About Peer Community in Ecology

Summary

Peer Community in Ecology (PCI Ecology) has been launched in december 2017. It is a community of recommenders playing the role of editors who recommend unpublished articles based on peer-reviews to make them complete, reliable and citable articles, without the need for publication in ‘traditional’ journals. Evaluation and recommendation by PCI Ecology are free of charge. When a recommender decides to recommend an article, he/she writes a recommendation text that is published along with all the editorial correspondence (reviews, recommender's decisions, authors’ replies) by PCI Ecology. The article itself is not published by PCI Ecology; it remains in the preprint server where it has been posted by the authors. PCI Ecology recommenders can also recommend, but to a lesser extent, postprints.

PCI Ecology is a community of the parent project Peer Community In, an original idea of Denis Bourguet, Benoit Facon and Thomas Guillemaud.
PCI Ecology is not designed to be a free peer-reviewing service for authors aiming to improve their articles before submission to a journal. It is, of course, possible, for authors to then submit their recommended article to a traditional journal, but this is not the goal of PCI Ecology.
PCI Ecology is free: there are no fees associated with the evaluation process, and no charge for access to the comments and recommendations. The website is freely accessible.
PCI Ecology is transparent: Reviews and recommendations (for unpublished articles) and recommendations (for published articles) are freely available for consultation. Recommendations are signed by the recommenders. Reviews may also be signed if the reviewers agree to do so.
PCI Ecology is not exclusive: An article may be recommended by different Peer Communities in X (a feature of particular interest for articles relating to multidisciplinary studies) and may even be published in a traditional journal.

Evaluation model

Which manuscripts can be recommended?

PCI Ecology will evaluate preprints, and to a lesser extent postprints, dealing with all fields of ecology and in particular with these subjects: Agroecology; Allometry; Behaviour & Ethology; Biodiversity; Biogeography; Biological control; Biological invasions; Biomechanics; Botany; Chemical ecology; Climate change; Coexistence; Colonization; Community ecology; Community genetics; Competition; Conservation biology; Demography; Dispersal & Migration; Eco-evolutionary dynamics; Eco-immunology & Immunity; Ecological stoichiometry; Ecological successions; Ecosystem functioning; Ecotoxicology; Epidemiology; Evolutionary ecology; Experimental ecology; Facilitation & Mutualism; Food webs; Foraging; Freshwater ecology; Habitat selection; Herbivory; Host-parasite interactions; Human impact; Interaction networks; Landscape ecology; Life history; Macroecology; Marine ecology; Maternal effects; Meta-analyses; Microbial ecology & microbiology; Molecular ecology; Morphometrics; Mycology; Ontogeny; Paleoecology & Paleontology; Parasitology; Phenotypic plasticity; Phylogeny & Phylogeography; Physiology; Pollination; Population ecology; Preregistrations; Social structure; Soil ecology; Spatial ecology, Metacommunities & Metapopulations; Species distributions; Statistical ecology; Symbiosis; Taxonomy; Terrestrial ecology; Theoretical ecology; Thermal ecology; Tropical ecology; Zoology.

The articles recommended may have diverse formats: reviews, comments, opinion papers, research articles, data papers, technical notes, computer notes, movies, etc. No editing, formatting or proofing of the recommended papers is required. We only ask the authors of recommended article to add a cover page to their article and a sentence at the beginning of the abstract stating that their article has been recommended by PCI Ecology.

PCI Ecology welcomes anonymous submissions and submissions of preregistrations.

Editorial Criteria

PCI Ecology recommends preprints addressing evolutionary questions about all types of organisms. We cover all fields of biology, provided that the context of the study and the key question addressed relate to evolution. The preprint must not be published or under consideration for evaluation elsewhere at the time of its submission to PCI Ecology.

The preprints recommended may describe empirical or theoretical studies, and be based on observations from experiments or nature, or previously acquired data. They may also report the results of verbal, computer or mathematical models. Studies of methodologies for ecology are also appreciated. Perspectives, reviews and opinions, as well as comments on previously published articles are also welcome.

PCI Ecology recommends only preprints of high scientific quality that are methodologically and ethically sound. To this end, PCI Ecology:

Requires data, computer codes and mathematical and statistical analysis scripts to be made available to reviewers and recommenders at the time of submission and to readers after recommendation.
Welcomes reproductions of studies.
Welcomes preregistration submissions and preprint submissions based on preregistrations (whether or not reviewed)
Welcomes preprints reporting negative results, provided that the questions addressed and the methodology are sound.
Does not accept submissions of preprints presenting financial conflicts of interest. Other conflicts of interest must be minimal and declared.
Ensures that, as far as possible, the reviewers and referees have no conflict of interest with the content or authors of the study being evaluated.

PCI Ecology does not guarantee the evaluation or recommendation of all submitted preprints. Only preprints considered interesting by at least one competent recommender (equivalent to an associate editor in a classical journal) will be peer-reviewed. The interest of the preprint, as determined by the recommender, can relate to its context, the scientific question addressed, the methodology, or the results. PCI Ecology has a large number of recommenders, ensuring a considerable diversity of interests. The recommendations published by PCI Ecology are designed to draw the attention of the research community to the qualities of the article, including the subjective reasons for the recommender’s interest in it.

PReF

Sciety uses the PReF (preprint review features) descriptors to describe key elements of each Group's evaluation activities, helping readers to interpret and compare their evaluations. Learn more.

Review requested by: Authors
Reviewer selected by: Editor, service, or community
Public interaction: No
Inclusion of author response: Yes
Decision: Binary decision
Review coverage: Complete paper
Reviewer identity known to: Editor or service
Competing interests: Checked

People

Corina Logan (Leipzig, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany)
Anna Eklof (Linköping, Linköping University, Sweden)
Julia Astegiano (Córdoba, IMBIV (CONICET-UNC), Argentina)
Ben Phillips (Parkville, Univ. Melbourne, Australia)
Cyrille Violle (Montpellier, CEFE CNRS, France)
Dominique Gravel (Sherbrooke, Univ. Sherbrooke, Canada)
Tim Coulson (Oxford, Univ. Oxford, UK)
François Massol (Lille, CIIL, Univ. Lille, France)

Read more about Peer Community in Ecology.