About

Focus and Scope

Rethinking Ecology is an open access journal that aims at fostering forward thinking and the publication of novel ideas in ecology. The term ecology in this instance should be understood in the broadest sense, and contributions including (but not limited to) evolution, ecophysiology, environmental sciences, global change biology, human ecology and decision ecology are all welcome. The journal publishes perspectives, research papers, rapid communications, responses, software descriptions and horizon scanning papers with an emphasis on new hypotheses and bold ideas.

As opposed to other journals, perspectives and horizon scanning papers to Rethinking Ecology are not commissioned. We believe that novel ideas and innovative research do not arise from direct invitations and we are committed to enable authors to publish their best work, regardless of their seniority, gender, publication track record and country of origin. Other singularities of the journal include a percentage-based author contribution index that accurately reflects the contribution of each co-author and a double-blind review process where reviewers score manuscripts against well-defined criteria in relation to the type of paper.

There is an urgent need for new ideas, new hypotheses and horizon scanning in ecology, particularly with regards to finding solutions to address critical issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Such challenges require bold and potentially controversial thinking. Rethinking Ecology is an opportunity to publish novel ideas and hypotheses prior to fully testing them. Our aim is to encourage scientists to share and discuss their novel ideas with their peers without fear of being scooped. Publishing in Rethinking Ecology will also draw attention from the scientific community, help create research networks, and support grant proposals aiming at putting these novel ideas to the test.


Policies


Open Access

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.


Copyright Notice

License and Copyright Agreement

In submitting the manuscript to any of Pensoft’s journals, authors certify that: 

  • They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements. 
  • The work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review or thesis); it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; its publication has been approved by all author(s) and responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out. 
  • They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or where copyright is owned by someone else. 
  • They agree to the following license and copyright agreement:

Copyright

  • Copyright on any article is retained by the author(s) or the author's employer. Regarding copyright transfers please see below. 
  • Authors grant Pensoft Publishers a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher. 
  • Authors grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its original authors and citation details are identified. 
  • The article and published supplementary material are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0):

Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)

Anyone is free:

to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work 
to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution. The original authors must be given credit. 

  • For any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are. 
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if the copyright holders give permission. 
  • Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.

The full legal code of this license.

Copyright Transfers

Any usage rights are regulated through the Creative Commons License. Since Pensoft Publishers is using the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), anyone (the author, their institution/company, the publisher and the public) is free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work as long as the original author is credited (see above). Therefore, specific usage rights cannot be reserved by the author or their institution/company and the publisher cannot include a statement "all rights reserved" in any published paper.

Website design and publishing framework: Copyright © Pensoft Publishers.

CLOCKSS system has permission to ingest, preserve, and serve this Archival Unit.


Privacy Statement

The personal information used on this website is to be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal. It will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.


Authorship/Contributorship

Some journals are integrated with Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT), in order to recognise individual author input within a publication, thereby ensuring professional and ethical conduct, while avoiding authorship disputes, gift / ghost authorship and similar pressing issues in academic publishing.

During manuscript submission, the submitting author is strongly recommended to specify a contributor role for each of co-author, i.e. Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing - Original draft, Writing - Review and Editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding Acquisition (see more). For the journals that are not integrated with CRediT, the submitting author is encouraged to specify the roles as a free text. Once published the article will include the contributor role for all authors in the article metadata.


Use of AI

Authors must be transparent about the use of Artificial Intelligence tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models in the manuscript preparation, and disclose details of how the AI tool was used within the "Materials and Methods" section.


Desk Rejection

During the pre-review evaluation, Editors-in-Chief or Subject editors check the manuscript for compliance with the journal's guidelines, focus, and scope. At this point, they may reject a manuscript prior to sending it out for peer review, specifying the reasons. The most common ones are non-conformity with the journal's focus, scope and policies and/or low scientific or linguistic quality. In such cases, authors are encouraged to considerably improve their manuscript and resubmit it for a review. We encourage authors whose manuscripts have been desk rejected due to being out of the scope of this journal to consider another potentially suitable title from the Pensoft portfolio.

In case the manuscript is suitable for the journal but has to be corrected technically or linguistically, it will be returned to the authors for improvement. The authors will not need to re-submit the manuscript but only to upload the corrected file(s) to their existing submission.


Peer Review Policy

This journal uses a double-blind peer review process, which means that both reviewer and author's names are concealed throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not reveal their identity.

Please consider the Editor and Reviewer Guidelines in the About webpage of this journal for more details and stepwise instructions on the editorial and peer review process.


Preprints

This journal allows posting preprints of the manuscripts submitted for peer-review. Authors are strongly encouraged to use the ARPHA Preprints server for that as an option available during the submission process, which will save a double effort in manuscript submission and allows the preprint to be directly linked to the published article and vice versa.

Manuscripts that contain nomenclatural acts in the sense of the biological Codes will not be posted as preprints even when the authors opt for that, to avoid possible confusion in the priority of names and validity of publication.


Indexing and Archiving Policy

The articles published in the journal are indexed by a high number of industry leading indexers and repositories. The journal content is archived in CLOCKSS, Zenodo, Portico and other international archives. The full list of indexes and archives are shown on the journal homepage.

The authors are allowed to publish preprints of their manuscripts on ARPHA Preprints or other preprint servers. The deposition and distribution of preprints and final article versions is highly encouraged.


Advertising

The journal will consider inquiries for the placement of advertisements as a banner (specified size) in a dedicated section on the journal’s homepage on a case-by-case basis. Each request will be subject to evaluation by the journal’s management team in order to determine if the content is appropriate and that it does not infringe the rights of any persons or other third parties. The content should be related to the journal’s topical focus. Illegal, discriminatory, obscene, abusive, pornographic, and otherwise harmful or offensive content will not be permissible. The journal does not endorse and is not liable for the content of advertisements displayed on its website.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

General

The publishing ethics and malpractice policies follow the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA), the NISO Recommended Practices for the Presentation and Identification of E-Journals (PIE-J), and, where relevant, the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from ICMJE.

Privacy statement

The personal information used on this website is to be used exclusively for the stated purposes of each particular journal. It will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. 

Open access

Pensoft and ARPHA-hosted journals adhere strictly to gold open access to accelerate the barrier-free dissemination of scientific knowledge. All published articles are made freely available to read, download, and distribute immediately upon publication, given that the original source and authors are cited (Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)).

Open data publishing and sharing

Pensoft and ARPHA encourage open data publication and sharing, in accordance with Panton’s Principles and FAIR Data Principles. For the domain of biodiversity-related publications Pensoft has specially developed extended Data Publishing Policies and Guidelines for Biodiversity Data. Specific data publishing guidelines are available on the journal website. 

Data can be published in various ways, such as preservation in data repositories linked to the respective article or as data files or packages supplementary to the article. Datasets should be deposited in an appropriate, trusted repository and the associated identifier (URL or DOI) of the dataset(s) must be included in the data resources section of the article. Reference(s) to datasets should also be included in the reference list of the article with DOIs (where available). Where no discipline-specific data repository exists authors should deposit their datasets in a general repository such as, for example Zenodo or others. 

Submission, peer review and editorial process

The peer review and editorial processes are facilitated through an online editorial system and a set of email notifications. Pensoft journals’ websites display stepwise description of the editorial process and list all necessary instructions and links. These links are also included in the respective email notification.

General: Publication and authorship

  • All submitted papers are subject to a rigorous peer review process by at least two international reviewers who are experts in the scientific field of the particular paper. 
  • The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability and language. 
  • A declaration of potential Conflicts of Interest is a mandatory step in the submission process. The declaration becomes part of the article metadata and is displayed in both the PDF and HTML versions of the article.
  • The journals allow several rounds of review of a manuscript. The ultimate responsibility for editorial decisions lies with the respective Subject Editor and, in some cases, with the Editor-in-Chief. All appeals should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief, who may decide to seek advice among the Subject Editors and Reviewers.
  • The possible decisions include: (1) Accept, (2) Minor revisions, (3) Major revisions, (4) Reject, but re-submission encouraged and (5) Reject. 
  • If Authors are encouraged to revise and re-submit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted. 
  • The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. 
  • No research can be included in more than one publication.
  • Editors-in-Chief, managing editors and their deputies are strongly recommended to limit the amount of papers co-authored by them. As a rule of thumb, research papers (co-)authored by Editors-in-Chief, managing editors and their deputies must not exceed 20% of the publications a year, with a clear task to drop this proportion below 15%. By adopting this practice, the journal is taking extra precaution to avoid endogeny and conflicts of interest, while ensuring the editorial decision-making process remains transparent and fair.
  • Editors-in-Chief, managing editors and handling editors are not allowed to handle manuscripts co-authored by them.

Responsibility of Authors

  • Authors are required to agree that their paper will be published in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) license.
  • Authors must certify that their manuscripts are their original work. 
  • Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere. 
  • Authors must certify that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. 
  • Authors should submit the manuscript in linguistically and grammatically correct English and formatted in accordance with the journal’s Author Guidelines.
  • Authors must participate in the peer review process. 
  • Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes. 
  • All Authors mentioned are expected to have significantly contributed to the research. 
  • Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest. 
  • Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript. 
  • Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
  • Authors should acknowledge all significant funders of the research pertaining to their article and list all relevant competing interests.   
  • Other sources of support for publications should also be clearly identified in the manuscript, usually in an acknowledgement (e.g. funding for the article processing charge; language editing or editorial assistance).
  • The Corresponding author should provide the declaration of any conflicts of interest on behalf of all Authors. Conflicts of interest may be associated with employment, sources of funding, personal financial interests, membership of relevant organisations or others.

