCiD (http://orcid.org) provides researchers with a unique identifier that can be kept throughout their career and can be used in publications and grant applications. ORCiD distinguishes between researchers with similar names, and helps ensure that publications are attributed and recorded correctly. It also helps researchers to comply with funders’ open access requirements. Funders, such as the Wellcome Trust and the UK Research Councils, now require or recommend the use of ORCiD alongside systems like Researchfish that can link with ORCiD.
How do I get an ORCID?
Researchers should register for an ORCiD identification number by going to http://orcid.org and following the registrations instructions. If you already have an ORCiD and want to submit, review, or comment on an article, you can login via ORCiD by clicking on the "Log in with ORCiD" button here https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ucloe/login or when clicking to submit to the journal.