Community responses to climate change

UCL Open: Environment is opening a call for papers on the theme of community responses to climate change and encourage contributions from researchers and professionals engaged in producing knowledge about climate change in and with local communities.

This special series focuses on responses to climate change taking place in, and / or led by, non-traditional ‘research’ communities. It will provide a platform to record and disseminate the insights from many community-level and community-led research projects that are currently poorly visible (or completely invisible) to many researchers and practitioners.  

We suspect that some of the most grounded, creative, innovative and transformative work on preparing for and responding to climate change impacts is and will be coming from communities around the world who are themselves foreseeing or currently grappling with the impacts of climate change. Communities of all kinds hold and constantly evolve important knowledge, skills and insights highly relevant to addressing climate change. 

This special series will provide a platform to record and disseminate the insights from many community-scale and community-led research projects that are currently poorly visible to researchers and practitioners.

For further detailed overview of the series aims and scope, please read the Editorial article, listed below.

Case study articles

Case study articles should present a single report on an example of community responses to climate change, with some reflection on wider implications. Case studies typically do not include a lengthy and detailed investigation in the research literature and methodology, but authors are encouraged to include sufficient detail to provide context and framing for readers.

It is widely understood some authors may not be familiar with submitting work to academic journals. To help and support authors through the review process, authors of case study articles are requested to firstly complete the series proposal form before completing the submission form. The Editors will then assess the proposal, provide feedback on the project, and either invite authors to formally submit and complete the submission form, or decline the proposal for the special series.

Please download the form here (word document .docx)
Once completed, please retrun to the Editorial office by email (uclopen.environment@ucl.ac.uk).

Note about data

Prior to submission, all authors should ensure that the data relied upon for the paper are either deposited into publicly available repositories whenever possible (for example, such as GenBank, TreeBASE, Dryad, the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity or other suitable long-term and stable public repositories, see below notice on data repositories) or be included in the main text for open peer review.

For further information, including about FAIR data sharing, UCL have prepared some useful information about when, where, and how to share data as openly as possible, at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data-management/best-practices/how-guides/sharing-data.

General repositories – for all types of research data (such as Figshare) – may be used where appropriate. UCL authors are encouraged to use the UCL Research Data Repository (please see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data-management/ucl-research-data-repository)

Series Editors

Dr Carla-Leanne Washbourne, Associate Professor in Environmental Science and Policy, STEaPP, UCL, UK
Prof Sarah Bell, City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia
Prof Dan Osborn, Chair of Human Ecology, Earth Sciences, UCL, UK