Responsibility of Reviewers

  • The manuscripts will be reviewed by two or three experts in order to reach first decision as soon as possible. Reviewers do not need to sign their reports but are welcome to do so. They are also asked to declare any conflicts of interests.
  • Reviewers are not expected to provide a thorough linguistic editing or copyediting of a manuscript, but to focus on its scientific quality, as well as for the overall style, which should correspond to the good practices in clear and concise academic writing. If Reviewers recognize that a manuscript requires linguistic edits, they should inform both Authors and Editor in the report.
  • Reviewers are asked to check whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, how interesting it is and whether the quality of the writing is acceptable.
  • In cases of strong disagreement between the reviews or between the Authors and Reviewers, the Editors can judge these according to their expertise or seek advice from a member of the journal's Editorial Board.
  • Reviewers are also asked to indicate which articles they consider to be especially interesting or significant. These articles may be given greater prominence and greater external publicity, including press releases addressed to science journalists and mass media.
  • During a second review round, the Reviewer may be asked by the Subject Editor to evaluate the revised version of the manuscript with regards to Reviewer’s recommendations submitted during the first review round.
  • Reviewers are asked to be polite and constructive in their reports. Reports that may be insulting or uninformative will be rescinded.
  • Reviewers are asked to start their report with a very brief summary of the reviewed paper. This will help the Editors and Authors see whether the reviewer correctly understood the paper or whether a report might be based on misunderstanding.
  • Further, Reviewers are asked to comment on originality, structure and previous research: (1) Is the paper sufficiently novel and does it contribute to a better understanding of the topic under scrutiny? Is the work rather confirmatory and repetitive? (2) Is the introduction clear and concise? Does it place the work into the context that is necessary for a reader to comprehend the aims, hypotheses tested, experimental design or methods? Are Material and Methods clearly described and sufficiently explained? Are reasons given when choosing one method over another one from a set of comparable methods? Are the results clearly but concisely described? Do they relate to the topic outlined in the introduction? Do they follow a logical sequence? Does the discussion place the paper in scientific context and go a step beyond the current scientific knowledge on the basis of the results? Are competing hypotheses or theories reasonably related to each other and properly discussed? Do conclusions seem reasonable?  Is previous research adequately incorporated into the paper? Are references complete, necessary and accurate? Is there any sign that substantial parts of the paper were copies of other works?
  • Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
  • Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information. 
  • Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. 
  • Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
  • Reviewers should also call to the Editors’ attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Responsibility of Editors

  • Editors in Pensoft’s journals carry the main responsibility for the scientific quality of the published papers and base their decisions solely on the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.
  • The Subject Editor takes the final decision on a manuscript’s acceptance or rejection and his/her name is listed as "Academic Editor" in the header of each article.
  • The Subject Editors are not expected to provide a thorough linguistic editing or copyediting of a manuscript, but to focus on its scientific quality, as well as the overall style, which should correspond to the good practices in clear and concise academic writing. 
  • Editors are expected to spot small errors in orthography or stylistic during the editing process and correct them.
  • Editors should always consider the needs of the Authors and the Readers when attempting to improve the publication. 
  • Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record. 
  • Editors should preserve the anonymity of Reviewers, unless the latter decide to disclose their identities. 
  • Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines. 
  • Editors should act if they suspect misconduct and make all reasonable attempts to obtain a resolution to the problem. 
  • Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions, they should have proof of misconduct.
  • Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between Authors, Reviewers and Board Members.
  • Editors are allowed to publish a limited proportion of papers per year co-authored by them, after considering some extra precautions to avoid an impression of impropriety, endogeny, conflicts of interest and ensure that the editorial decision-making process is transparent and fair.
  • Editors-in-Chief, managing editors and handling editors are not allowed to handle manuscripts co-authored by them.
           

Neutrality to geopolitical disputes

General

The strict policy of Pensoft and its journals is to stay neutral to any political or territorial dispute. Authors should depoliticize their studies by avoiding provoking remarks, disputable geopolitical statements and controversial map designations; disputable territories should be referred to as well-recognised and non-controversial geographical areas. Тhe journal reserves the right to mark such areas at least as disputable at or after publication, to publish editor's notes, or to reject/retract the paper.

Authors' affiliations

Pensoft does not take decisions regarding the actual affiliations of institutions. Authors are advised to provide their affiliation as indicated on the official internet site of their institution.

Editors 

Editorial decisions should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors. Decisions to edit and publish should not be determined by the policies of governments or other agencies outside of the journal itself.

Human and animal rights

The ethical standards in medical and pharmacological studies are based on the Helsinki declaration (1964, amended in 1975, 1983, 1989, 1996, 2000 and 2013) of the World Medical Association and the Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals of the World Association of Medical Journals (WAME).

Authors of studies including experiments on humans or human tissues should declare in their cover letter a compliance with the ethical standards of the respective institutional or regional committee on human experimentation and attach committee’s statement and informed consent; for those researchers who do not have access to formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed and declared in the cover letter. Patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers should not be used, not in the text nor in any illustrative material, tables of databases, unless the author presents a written permission from each patient to use his or her personal data. Photos or videos of patients should be taken after a warning and agreement of the patient or of a legal authority acting on his or her behalf.

Animal experiments require full compliance with local, national, ethical, and regulatory principles, and local licensing arrangements and respective statements of compliance (or approvals of institutional ethical committees where such exists) should be included in the article text.

Informed consent

Individual participants in studies have the right to decide what happens to the identifiable personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, as well as to any photograph that was taken. Hence it is important that all participants gave their informed consent in writing prior to inclusion in the study. Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers and other information) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian if the participant is incapable) gave written informed consent for publication. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve in some cases, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic profiles, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning.

The following statement should be included in the article text in one of the following ways:

  • "Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study."
  • "Informed consent was obtained from all individuals for whom identifying information is included in this article." (In case some patients’ data have been published in the article or supplementary materials to it).

Gender issues

We encourage the use of gender-neutral language, such as 'chairperson' instead of 'chairman' or 'chairwomen', as well as 'they' instead of 'she/he' and 'their' instead of  'him/her' (or consider restructuring the sentence).

Conflict of interest

During the editorial process, the following relationships between editors and authors are considered conflicts of interest: Colleagues currently working in the same research group or department, recent co-authors, and doctoral students for which the editor served as committee chair. During the submission process, the authors are kindly advised to identify possible conflicts of interest with the journal editors. After manuscripts are assigned to the handling editor, individual editors are required to inform the managing editor of any possible conflicts of interest with the authors. Journal submissions are also assigned to referees to minimize conflicts of interest. After manuscripts are assigned for review, referees are asked to inform the editor of any conflicts that may exist.

Appeals and open debate

We encourage academic debate and constructive criticism. Authors are always invited to respond to any editorial correspondence before publication. Authors are not allowed to neglect unfavorable comments about their work and choose not to respond to criticisms. 

No Reviewer’s comment or published correspondence may contain a personal attack on any of the Authors. Criticism of the work is encouraged. Editors should edit (or reject) personal or offensive statements. Authors should submit their appeal on editorial decisions to the Editorial Office, addressed to the Editor-in-Chief or to the Managing Editor. Authors are discouraged from directly contacting Editorial Board Members and Editors with appeals.

Editors will mediate all discussions between Authors and Reviewers during the peer review process prior to publication. If agreement cannot be reached, Editors may consider inviting additional reviewers if appropriate. 

The Editor-in-Chief will mediate all discussions between Authors and Subject Editors.

The journals encourage publication of open opinions, forum papers, corrigenda, critical comments on a published paper and Author’s response to criticism.

Misconduct

Research misconduct may include: (a)  manipulating research materials, equipment or processes; (b) changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the article; c) plagiarism. Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion. If misconduct is suspected, journal Editors will act in accordance with the relevant COPE guidelines.

Plagiarism and duplicate publication policy
A special case of misconduct is plagiarism, which is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit. Plagiarism is considered theft of intellectual property and manuscripts submitted to this journal which contain substantial unattributed textual copying from other papers will be immediately rejected. Editors are advised to check manuscripts for plagiarism via the iThenticate service by clicking on the "ïThenticate report" button. Journal providing a peer review in languages other than English (for example, Russian) may use other plagiarism checking services (for example, Antiplagiat). 
Instances, when authors re-use large parts of their publications without providing a clear reference to the original source, are considered duplication of work. Slightly changed published works submitted in multiple journals is not acceptable practice either. In cases of plagiarism in an already published paper or duplicate publication, an announcement will be made on the journal publication page and a procedure of retraction will be triggered.

Responses to possible misconduct

All allegations of misconduct must be referred to the Editor-In-Chief. Upon the thorough examination, the Editor-In-Chief and deputy editors should conclude if the case concerns a possibility of misconduct. All allegations should be kept confidential and references to the matter in writing should be kept anonymous, whenever possible.

Should a comment on potential misconduct be submitted by the Reviewers or Editors, an explanation will be sought from the Authors. If it is satisfactory and the issue is the result of either a mistake or misunderstanding, the matter can be easily resolved. If not, the manuscript will be rejected or retracted and the Editors may impose a ban on that individual's publication in the journals for a certain period of time. In cases of published plagiarism or dual publication, an announcement will be made in both journals explaining the situation.

When allegations concern authors, the peer review and publication process for their submission will be halted until completion of the aforementioned process. The investigation will be carried out even if the authors withdraw the manuscript, and implementation of the responses below will be considered.

When allegations concern reviewers or editors, they will be replaced in the review process during the ongoing investigation of the matter. Editors or reviewers who are found to have engaged in scientific misconduct should be removed from further association with the journal, and this fact reported to their institution.

Retraction policies

Article retraction

According to the COPE Retraction Guidelines followed by this Journal, an article can be retracted because of the following reasons:

  • Unreliable findings based on clear evidence of a misconduct (e.g. fraudulent use of the data) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).
  • Redundant publication, e.g., findings that have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification.
  • Plagiarism or other kind of unethical research.

Retraction procedure

  • Retraction should happen after a careful consideration by the Journal editors of allegations coming from the editors, authors, or readers.
  • The HTML version of the retracted article is removed (except for the article metadata) and on its place a retraction note is issued.
  • The PDF of the retracted article is left on the website but clearly watermarked with the note "Retracted" on each page.
  • In some rare cases (e.g., for legal reasons or health risk) the retracted article can be replaced with a new corrected version containing apparent link to the retracted original version and a retraction note with a history of the document.

Expression of concern

In other cases, the Journal editors should consider issuing an expression of concern, if evidence is available for:

  • Inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors.
  • Unreliable findings that are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case.
  • A belief that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive.
  • An investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.

Errata and Corrigenda

Pensoft journals largely follow the ICMJE guidelines for corrections and errata.

Errata

Admissible and insignificant errors in a published article that do not affect the article content or scientific integrity (e.g. typographic errors, broken links, wrong page numbers in the article headers etc.) can be corrected through publishing of an erratum. This happens through replacing the original PDF with the corrected one together with a correction notice on the Erratum Tab of the HTML version of the paper, detailing the errors and the changes implemented in the original PDF. The original PDF will be marked with a correction note and an indication to the corrected version of the erratum article. The original PDF will also be archived and made accessible via a link in the same Erratum Tab.

Authors are also encouraged to post comments and indicate typographical errors on their articles to the Comments tab of the HTML version of the article.

