Submitting your new manuscript

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 It is important to note here that all preprint articles are deemed under review for the journal and declared as not yet peer reviewed.

Submit your manuscript as a PDF file via the ‘Submit here’ button above and complete the online form – you will be asked to sign in to MyScienceOpen with your ORCID, or if you are first time user you will be asked to register your ORCID with the journal. Please ensure you have written a covering letter to sumamrise key findings and contextualise your article for a multi-disciplinary audience.

The journal aims to keep submission as simple and straight forward as possible, but please make sure to read through the author guidelines to ensure you have everything included in your manuscript that is required for open peer review.

After submission your manuscript will undergo assessment by a journal Editor to check for suitability, completeness, and basic scholarly integrity in line with our publishing policies. If approved for peer review the PDF file will be uploaded as a preprint article under submission to the journal and pending open peer review, on the preprint server (UCL Open: Environment Preprint).

All preprint articles are assigned a Crossref DOI, and made available under a CC BY 4.0 attribution licence. The preprint article is then open to peer review. See our peer review pages on how to get involved.

Submission statement of intent

Upon submitting, 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 been published elsewhere. You can read more about these terms in our author licence agreement publically available online at https://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/author-contributor-agreement.

Submitting your revision

When requested to revise and when you are ready to submit your revised manuscript, please complete the submission form and make note of the below points to improve reference to any changes for the journal Editor and reviewers.

Once you are ready to submit please follow these 3 steps:

1. Login to MyScienceOpen;
2. Navigate to your paper online and you will then see a ‘New Revision’ button under the general information section of the webpage. Click this to upload a new file in the submission form;
3. Check all details are correct and upload the new revised PDF file (removed of all/any tracked changes – this will be the main file presented online). Please make sure you clarify how you revised your paper and respond fully to any/all reviewer and Editor comments in the “Revision notes” section of the form (see below for further guidance). We require all authors to also upload an additional tracked changes PDF file to aid re-review processes.

Responding to reviewer reports and comments

To ensure the highest-quality research in UCL Open: Environment, authors, reviewers and any user wishing to comment on the site are expected to uphold and follow our peer review and commenting code of conduct, found online at https://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/review-and-comment-code-conduct. When responding to reviewer comments, authors should do so politely and professionally.

Please note that any/all comments supplied responding to reviewer reports will be made openly available to read online, alongside the submitted manuscript.

Responding to reviewer comments:

1. You will be required to clarify how you have revised your paper when submitting your revision by filling out the ‘Revision notes’ section in the submission form. Here, you should aim to address all points raised by the editor and reviewers, preferably sequentially and in a bullet point list and outline what revisions you have made to your manuscript as well as providing a polite objective rebuttal to any points or comments you disagree with.
2. Where applicable, please perform any additional analyses or experiments the reviewers recommend (unless you feel that they would not make your paper better; if this is the case, explain why in the’Revision notes’ section).
3. We require all authors to additionally upload a tracked changes document (saved as a PDF) that Editors and reviewers can download to see how you have modified your paper.
   Note: if you do not have a tracked changes function in your word processor, changing the colour of the text where you have made editions is a useful visual guide.