About us
Published by UCL Press (from the University College London), UCL Open: Environment is a new open and transparent, open access (OA) journal where high-impact disciplinary and interdisciplinary research is published that showcases radical and critical thinking on real world problems, with the aim of benefitting humanity. Instead of a journal with narrow specifications, the journal welcomes submissions across a broad range of themes in all aspects of environment-related research.
Open for anyone to submit to, the journal will champion the open scholarship agenda by openly and transparently publishing peer-reviewed works that generate new knowledge, new ideas and new thinking. Articles will be judged on the merit and scientific validity (sound scholarship) of the work and the journal is inviting submissions from any grade of researcher at UCL and beyond, at all career stages, including early career researchers, professionals, and senior scholars.
The entire publishing process will be open and transparent – operating on a preprint server, post-publication, open peer review model. You can find further information and the full aims and scope of the journal by clicking on the headings below.
Our vision
Knowledge should be accessible to all, regardless of location or financial means, and at UCL we believe that the future of academic and scholarly pursuit is best served by an open science agenda, towards a fully open access environment. By establishing UCL Press and in turn UCL Open: Environment, by bringing the publication and dissemination of knowledge back into the academy, it is our aim to stimulate disruptive thinking, to challenge prevailing scholarly publishing models, across and beyond the university, and to transform the way new knowledge is shared openly and without barriers. Our objective is not only to innovate and take a leading role into new open methods of scholarly publication, but also to develop a sustainable and cost effective solution for the communities we serve – researchers, educators, students, policy makers, institutions, etc. UCL Open: Environment is the first iteration and pilot of this new open and transparent publishing model – UCL Open – with its focus in environment-related research. Our ambition is to further develop the model and to roll it out across other broad and multidisciplinary foci.
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://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/author-contributor-agreement.
Further information about where the journal is currently indexed can be found at https://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/indexing
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.