Corrigenda

Corrigenda should be published in cases when significant errors are discovered in a published article. Usually, such errors affect the scientific integrity of the paper and could vary in scale. Reasons for publishing corrigenda may include changes in authorship, unintentional mistakes in published research findings and protocols, errors in labelling of tables and figures or others. In taxonomic journals, corrigenda are often needed in cases where the errors affect nomenclatural acts. Corrigenda are published as a separate publication and bear their own DOI. Examples of published corrigenda are available here.

The decision for issuing errata or corrigenda is with the editors after discussion with the authors.


COPE Compliance

This journal endorses the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines and will pursue cases of suspected research and publication misconduct (e.g. falsification, unethical experimentation, plagiarism, inappropriate image manipulation, redundant publication). For further information about COPE please see the website for COPE at http://www.publicationethics.org and journal's Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

Terms of Use

This document describes the Terms of Use of the services provided by the Rethinking Ecology journal, hereinafter referred to as "the Journal" or "this Journal". All Users agree to these Terms of Use when signing up to this Journal. Signed Journal Users will be hereinafter referred to as "User" or "Users".

The publication services to the Journal are provided by Pensoft Publishers Ltd., through its publishing platform ARPHA, hereinafter referred to as "the Provider".

The Provider reserves the right to update the Terms of Use occasionally. Users will be notified via posting on the site and/or by email. If using the services of the Journal after such notice, the User will be deemed to have accepted the proposed modifications. If the User disagrees with the modifications, he/she should stop using the Journal services. Users are advised to periodically check the Terms of Use for updates or revisions. Violation of any of the terms will result in the termination of the User's account. The Provider is not responsible for any content posted by the User in the Journal.

Account Terms

  1. For registration in this Journal or any of the services or tools hosted on it, Users must provide their full legal name, a valid email address, postal address, affiliation (if any),  and any other information requested.
  2. Accounts created via this journal automatically sign in the User to the ARPHA Platform.
  3. Users are responsible for maintaining the security of their account and password. The Journal cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from failure to comply with this security obligation.
  4. Users are solely responsible for the content posted via the Journal services (including, but not limited to data, text, files, information, usernames, images, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, sounds, applications, links and other content) and all activities that occur under their account.
  5. Users may not use the service for any illegal or unauthorised purpose. Users must not, in the use of the service, violate any laws within their jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws).
  6. Users can change or pseudonomyse their personal data, or deactivate their accounts at any time through the functionality available in the User’s personal profile. Deactivation or pseudonomysation will not affect the appearance of personal data in association with an already published work of which the User is author, co-author, editor, or reviewer.
  7. Users can report to the Journal uses of their personal data, that they might consider not corresponding to the current Terms of Use.
  8. The User’s personal data is processed by the Journal on the legal basis corresponding to Article 6, paragraph 1, letters a, b, c and f. of the General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter referred to as GDPR) and will be used for the purpose of Journal’s services in accordance with the present Terms and Use, as well as in those cases expressly stated by the legislation.
  9. User’s consent to use the information the Journal has collected about the User corresponds to Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR.
  10. The ‘legitimate interest’ of the Journal to engage with the User and enable him/her to participate in Journal’s activities and use Journal’s services correspond to Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR.

Services and Prices

The Provider reserves the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the services provided by the Journal. Plans and prices are subject to change upon 30 days notice from the Provider. Such notice may be provided at any time by posting the changes to the relevant service website.

Ownership

The Authors retain full ownership to their content published in the Journal. We claim no intellectual property rights over the material provided by any User in this Journal. However, by setting pages to be viewed publicly (Open Access), the User agrees to allow others to view and download the relevant content. In addition, Open Access articles might be used by the Provider, or any other third party, for data mining purposes. Authors are solely responsible for the content submitted to the journal and must confirm [during the submission process] that the content does not contain any materials subject to copyright violation including, but not limited to, text, data, multimedia, images, graphics, photos, audio and video clips. This requirement holds for both the article text and any supplementary material associated with the article.

The Provider reserves the rights in its sole discretion to refuse or remove any content that is available via the Website.

Copyrighted Materials

Unless stated otherwise, the Journal website may contain some copyrighted material (for example, logos and other proprietary information, including, without limitation, text, software, photos, video, graphics, music and sound - "Copyrighted Material"). The User may not copy, modify, alter, publish, transmit, distribute, display, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works or, in any way, exploit any of the Copyrighted Material, in whole or in part, without written permission from the copyright owner. Users will be solely liable for any damage resulting from any infringement of copyrights, proprietary rights or any other harm resulting from such a submission.

Exceptions from this rule are e-chapters or e-articles published under Open Access (see below), which are normally published under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY), or Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY), or Creative Commons Public Domain license (CC0).

Open Access Materials

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Author Guidelines

The aim of Rethinking Ecology is to encourage scientists to share and discuss their novel ideas with their peers at any stage of the research cycle without fear of being scooped. For example, publishing novel ideas and hypotheses in Rethinking Ecology prior to fully testing them will draw attention from the scientific community, help create research networks, and support grant proposals that aim to put these novel ideas to the test. To ensure an efficient double-blind review process, any information with the potential to identify the authors should only appear in the letter to the editor, not in the manuscript or supporting information.

Letter to the editor:
The letter should be saved as a separate document from the manuscript. The letter is not seen by reviewers. It should include:

Authors’ names, affiliation and addresses: Include the full name of all authors and their affiliations (using superscript letters). The corresponding author should be indicated with a superscript star (*). Please provide an email address for every co-author.
Author contribution: Using the authors’ initials, briefly describe the contribution of each author as well as a percentage contribution.  (E.g.: SB developed the concept and designed the manuscript, MCL revised the manuscript, LW revised the manuscript. SB: 50%, MCL 20%, LW: 30%.) These percentages will be used to calculate an author contribution index (see ACI section below). Every co-author will be contacted by email and asked to confirm their contribution.
Acknowledgments: Briefly list any contributor who was not listed as an author. List funding from any agency or grant that supported the work.

Manuscript file:

The manuscript should be stripped of any information about the authors. The standard manuscript sections (Introduction, Methods, Results, etc.) are not required for every paper, but below are general guidelines for each section. All sections may contain subheadings and sub-subheadings.

Title: A short title.
Abstract: 300 words max. The abstract should clearly state the novelty of the manuscript and how it advances or challenges the current state of knowledge.
Keywords: Up to 5 key words that are not present in the title.
Introduction: The introduction should focus on describing the state of knowledge or the knowledge gap that the manuscript addresses.

Methods (for Research articles, Rapid communications and Horizon scanning papers): The methodology must be described in detail and all necessary information to reproduce the work must be provided for reviewing purpose (e.g. data, codes, etc.). Subsections can be inserted and their titles are free but should remain short as much as possible. Please see additional information on uploading scientific protocols below under "Materials and Methods".

Recommendations (for Horizon scanning papers): Clear recommendations about the topic under scrutiny should be listed in a form that is accessible to scientists, practitioners and/or decision makers.


What Can I Publish?

The journal publishes perspectives, research papers, rapid communications, responses, software descriptions and horizon scanning papers with an emphasis on new hypotheses and bold ideas.

  • Perspective papers that propose a new idea, hypothesis or terminology that is well supported conceptually by existing literature.
  • Research papers that are empirical or theoretical studies presenting novel data or analysis that contribute to a better understanding of the topic under scrutiny. The methodology must be described in detail and all necessary information to reproduce the work must be provided for reviewing purpose (e.g. data, codes etc.).
  • Rapid communications that are short research papers which include experimental testing of a new idea or hypothesis. The methodology must be described in detail and all necessary information to reproduce the work must be provided for reviewing purpose (e.g. data, codes etc.).
  • Response papers that complement a recently published paper (either in Rethinking Ecology or in another peer-reviewed journal), by bringing a new idea/hypothesis or by presenting an opposing view/opinion.
  • Software presentations that describe for the first time the scope and basic functions of a software or a significant update to a previously published existing software.
  • Horizon scanning papers that present a forward-looking systematic analysis based on a survey of the latest literature to identify future threats or future areas of growth, inform risk management strategies, and/or provide guidance in research prioritisation (see Sutherland et al. 2009: The need for environmental horizon scanning). These papers must provide clear recommendations about the topic under scrutiny to scientists, practitioners and/or decision makers.

Citations in the text

Before submitting the manuscript, please check each citation in the text against the References list (and vice-versa) to ensure that they match exactly.

Citations in the text should be formatted as follows:

One author: Smith (1990) or (Smith 1990)

Two authors: Brock and Gunderson (2001) or (Brock and Gunderson 2001)

Three or more authors: Smith et al. (1998) or (Smith et al. 1998)

A citation’s format depends on how it is incorporated in the text:

Examples:

  1. According to Smith (1990), these findings…
  2. These findings have been first reported in the beginning of the nineties (Smith 1990).

When citing more than one source, in-text citations should be ordered by the year of publication, starting with the earliest one:

(Smith et al. 1998, 2000, 2016; Brock and Gunderson 2001; Felt 2006).

When you have a few citations from the same author but from different years (such as the case with Smith et al. above), the first year is taken into consideration when ordering the sources (in this case 1998, which is why the three references for Smith et al. come first in the list).

When two or more citations are identical (e.g. more than one citation with the same year and authors, the references are distinguished by adding the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc. after the years. These letters appear in both the in-text citations and in the references list:

(Reyes-Velasco et al. 2018a, Reyes-Velasco et al. 2018b)

Authorship references for species should include a comma (",") between author and year:

Brianmyia stuckenbergi Woodley, 2012.

Reference list format: It is important to format the references properly because references will be linked electronically to the papers cited. It is desirable to add a DOI (digital object identifier) in addition to the volume and page numbers. If a DOI is lacking, we recommend you add a link to an online source of the article, preferably via the library or journal subscription pages, or through large international archives, indexes and aggregators, e.g., PubMedCentral, Scopus, CAB Abstracts, etc. URLs for articles posted on personal websites should be avoided.

Please use the following style for the reference list (or download the Pensoft EndNote style): here. It is also available in Zotero, when searched by journal name.

Published papers:
Polaszek A, Alonso-Zarazaga M, Bouchet P, Brothers DJ, Evenhuis NL, Krell FT, Lyal CHC, Minelli A, Pyle RL, Robinson N, Thompson FC, van Tol J (2005) ZooBank: the open-access register for zoological taxonomy: Technical Discussion Paper. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 62: 210-220.

Accepted papers:
Same as above, but ''in press'' appears instead of the year in parentheses.

Electronic journal articles:
Mallet J, Willmott K (2002) Taxonomy: renaissance or Tower of Babel? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18 (2): 57-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(02)00061-7.

Paper within conference proceedings:
Orr AG (2006) Odonata in Bornean tropical rain forest formations: Diversity, endemicity and applications for conservation management. In: Cordero Rivera A (Ed.) Forest and Dragonflies. Fourth WDA International Symposium of Odonatology, Pontevedra (Spain), July 2005. Pensoft Publishers, Sofia-Moscow, 51-78.

Book chapters:
Mayr E (2000) The biological species concept. In: Wheeler QD, Meier R (Eds) Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory: A Debate. Columbia University Press, New York, 17-29.

Books:
Goix N, Klimaszewski J (2007) Catalogue of Aleocharine Rove Beetles of Canada and Alaska. Pensoft Publishers, Sofia-Moscow, 166 pp.

Book with institutional author:
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (1999) International code of zoological nomenclature. Fourth Edition. London: The International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature.

PhD thesis:
Dalebout ML (2002) Species identity, genetic diversity and molecular systematic relationships among the Ziphiidae (beaked whales). PhD thesis, Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland.

Link/URL:
BBC News: Island leopard deemed new species http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Citations of public resource databases: It is highly recommended all appropriate datasets, images, and information to be deposited in public resources. Please provide the relevant accession numbers (and version numbers, if appropriate). Accession numbers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use. Examples of such databases include, but are not limited to:

Providing accession numbers to data records stored in global data aggregators allows us to link your article to established databases, thus integrating it with a broader collection of scientific information. Please hyperlink all accession numbers through the text or list them directly after the References in the online submission manuscript.

All journal titles should be spelled out completely and should NOT be italicized.

Provide the publisher's name and location when you cite symposia or conference proceedings; distinguish between the conference date and the publication date if both are given. Do not list abstracts or unpublished material in the References. They should be quoted in the text as personal observations, personal communications, or unpublished data, specifying the exact source, with date, if possible. Authors are encouraged to cite in the References list the publications of the original descriptions of the taxa treated in their manuscript.

Reference list orderAll references should be ordered alphabetically. If the references have the same first author and a varying number of co-authors, the ordering should be based on the number of co-authors starting with the lowest as follows:

Smith J (2018) Article Title. Journal Name 1: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.3897

Smith J, Gunderson A (2017) Article Title. Journal Name 1: 10-20. https://doi.org/10.3897 

Smith J, Gunderson A, Brock B (2015) Article Title. Journal Name 1: 20-30. https://doi.org/10.3897

In the occasion of more than one article from the same first author within any of the categories above, the references should be ordered chronologically.

If both the first author and year of publication match within the categories above, the references are distinguished by adding the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc. after the year of publication and this marking is followed in the in-text citations, respectively.  


Figures/Tables

Each figure and table should be submitted as separate files in high resolution graphic format (EPS, TIFF, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, SVG), not larger than 20 MB each. Low-resolution figures should also be included in the manuscript close to where they are first referenced. Legends should be included below each figure.

Word limit: We recommend that manuscripts remain short (i.e. <3,000 words exclusive of the reference list, figures and tables). It is possible to publish longer pieces, but the standard article processing charge (550 EUR) may have to be adjusted if manuscripts exceed 40 pages.

Numbering: Please include continuous line numbering throughout the manuscript as well as page numbering to facilitate the review process.

ACI: The author contribution index (ACI) is a unique feature that provides reader with a metric of the contribution of each co-author (for more information, see Boyer et al. 2017: Percentage-based Author Contribution Index: a universal measure of author contribution to scientific articles. This value will be featured on every papers published in Rethinking Ecology. The index is based on the number of co-authors and the percentage contribution of each author. To decide on percentage contributions, a good starting point is to divide 100% by the number of authors and then estimate whether and to what extent each author provided more or less work than the others. If you are sole author, your percentage contribution is 100%.​​​​​

Materials and Methods

In line with responsible and reproducible research, as well as FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) data principles, we highly recommend that authors describe in detail and deposit their scientific methods and laboratory protocols in the open access repository protocols.io.

Once deposited on protocols.io, protocols and methods will be issued a unique DOI, which could be then used to link a manuscript to the relevant deposited protocol. By doing this, authors could allow for editors and peers to access the protocol when reviewing the submission to significantly expedite the process.  

Furthermore, an author could open up his/her protocol to the public at the click of a button as soon as their article is published.

Stepwise instructions:

  1. Prepare a detailed protocol via protocols.io.
  2. Click Get DOI to assign a persistent identifier to your protocol.
  3. Add the DOI link to the Methods section of your manuscript prior to submitting it for peer review.
  4. Click Publish to make your protocol openly accessible as soon as your article is published (optional).
  5. Update your protocols anytime.

Supplementary Files

Online publishing allows an author to provide datasets, tables, video files, or other information as supplementary information, greatly increasing the impact of the submission. Uploading of such files is possible in Step 7 of the submission process.

The maximum file size for each Supplementary File is 20 MB.

The Supplementary Files will not be displayed in the printed version of the article but will exist as linkable supplementary downloadable files in the online version.

When submitting a Supplementary File, the following information should be completed:

  • File format (including name and a URL of an appropriate viewer if format is unusual)
  • Title of data
  • Description of data

All Supplementary Files should be referenced explicitly by file name within the body of the article, e.g. 'See supplementary file 1: Movie 1" for the original data used to perform this analysis.

Ideally, the Supplementary Files should not be platform-specific, and should be viewable using free or widely available tools. Suitable file formats include:

For supplementary documentation:

  • PDF (Adobe Acrobat)

For animations:

  • SWF (Shockwave Flash)

For movies:

  • MOV (QuickTime)
  • MPG (MPEG)

For datasets:

  • XLS (Excel spreadsheet)
  • CSV (Comma separated values)
  • ODS (OpenOffice spreadsheets)

File names should be given in the standard file extensions. This is especially important for Macintosh users, since the Mac OS does not enforce the use of standard file extensions. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie.


Preprints

The journal is integrated with the ARPHA Preprints platform, thereby allowing authors to post their pre-review manuscript as a preprint by simply checking the relevant box while completing the submission of their manuscript.

Due to the integration, the authors are not required to re-format or submit any additional files, as the system uses the manuscript to automatically generate a preprint. Subject to a basic editorial screening, the preprint will be posted on ARPHA Preprints within a few days after the manuscript’s submission.

By choosing to post their manuscript as a preprint, the authors provide their consent for their identity to be revealed to all, including potential reviewers. As a consequence, the double blind review process offered by the journal cannot be guaranteed for manuscripts posted as preprints.

Explore the Benefits of posting a preprint or visit ARPHA’s blog to learn more about ARPHA Preprints.

Find more about how to submit your preprint in the ARPHA Manual.


Revising Your Article

Authors must submit the revised version of the manuscript using Track Changes/Comments tools of Word so that the Subject Editor can see the corrections and additions.

Authors must address all critiques of the referees in a response letter to the editor and submit it along with the revised manuscript through the online editorial system. In case a response letter is not submitted by the authors, the editor has the right to reject the manuscript without further evaluation. When resubmitting a manuscript that has been previously rejected with resubmission encouraged, authors must include the response letter to the article text file, and the pdf review version, so that it gets to the Subject Editor and the reviewers during the peer review.

When submitting corrections to proofs (during the layout stage), authors must upload the latest proof (in PDF format) containing their revisions as track changes.


Why should you choose to publish with us?

  • There is an urgent need for new ideas, new hypotheses and horizon scanning in ecology, evolution and the environment. This includes finding solutions to address climate change and biodiversity loss.
  • It is almost impossible to publish ground-breaking ideas or new hypotheses without fully testing them first. However, testing these hypotheses takes time and funding, which substantially delays the dissemination of ideas of general interest to the ecological research community.
  • Rethinking Ecology is an opportunity to publish your idea prior to testing it. This will allow you to draw attention and encourage the scientific community to discuss your idea but also attract the necessary funding to put it to the test.
  • Once published in Rethinking Ecology, you will always remain the inventor of the idea, even if it is applied or tested by someone else. Publishing eliminates the hesitation to discuss a new idea with your peers for fear of being scooped.
  • Controversial ideas and hypotheses that challenge current thinking are difficult to get published in conventional peer-review journals. Controversy is not a motive of rejection in Rethinking Ecology, nor is your seniority, publication record or country of origin. Although the journal is not specifically aimed at early career researchers (ECR), its format makes it more ECR-friendly than many other journals.
  • We use double-blind review primarily to avoid conflicts of interest and foster the publication of new ideas (see Beryl Lieff Benderly 2016: How scientific culture discourages new ideas). It is also an incentive to limit self-citation.

Unique features

  • Rethinking Ecology publishes Research papers, Perspectives, Rapid Communications, Responses, Software Descriptions and Horizon Scanning papers with an emphasis on new hypotheses and bold ideas.
  • A double-blind peer-review system is used to avoid bias and conflicts of interest and to limit self-citations.
  • Reviewers provide comments and scores on a set of very specific questions (see peer-review process and criteria for publication below)
  • A percentage-based author contribution index (ACI) is implemented in every publication to establish the true contribution of each co-author and limit "guest authorship" (i.e. inclusion of authors who did not significantly contribute to the work) (see Boyer et al. 2017: Percentage-based Author Contribution Index: a universal measure of author contribution to scientific articles).
  • A proportion of the article processing charge (APC) is used to support research in developing countries within the South Pacific region. These funds will be distributed by an independent in-region panel led by the local scientific community.

Data Publishing Guidelines

We strongly encourage and support various strategies and methods for data publication. The preferable way is to store data in internationally recognised data repositories and link back to the data set(s) in the respective article. Data can also be published as supplementary files to the articles, however this should be an exception rather than a rule (see How to publish data). The key to discover, use and cite your data is to include the data references in the reference lists of the articles and always include the DOIs of the data sets, when available, in the citation record. You may read more about this in How to cite data section of the article below. A good example of concise data citation guidelines using DOIs is also available on the GBIF website and on other data repositories.

Darwin Core-structured species occurrence records and observations (primary biodiversity data) should be published with GBIF using either the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) (for which Pensoft maintains an instance, in case such is not available to the authors).  Alternatively, DwC data could also be published in trusted and community-recognised repositories (for example, Atlas of Living Australia, Symbiota,  Arctos or others), however deposition at GBIF should always have a priority over the alternatives. In case a dataset is deposited in more than one repository, the data paper should link to the dataset which is actually described, again with GBIF having a priority over the others.

Authors who want to publish species occurrence data as supplementary files only or through generic repositories (e.g. Zenodo, Dryad), instead of submitting these to GBIF, should justify their decision to do so in a letter to the editors.

For biodiversity and biodiversity-related data the reader may consult the Strategies and guidelines for scholarly publishing of biodiversity data (Penev et al. 2017, Research Ideas and Outcomes 3: e12431. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e12431). For reader's convenience, we list here the hyperlinked table of contents of these extensive guidelines:

The core of the data publishing project of Pensoft is the concept of "Data Paper" developed in a cooperation with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Data Papers are peer-reviewed scholarly publications that describe the published datasets and provide an opportunity to data authors to receive the academic credit for their efforts. Currently, Pensoft offers the opportunity to publish Data Papers describing occurrence data and checklists, Barcode-of-Life genome data and biodiversity-related software tools, such as interactive keys and others.

Examples of data papers

ZooKeys:
Antarctic, Sub-Antarctic and cold temperate echinoid database
A dataset from bottom trawl survey around Taiwan
Project Description: DNA Barcodes of Bird Species in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, USA
Literature based species occurrence data of birds of northeast India
MOSCHweb — a matrix-based interactive key to the genera of the Palaearctic Tachinidae (Insecta, Diptera)
Amundsen Sea Mollusca from the BIOPEARL II expedition
Iberian Odonata distribution: data of the BOS Arthropod Collection (University of Oviedo, Spain
FORMIDABEL: The Belgian Ants Database
Circumpolar dataset of sequenced specimens of Promachocrinus kerguelensis (Echinodermata, Crinoidea)

PhytoKeys:
Florabank1: a grid-based database on vascular plant distribution in the northern part of Belgium (Flanders and the Brussels Capital region)
Database of Vascular Plants of Canada (VASCAN): a community contributed taxonomic checklist of all vascular plants of Canada, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Greenland
Herbarium of Vascular Plants Collection of the University of Extremadura (Spain)

Nature Conservation:
Antarctic macrobenthic communities: A compilation of circumpolar information

Press releases on data papers
New incentive for biodiversity data publishing
Data publishing policies and guidelines for biodiversity data by Pensoft
First database-derived 'data paper' published in journal
A new type of data papers designed to publish online interactive keys
Data paper describes Antarctic biodiversity data gathered by 90 expeditions since 1956
Unique information on Belgian ants compiled and published through FORMIDABEL data paper
Database simplifies finding Canadian plant names and distribution
A synthesis of the 36451 specimens from the UNEX Herbarium in a new data paper


Data Quality Checklist and Recommendations

INTRODUCTION

An empowering aspect of digital data is that they can be merged, reformatted and reused for new, imaginative uses that are more than the sum of their parts. However, this is only possible if data are well curated. To help authors avoid some common mistakes we have created this document to highlight those aspects of data that should be checked before publication.

By "mistakes" we do not mean errors of fact, although these should also be avoided! It is possible to have entirely correct digital data that are low-quality because they are badly structured or formatted, and, therefore, hard or impossible to move from one digital application to another. The next reader of your digital data is likely to be a computer program, not a human. It is essential that your data are structured and formatted so that they are easily processed by that program, and by other programs in the pipeline between you and the next human user of your data.

The following list of recommendations will help you maximise the re-usability of your digital data. Each represents a test carried out by Pensoft when auditing a digital dataset at the request of an author. Following the list, we provide explanations and examples of each recommendation.

Authors are encouraged to perform these checks themselves prior to data publication. For text data, a good text editor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_editors) can be used to find and correct most problems. Spreadsheets usually have some functions for text checking functions, e.g. the "TRIM" function that removes unneeded whitespace from a data item. The most powerful text-checking tools are on the command line, and the website "A Data Cleaner's Cookbook" (https://www.datafix.com.au/cookbook/) is recommended for authors who can use a BASH shell.

When auditing datasets for authors, Pensoft does not check taxonomic or bibliographic details for correctness, but we will do basic geochecks upon request, e.g. test to see if the stated locality is actually at or near the stated latitude/longitude. We also recommend checking that fields do not show "domain schizophrenia", i.e. fields misused to containing data of more than one type.

Proofreading data takes at least as much time and skill as proofreading text. Just as with text, mistakes easily creep into data files unless the files are carefully checked. To avoid the embarrassment of publishing data with such mistakes, we strongly recommend that you take the time to run these basic tests on your data.


CHECKLIST

Characters

  • The dataset is UTF-8 encoded
  • The only characters used that are not numbers, letters or standard punctuation, are tabs and whitespaces
  • Each character has only one encoding in the dataset
  • No line breaks within data items
  • No field-separating character within data items (tab-separated data preferred)
  • No "?" or replacement characters in place of valid characters
  • No Windows carriage returns
  • No leading, trailing, duplicated or unnecessary whitespaces in individual data items

Records

  • No broken records, i.e. records with too few or too many fields
  • No blank records
  • No duplicate records (as defined by context)

Fields

  • No empty fields
  • No evident truncation of data items
  • No unmatched braces within data items
  • No data items with values that are evidently invalid or inappropriate for the given field
  • Repeated data items are consistently formatted
  • Standard data items such as dates and latitude/longitude are consistently formatted
  • No evident disagreement between fields
  • No unexpectedly missing data

RECOMMENDATIONS

Characters 

  • The dataset is UTF-8 encoded

Computer programs do not "read" characters like "A" and "4". Instead, they read strings of 0's and 1's and interpret these strings as characters according to an encoding scheme. The most universal encoding scheme is called UTF-8 and is based on the character set called Unicode. Text data should always be shared with UTF-8 encoding, as errors can be generated when non-UTF-8 encodings (such as Windows-1252) are read by a program expecting UTF-8, and vice-versa. (See also below, on replacement characters). 

  • The only characters used that are not numbers, letters or standard punctuation are tabs and whitespaces

Unusual characters sometimes appear in datasets, especially when databases have been merged. These "control" or "gremlin" characters are sometimes invisible when data are viewed within a particular application (such as a spreadsheet or a database browser) but can usually be revealed when the data are displayed in a text editor. Examples include vertical tab, soft hyphen, non-breaking space and various ASCII control characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_character).

  • Each character has only one encoding in the dataset

We have seen individual datasets in which the degree symbol (°) is represented in three different ways, and in which a single quotation mark (') is also represented as a prime symbol, a right single quotation mark and a grave accent. Always use one form of each character, and preferably the simplest form, e.g. plain quotes rather than curly quotes.

  • No line breaks within data items

Spreadsheet and database programs often allow users to have more than one line of text within a data item, separated by linebreaks or carriage returns. When these records are processed, many computer programs understand the embedded linebreak as the end of a record, so that the record is processed as several incomplete records:

item A  itemB1          itemC

               itemB2

becomes:

itemA           itemB1

itemB2          itemC

  • No field-separating character within data items (tab-separated data preferred)

Data are most often compiled in table form, with a particular character used to separate one field ("column") from the next. Depending on the computer program used, the field-separating character might be a comma (CSV files), a tab (TSV files), a semicolon, a pipe (|) etc.

Well-structured data keeps the field-separating character out of data items, to avoid confusion in processing. Because commas are commonly present within data items, and because not all programs understand how to process CSVs, we recommend using tabs as field-separating characters (and avoiding tabs within data items!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab-separated_values.

  • No "?" or replacement characters in place of valid characters

When text data are moved between different character encodings, certain characters can be lost because the receiving program does not understand what the sending program is referring to. In most cases, the lost character is then represented by a question mark, as in "Duméril" becoming "Dum?ril", or by a replacement character, usually a dark polygon with a white question mark inside.

It is important to check for these replacements before publishing data, especially if you converted your data to UTF-8 encoding from another encoding.

  • No Windows carriage returns

On UNIX, Linux and Mac computers, a linebreak is built with just one character, the UNIX linefeed '\n' ('LF'). On Windows computers, a linebreak is created using two characters, one after the other: '\r\n' ('CRLF'), where '\r' is called a 'carriage return' ('CR'). Carriage returns are not necessary in digital data and can cause problems in data processing on non-Windows computers. Check the documentation of the program in which you are compiling data to learn how to remove Windows carriage returns.

  • No leading, trailing, duplicated or unnecessary whitespaces in individual data items

Like "control" and "gremlin" characters, whitespaces are invisible and we pay little attention to them when reading a line of text. Computer programs, however, see whitespaces as characters with the same importance as "A" and "4". For this reason, the following four lines are different and should be edited to make them the same:

Aus bus (Smith, 1900)

   Aus bus (Smith, 1900)

Aus bus (Smith,   1900)

Aus  bus   (Smith, 1900  )

 Records

  • No broken records, i.e. records with too few or too many fields

If a data table contains records with, for example, 25 fields, then every record in the table should have exactly 25 data items, even if those items are empty. Records with too few fields are often the result of a linebreak or field separator within a data item (see above). Records with too many fields also sometimes appear when part of a record has been moved in a spreadsheet past the end of the table.

  • No blank records

Blank records contribute nothing to a data table because they contain no information, and a tidy data table has no blank lines. Note, however, that a computer program looking for blank lines may not find what looks to a human like a blank line, because the "blank" line actually contains invisible tabs or whitespaces.

  • No duplicate records (as defined by context)

It can be difficult to find duplicate records in some datasets, but our experience is that they are not uncommon. One cause of duplicates is database software assigning a unique ID number to the same line of data more than once. Context will determine whether one record is a duplicate of another, and data compilers are best qualified to look for them.

 Fields

  • No empty fields

 Fields containing no data items do not add anything to the information content of a dataset and should be omitted.

  •  No evident truncation of data items

The end of a data item is sometimes cut off, for example when a data item with 55 characters is entered into a database field with a 50-character maximum limit. Truncated data items should be repaired when found, e.g.

Smith & Jones in Smith, Jones and Bro

repaired to:

Smith & Jones in Smith, Jones and Brown, 1974

  • No unmatched braces within data items

These are surprisingly common in datasets and are either data entry errors or truncations, e.g.

Smith, A. (1900 A new species of Aus. Zool. Anz. 23: 660-667.

5 km W of Traralgon (Vic

  • No data items with values that are evidently invalid or inappropriate for the given field

For example, a field labelled "Year" and containing years should not contain the data item "3 males".

  •  Repeated data items are consistently formatted

The same data item should not vary in format within a single dataset, e.g.

Smith, A. (1900) A new species of Aus. Zool. Anz. 23: 660-667.

Smith, A. 1900. A new species of Aus. Zoologischer Anzeiger 23: 660-667.

Smith, A. (1900) A new species of Aus. Zool. Anz. 23, 660-667, pl. ix.

  • Standard data items such as dates and latitude/longitude are consistently formatted

Data compilers have a number of choices when formatting standard data items, but whichever format is chosen, it should be used consistently. A single date field should not, for example, have dates represented as 2005-05-17, May 19, 2005 and 23.v.2005.

  • No evident disagreement between fields

If there are fields which contain linked information then these fields should be checked to ensure that they do not conflict with each other. For example, the year or an observation cannot be after the year it was published. Examples:

Year            Citation

1968            Smith, A. (1966) Polychaete anatomy. Academic Press, New York; 396 pp.

 

Genus           Subgenus

Aus             Bus (Aus)

  • No unexpectedly missing data

This is a rare issue in datasets that have been audited, but occasionally occurs. An example is the Darwin Core "verbatimLocality" field for a record containing a full latitude and longitude, but with the "decimalLatitude" and "decimalLongitude" fields blank.

  • Spelling of Darwin Core terms

Darwin Core terms are usually considered case sensitive, therefore you should use their correct spelling (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/).

We thank Dr. Robert Mesibov for preparing the Data Quality Checklist draft and Dr. Quentin Groom for reviewing it.


Peer-review process and criteria for publication

Upon submission, manuscripts are attributed to an academic editor who will initially screen the manuscript to verify that it meets the scope and specification of the journal. Based on this first assessment, the editor will either send it to two or more reviewers for further consideration or reject the manuscript if it does not meet the journal’s criteria. Reviewers are asked to comment and score manuscripts for the following criteria:

  1. Novelty score (How novel is the idea / the software capabilities?) or Response score for Response papers (does the response present novel and complementary arguments or opposing views to the original paper?)
  2. Feasibility/likelihood/applicability score for Perspective and Response papers (does the idea/hypothesis arise from or is supported by rigorous arguments? Is the idea or hypothesis testable? Is the new concept, term or definition useful?) or Methodology score for Research papers, Rapid communications and Horizon scanning papers (is the methodology used/analysis conducted scientifically sound?) or Utility score for Software description (Is the software responding to a well identified need? Is it likely to be used by the scientific community?)
  3. Scholarship score (the authors demonstrate good knowledge and appropriate use of the current literature)
  4. Literacy score (English, grammar, clarity and logical flow reaches publication standard)

 

Criterion 1

Criterion 2

Criterion 3

Criterion 4

Responses papers

Response score

Feasibility / likelihood / applicability score

Scholarship score

Literacy score

Perspectives papers

Novelty score

Research papers

Methodology score

Rapid communications

Horizon scanning papers

Software descriptions

Utility score

To ensure a fast peer-review process, we ask reviewers to provide their report within two to three weeks. The editor then takes a decision based on the reviewers’ comments and scoring.


Article Charges


Publisher's statement

A key policy and strategic aim of Pensoft is to provide high-quality and inclusive publishing services at highly competitive and affordable Article Processing Charges (APCs) or for free through its diamond open access journals. See Pensoft’s journal portfolio here.

In order to ensure long-term sustainability of the journals and cover the cost of the associated in-house publishing services, our journals require Article Processing Charges (APCs). These charges apply only after a submitted manuscript is accepted for publication, and may be partially or fully covered by institutional funds to reduce financial burdens on authors of research.

Pensoft strongly supports measures that ensure an inclusive and FAIR publishing environment, which in turn prompts quality, sustainability and reasonable pricing in scholarly publishing. You can find more about the publisher’s view on quality, transparency, openness and equity in scholarly publishing in Pensoft’s official statement, prompted by the publication of the European Union’s Conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open and equitable scholarly publishing

In compliance with the Plan S requirements, Pensoft provides a breakdown of the APC following the guidelines by the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA). The report on the journal’s APC is submitted on a yearly basis to the Journal Comparison Service by Coalition S and the detailed breakdown is available to the participating funding institutions on the platform.

Authors who are unable to pay their APCs for several reasons, should consult the Journal’s Discounts and Waivers page, use the diamond open-access journals (free to publish and free to read) hosted on Pensoft’s ARPHA Publishing Platform, or contact the journal’s Editor-in-Chief directly. 


Core Charges

We believe open access is essential to the dissemination of scientific research. However, in the current publication model, the relationship between research funds and open access journals only goes in one direction. Rethinking Ecology proposes a more sustainable publishing model where article publication charges (APC) are kept affordable (550 EUR) and a proportion of the APC (100 EUR) is dedicated to funding research and supporting researchers in developing countries. Through this unique feature, Rethinking Ecology will directly foster and build scientific activity. We chose developing countries in the South Pacific Region as our primary beneficiary, an area within the Oceania Biodiversity Hotspot. Funds will be distributed by an independent in-region panel led by the local scientific community.

Core services included in our Article Processing Charges:

  • Online submission and editorial management system, professional peer review and editorial assistance.
  • Personal attitude, technical support and fast reply to any inquiry coming from authors, editors or reviewers.
  • Automated email notification and alert system to save you time from tracking the progress of your manuscript.
  • Automated registration of peer reviews at Clarivate (formerly Publons).
  • Copy-editing, technical editing, typesetting and proofreading services.
  • Publication in 3 digital formats: semantically enhanced HTML, PDF and machine-readable JATS XML.
  • Rapid publication process, normally within 1-2 weeks time after a manuscript is accepted for publication.
  • Full-color (no extra-charges for color), high-resolution hardcopy of reprints or whole issues.
  • Advanced data publishing workflows. 
  • Semantic Web enhancements to the article text. 
  • Markup and visualization of all biological taxon names and taxon treatments in your work, if present.
  • Immediate free access to the article on the day of publication.
  • Copyright retained by the authors, articles distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
  • Active dissemination and promotion through social bookmarking tools and social media.
  • Automated email acknowledgements to editors and reviewers upon publication.
  • Automated alert service through email and RSS on the day of publication. 
  • Registration of all new taxa in ZooBank, IPNI, MycoBank or Index Fungorum (where relevant).
  • Export and display of taxon treatments to Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), Plazi, Species-ID, Globalnames, and other aggregators (where relevant).
  • Immediate distribution of your publication to scientific databases, indices and search engines (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, CAB Abstracts, DOAJ Content and others).
  • Archiving in international repositories (PubMedCentral, CLOCKSS, Zenodo).
  • Bibliography search and discovery tool. 
  • Citation export in various formats.
  • Cited-by records statistics and display.
  • Article- and sub-article-level metrics (Altmetric, Dimensions, number of downloads separately for the PDF, XML and HTML, usage stats for figures, tables and supplementary files).

Please note that the charges below are applicable for all manuscripts submitted after 1st of February 2019. Innovative papers and reviews of special importance for science are to be priced by agreement.

Article size

Article Processing Charges

1 – 40 published pages €  550
41 – 300 published pages €  15 / page (for each page above 40)
301 and more published pages By agreement
*Corrigendum € 100 

Please note that the above prices do not include VAT (Value Added Tax). VAT is applicable only for VAT non-registered customers based within the European Union. To avoid charging VAT, the EU companies or persons should provide their VAT registration numbers validated with the EU taxation database (https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/).

Guidelines for Chinese authors:

中国作者支付ZooKeys 出版费的一点建议
来自大陆的中国作者在支付出版费时可采用下述方式:
1. 通过具有国际支付功能的信用卡支付:国内银行信用卡宣称有国际支付功能
的很多,但实际支付时问题不少。目前,花旗银行(中国)美元信用卡可以顺利支
付ZooKeys 出版费。办理花旗银行礼享卡(美元信用卡),可在网上申请。网址是:
https://www.citibank.com.cn/ICARD/forms/shortform/index.html?eOfferCode=CNCCHWAAN1。注;
意并非所有的城市都可以办理花旗银行礼享卡。
2. 通过贝宝 paypal 支付:在贝宝官网https://www.paypal.com/建立个人账户。
有银联卡的人都可以注册,注册之后即可支付低于1000 美元的支付。支付高于1000
美元,需要和贝宝公司联系,获得授权后也可支付。如ZooKeys 未提供paypal 的
链接,可要求他们提供。
3. 到银行柜台支付:咨询当地银行可否办理,一般中国银行中心支行都可以办
理。注意这种方法不仅费时较多,还收取人民币200 元以上的手续费,而且款项到
对方账户时对方银行还要收取手续费。

 


Discounts and Waivers

Please note that the discounts and waivers policy below is applicable for all manuscripts submitted after 1st of January 2024.

Authors can apply for a discount or a waiver during manuscript submission if they comply with the conditions listed below. The journal will not consider requests made during the review process or after acceptance. Formal letters to the editors will not be considered outside the application process during manuscript submission. The waiver system will be managed by administrative staff not involved in decisions regarding article acceptance. We ask authors not to discuss any issues concerning payment with editors.

  • A discount of 10% is offered to:
    • Scientists working privately, not affiliated with an institution.
    • Graduate and PhD students if they are first authors of a manuscript. 
    • Scientists affiliated with institutions located in Research4Life Group B countries (https://www.research4life.org/access/eligibility/#groupb) if they are lead or corresponding authors of a manuscript. In cases of multiple affiliations, all institutions should be located in eligible countries.
  • Discounts are also offered to our editors and reviewers. For more information see here.
  • Special discounts can be requested by the authors of extensive review papers and monographs.
  • Waivers (once per year per author/co-author for manuscripts no larger than 10 printed pages, or for the first 10 pages of a larger manuscript) are offered to:
    • Retired scientists who are editors or active reviewers for this journal (1-3 reviews provided in the year before the manuscript submission). 
    • Scientists affiliated with institutions located in Research4Life Group A countries (https://www.research4life.org/access/eligibility/#groupa), if they are senior or corresponding authors of a manuscript. In cases of multiple affiliations, all institutions should be located in eligible countries.

The journal also offers various institutional programs and membership plans to support Open Access scientific publishing. To be eligible, the author must be a corresponding author affiliated with the institution or agency.

Discounts and waivers do not accumulate.

Please note that the discounts and waivers policy below is applicable for all manuscripts submitted before 1st of January 2024.

Authors can apply for discount or waiver during manuscript submission if they comply with the conditions listed below. The journal will not consider requests made during the review process or after acceptance. Formal letters to the editors will not be considered outside the application process during manuscript submission.

  • Discount of 10 % is offered to:
    • Scientists working privately, not affiliated with an institution.
    • Graduate and PhD students if they are first authors of a manuscript. 
    • Scientists living and working in lower middle-income countries (http://data.worldbank.org/income-level/lower-middle-income) if they are sole authors of a manuscript, or authors' research is funded primarily (50% or more of the work contained within the article) by an institution or organization from the eligible countries. 
  • Discounts are also offered to our editors and reviewers, for more information see here
  • Special discounts can be requested by the authors of extensive review papers and monographs.
  • Waivers (once per year per (co-) author for manuscripts no larger than 10 printed pages, or for the first 10 pages of a larger manuscript) are offered to:
    • Retired scientists who are editors or active reviewers for this journal (1-3 reviews provided in the year before the manuscript submission). 
    • Scientists living and working in low-income countries (http://data.worldbank.org/income-level/low-income), if they are sole authors of a manuscript, or authors' research is funded primarily (50% or more of the work contained within the article) by an institution or organization from the eligible countries.

The journal offers also various institutional programs and membership plans to support Open Access scientific publishing. To be eligible, the author must be a corresponding author affiliated with the institution or agency.

Discounts and waivers do not accumulate.


Additional Services (Optional)

Optional service

Price

Notes

Linguistic services

€ 15 per 1800 characters

For texts that require additional English language editing

Tailored PR campaign

€ 150*

Press release, dedicated media and social networks promotion

Scientific illustrations & image processing to complement articles ask for a quote contacting Pensoft Publishers at designer@pensoft.net On demand

*This service can be discounted or waived for articles of outstanding importance for the science and society.


Guidelines for Editors


How to Access a Manuscript

Manuscripts can be accessed after login

  1. Editors must register at the journal's website. New users will receive an automated notification with a request to confirm registration and account information, and options for setting a password, email alerts and other features.  
    Note: All users can use their registration details to login in all three (Book, E-Book and the respective Journal) platforms of www.pensoft.net.
    Note: Users who have registered with two or more different email addresses, may have multiple accounts at www.pensoft.net. We advise using only one email address, for all your operations at www.pensoft.net. Accounts can be merged on a user's profile page.  
    Note: The users can at any time change the initially set password and correct personal details using their user's profile menu (by clicking on the user's name in the upper right corner of the screen appearing after login).
  2. If you have forgotten your password, please use the function Forgot your password? or write to request it from journals@pensoft.net.

There are two ways to access a manuscript

  1. After login, go to the respective journal’s web page and click on My Tasks button in the upper right corner of the screen. In the left column, you will see all manuscripts you are responsible for as an author or reviewer or editor. The manuscripts are grouped by categories: In Review (no.), In layout (no.), Published (no.), and Archived (no.) etc. The number in brackets after each category shows the number of manuscripts that are assigned to you.

  2. Click on the direct manuscript link provided in the email notification you have received from the Editorial Office.


General Responsibilities of Editors

Subject, or Academic, editors in Pensoft’s journals carry the main responsibility for the scientific quality of the papers. They take the final decision on a manuscript’s acceptance or rejection and their names are listed as Academic Editor in the header of each published article.

The editorial process is facilitated through an online editorial system and a set of email notifications. The online editorial system informs the Subject Editor about any change in the status of a manuscript, from submission to publication.

The online editorial system is designed to save time and effort for Subject Editors. There is no need for editors to visit the journal’s website to keep track of the manuscripts they are responsible for; the online system will inform the Subject Editor when an invited reviewer has accepted or declined to review. The email notifications contain stepwise instructions what action is needed at each stage, as well as a link to the respective manuscript (see How to Access a Manuscript).

Editors are allowed to publish a limited proportion of papers per year co-authored by them, after considering some extra precautions to avoid an impression of impropriety, endogeny, conflicts of interest and ensure that the editorial decision-making process is transparent and fair.

Subject Editors are not expected to provide thorough linguistic editing or copyediting of a manuscript, but rather focus on its scientific quality and overall style, which should correspond to good practices in clear and concise academic writing. It is the author’s responsibility to submit the manuscript in linguistically and grammatically correct English. The Subject Editor should not hesitate to recommend either Reject, or Reject, but resubmission encouraged PRIOR to the peer-review process, in cases when a manuscript is scientifically poor and/or does not conform to journal’s style, and/or is written in poor English (see Note under point 1 below how to reject a manuscript prior to peer review).


Stepwise Description of the Editorial Process

  1. Once a manuscript is submitted, the Managing Editor (or the Editor-in-Chief) briefly checks if the manuscript for conforms with the journal's Focus, Scope, Policies and style requirements and decides whether it is potentially suitable for publication and can be processed for review, or rejected immediately, or returned to the author for improvement and resubmission.
    Note: The Managing Editor or Editor-in-Chief can reject/return a manuscript prior to review process via the buttons Reject or Return to the author for correction in the Editorial tab. These buttons become active only after a justification for the rejection or return is provided in the text field.

  2. At this stage, the Managing Editor (or the Editor-in-Chief) can also check the manuscript for plagiarism via the iThenticate service by clicking on the "ïTehnticate report" button.

  3. When a manuscript is suitable, the Managing Editor (or the Editor-in-Chief) assigns it to the Subject Editor responsible for the respective topic 

  4. The assigned Subject Editor next reads the manuscript to decide whether it is potentially suitable for publication and can be processed for review, or rejected immediately, or returned to the author for improvement and re-submission. Reasons for rejection can be a low scientific quality, non-conformance to the journal’s style/policies, and/or linguistically or grammatically poor English language.
    Note: There are two ways for a Subject Editor to reject a manuscript prior to review process:
  • Through the buttons Reject or Reject, but re-submission encouraged in the Editorial tab. These buttons become active only after a justification for the rejection is provided in the text field.

  • Through an email to the Editorial office explaining the reason for rejection. The manuscript will be then rejected/returned through the online editorial system and the respective notification email will be sent from the Editorial Office.

  1. In case the manuscript is acceptable for peer review, the Subject Editor has to invite reviewers by clicking on the Invite reviewers link. The Subject Editor can select from a list of reviewers, starting with the ones suggested by the authors during the submission process, and followed by the reviewers who are already listed in the database, or add new reviewers (see #7).

  2. Once reviewers are chosen, the Subject Editor has to click the Invite reviewers green button at the end of the page which will generate email templates with review invitations. It is highly recommended that the Subject Editor adds some personal words above the standard email text of the review invitation.

  3. In case a reviewer is absent from our users' data-base, the Subject Editor can add his/her names and email through the Add new reviewer link, which will appear once the search field reveals no results. It is possible that the needed reviewer has already been registered in the Pensoft database either as customer or author/reviewer of another journal. If this is the case, then his/her names, affiliation and other metadata will automatically appear once the e-mail field is populated in the Create user online form.

  4. The Subject Editor receives a notification email when the Reviewer agrees or declines to review. The Subject Editor can appoint additional Reviewers if some of the invited reviewers decline.

  5. Once all Reviewers submit their reviews, the Subject Editor receives an email notification, inviting him/her to consider Reviewers’ opinions, read through the manuscript and take a decision through the Proceed button.
    Note: Editorial comments can be added in the online editorial form, alternatively, comments and corrections can be added in a manuscript file (either on the PDF version or in the text file), which can be uploaded during finalization of the editorial decision process.

  6. At this stage, the Subject Editor should take a decision either to (1) accept the manuscript, (2) reject it, (3) recommend Major or Minor Revisions, or open a second review round. In case the manuscript is not rejected, but recommended for Minor Revision, Major Revision, or Acceptance, the author is expected to submit a revised version within a certain period of time.
    Note 1: Authors must submit revised versions as a text file using Track Changes/Comments tools of Word so that the Subject Editor can see their corrections/additions. Authors must reply to the critiques and comments of reviewers separately ina point-by-point document. The point-by-point may be a separate document (preferred) or pasted into the provided box in the online editorial system.
    Note 2: During the second, or next, review round, the Subject Editor may decide to ask reviewers to evaluate the revised version of the manuscript. He/she may also make a decision based on the author’s responses and the revised version of the manuscript without asking additional reviewers' support.

  7. After acceptance, the manuscript will go to layout and proofreading. The Subject Editor will be notified by email when the final proof is uploaded on the journal’s website. The Subject Editor is expected to look at the proofs and notify the Editorial Office through email in case the proofs need improvement.

  8. The Subject Editor may always access information on the manuscripts which have been edited by him/her through the menu My Tasks –> Subject Editor on the journal’s web page – In Review (no.), In Edit (no.), Published (no.), and Archived (no.). The number in brackets after each category shows the number of manuscripts that were assigned.


Editors’ and Reviewers’ Workload Stats

While selecting a Reviewer or a Subject Editor to assign to a manuscript, Editors can access the current and past workload for the person they are considering.

By clicking on the user’s name, an Editor sees how many editorial or review tasks the person is currently assigned with, as well as a record of the user’s previous performance across all ARPHA-hosted journals (i.e. number of accepted and declined editorial and review assignments, as well as the titles of the corresponding journals).

The feature is meant to facilitate and expedite the editorial process by discouraging assignment of tasks to overburdened or inactive users.

Find how to Manage Subject editor assignments and Invite Reviewers in the ARPHA Manual.


Review Quality Rating

Subject Editors should evaluate each review submitted to a manuscript they are handling by using a 5-star rating system. The average score is visible for Subject editors who consider the user as a Reviewer. The feature is meant to expedite the editorial process by aiding Subject Editors in the selection of the most suitable reviewers.

Find how to Rate a peer review in the ARPHA Manual.


Guidelines for Reviewers


How to Access a Manuscript

Manuscripts can be accessed after login

Reviewers must register at the journal's website. New users will receive an automated notification with a request to confirm registration and account information, and options for setting a password, email alerts and other features.  
Note: All users can use their registration details to login in all three (Book, E-Book and the respective Journal) platforms of www.pensoft.net.
Note: Users who have registered with two or more different email addresses, may have multiple accounts at www.pensoft.net. We advise using only one email address, for all your operations at www.pensoft.net. Accounts can be merged on a user's profile page.  
Note: The users can at any time change the initially set password and correct personal details using their user's profile menu (by clicking on the user's name in the upper right corner of the screen appearing after login).

If you have forgotten your password, please use the function Forgot your password? or write to request it from journals@pensoft.net.

There are two ways to access a manuscript

  1. After login, go to the respective journal’s web page and click on My Tasks button in the upper right corner of the screen. In the left column, you will see all manuscripts you are responsible for as an author or reviewer or editor. The manuscripts are grouped by categories: In Review (no.), In layout (no.), Published (no.), and Archived (no.) etc. The number in brackets after each category shows the number of manuscripts that are assigned to you.

  2. Click on the direct manuscript link provided in the email notification you have received from the online editorial system.


General Responsibilities of Reviewers

This journal uses a double-blind peer review process. Reviewers should NOT disclose their identity. The peer review and editorial process is facilitated through an online editorial system and a set of email notifications. The online editorial system sends the Reviewer a review request, initiated by the Subject Editor or the Editorial Office. The online system will also send reminders and will confirm a successful review submission. The email notifications contain stepwise instructions about the actions needed at each stage along with the link to the respective manuscript (see section How to Access a Manuscript).

Reviewers are not expected to provide a thorough linguistic editing or copyediting of a manuscript, but rather focus on its scientific quality and overall style, which should correspond to the good practices in clear and concise academic writing. If Reviewers recognize that a manuscript requires linguistic edits, we shall be grateful for them to inform both the Author and the Subject Editor about this in the report. It is the Author’s responsibility to submit the manuscript in linguistically and grammatically correct English. It often happens that even carefully written manuscripts may contain small errors in orthography or stylistics. We shall be thankful if Reviewers spot such errors during the reading process and correct them. Reviewers are also asked to declare any conflicts of interest.

Each manuscript will generally be reviewed by two or three experts with the aim of reaching a first decision as soon as possible.

Reviewers are asked to start their report with a very brief summary of the reviewed paper. This will help the editor and the authors see whether the reviewer correctly understood the paper or whether a report might be based on misunderstanding.

Reviewers are then asked to judge the manuscript on the following criteria:

  1. Novelty score (How novel is the idea / the software capabilities?) or Response score for Response papers (does the response present novel and complementary arguments or opposing views to the original paper?)
  2. Feasibility/likelihood/applicability score for Perspective and Response papers (does the idea/hypothesis arise from or is supported by rigorous arguments? Is the idea or hypothesis testable? Is the new concept, term or definition useful?) or Methodology score for Research papers, Rapid communications and Horizon scanning papers (is the methodology used/analysis conducted scientifically sound?) or Utility score for Software description (Is the software responding to a well identified need? Is it likely to be used by the scientific community?)
  3. Scholarship score (the authors demonstrate good knowledge and appropriate use of the current literature)
  4.  Literacy score (English, grammar, clarity and logical flow reaches publication standard)

In addition to the written review, Reviewers are asked to respond to a short questionnaire that serves as a Reviewer’s checklist and ensures a standardised, comprehensive review.

When possible, the final decision is made on the basis of the peer reviews. In cases of strong disagreement between the reports or between the Authors and Reviewers, the Subject Editor can assess these according to his/her expertise or seek advice from a member of the journal's Editorial Board.

The ultimate responsibility for editorial decisions lies with the respective Subject Editor and/or with the Editor-in-Chief. All appeals should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief, who may decide to seek advice from the Subject Editors or the Editorial Board.

During a second review round, reviewers may be asked to evaluate the revised version against their recommendations submitted during the first review round.

Reviewers should be polite and constructive. Reports that may be insulting or uninformative will be rescinded.


Stepwise Description of the Peer Review Process

  1. This journal uses a double-blind peer review process. Reviewers should NOT disclose their identities. 

  2. The Reviewer receives a review request generated by the Subject Editor or the Editorial Office and is expected to either agree to provide a review, or decline, through pressing the Will do the review or Unable to do the review link in the online editorial system.
    Note: The link to the respective manuscript is available in the review request email and all consequent reminder emails (see How to Access a Manuscript above).

  3. The review should be submitted through the Proceed button. The review consists of:

  • a simple online questionnaire to be answered by ticking the YesNo, Moderately or N/A;

  • comments addressed to the Author and the Subject Editor in the online form;

  • associated files (corrected/commented manuscript file, review submitted in a separate text file, etc.), if any.

    Note: Reviewers can insert corrections and comments in the manuscript review version (PDF) and/or in the manuscript text file (usually Microsoft Word). When working in the PDF, please use either the Text Edits or the Sticky Notes tools (available through the menu Tools -> Comments & Markup of the Acrobat Reader). When editing in Microsoft Word please use the Track Changes / Comments tools.
    Note: Associated files should be submitted at the end of the review process by clicking on the Browse button, then selecting the respective file on your computer, and then pressing the Upload button.

  1. The review process is completed by selecting a recommendation from five options:
  • Reject;

  • Reject, but resubmission encouraged;

  • Major Revision;

  • Minor Revision;

  • Accept.

The system will ask for one more confirmation of the selected recommendation before submission. The submitted review cannot be changed after submission.
Note: Reasons for rejection can be a low scientific quality, non-conformance to the journal’s style/policies, and/or grammatically poor English language.

  1. Once a Reviewer submits a review of a manuscript, he/she receives an acknowledgement email from the journal.

  2. The submission of the review is also automatically reported to Clarivate - Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service (formerly Publons). Reviewers are asked to confirm whether they want their reviews to be recorded on Clarivate.

  3. When all Reviewers have submitted their reviews, the Subject Editor makes a decision to either accept, reject or request further minor/major revision.

  4. After the Subject Editor's decision, the manuscript is sent back to the author for comments and further revision.

  5. Reviewers are notified via email when the revised version of a manuscript they have reviewed is submitted by the author. They receive a link to the revised version along with the editorial decision and all reviews of the manuscript. Reviewers are also provided with a feedback form should they have any comments on the revised version. 

  6. When an article is published, all Reviewers who have provided a review for the respective manuscript receive an email acknowledgement. In the email, there is a link to view/download the published article.

  7. A Reviewer may always access information on the manuscripts that are being / have been reviewed by him/her through the menu My Tasks –> Reviewer on the journal’s web page – In Review (no.), In Edit (no.), Published (no.), and Archived (no.). The number in brackets after each category shows the number of manuscripts that have been assigned to you.


Science Communication

Our journal and the PR team at Pensoft invites authors to contribute to the communication and promotion of their published research, thereby increasing the visibility, outreach and impact of their work. 

Authors are welcome to notify us whenever their institution is working on a promotional campaign about their work published in our journal. We are always happy to reshare and/or repost (where appropriate). 

You can contact our PR team at dissemination@pensoft.net to discuss the communication and promotion of your research.


Tailored PR Campaign

(Paid service*)

We encourage authors, who feel that their work is of particular interest to the wider audience, to email us with a press release draft** (see template and guidelines), outlining the key findings from the study and their public impact. Then, the PR team will work with them to finalise the announcement that will be:

  • Issued on the global science news service Eurekalert!
  • Sent out to our media contacts from the world’s top-tier news outlets
  • Posted on ARPHA’s or Pensoft’s blog
  • Shared on social media via suitable ARPHA-managed accounts

Following the distribution of the press announcement, our team will be tracking the publicity across news media, blogs and social networks, in order to report back to the author(s), and reshare any prominent media content.

Request our Tailored PR campaign service by selecting it while completing your submission form and you will be contacted once your manuscript is accepted for publication. Alternatively, contact our PR team  (dissemination@pensoft.net), preferably upon the acceptance of your manuscript.

* The Tailored PR campaign is an extra service charged at EUR 150. However, we would consider discounts and even full waivers for studies of particular interest for the society.

** Please note that our PR team reserves the right to edit your press release at their discretion. No press announcements will be issued until we receive the author’s final approval to do so. The service is only available for studies published within the past 3 months.


Guest Blog Post

(Free service)

Authors are strongly encouraged to promote their work and its impact on society to the audience beyond their immediate public of fellow scientists by means of storytelling in plain language. Ideally, such guest blog posts will be:

  • Written from the author’s own point of view, using conversational tone;
  • Written in fluent English;
  • Presenting some curious background information, in order to place the discovery in context;
  • Including attractive non-copyright imagery.

Request our Guest blog post service by contacting the PR department (dissemination@pensoft.net), regardless of the status of your submission, as there are no time constraints for guest blog post publication. Particularly encouraged are follow-up contributions telling the story of, for example, a research paper that has led to an important policy to be set in place; or an article that has met remarkable attention or reactions in the public sphere.

Following the necessary final touches to the guest blog post by the PR team, the contribution will be:

  • Posted on ARPHA’s or Pensoft’s blog
  • Shared on social media via multiple and relevant ARPHA-managed accounts

Please note that the PR team reserves the right to refuse publication of a guest blog post on the occasion that it is provided in poor English, uses considerable amount of jargon or does not abide by basic ethical standards. Our PR team reserves the right to request changes to the text related to formatting or language. No blog posts will be issued until we receive the author’s final approval to do so.

Find past guest blog posts on Pensoft’s blog here


Video Podcast

(Free service)

To efficiently increase the outreach of their research, authors are suggested to prepare a video contribution (i.e. elevator video pitch, video abstract or topical video), where they present their work to an audience beyond their immediate public of fellow scientists by means of visual storytelling.

To do so, they are expected to send us a short (up to 02’00’’) video clip, presenting their study in a nutshell, in order to spark the viewer’s further interest in their findings and work, as well as the research topic as a whole. Ideally, such contribution will be:

  • filmed in high quality, preferably with .mp4 file extension with the H.264 video codec;
  • directed from the author’s own point of view, using conversational tone and minimal jargon;
  • presented in fluent English or featuring English subtitles;
  • accompanied by a transcript in English;
  • accompanied by a short text introduction for the purposes of a blog post.

Request our Guest video contribution service by contacting the PR department (dissemination@pensoft.net), regardless of the status of your submission, since there are no time constraints for guest blog post publication.

Following the necessary final touches to the guest blog post, the contribution will be:

  • Shared on Pensoft’s YouTube channel;
  • Posted on ARPHA’s or Pensoft’s blog;
  • Shared on social media via multiple and relevant ARPHA-managed accounts. 

Please note that the PR team reserves the right to refuse distribution of a guest contribution on the occasion that it is provided in poor English, uses considerable amount of jargon or does not abide by basic ethical standards.


Custom Social Media Content

(Free service)

To help increase the visibility and outreach of their research, authors are welcome to suggest custom social media content to be distributed via suitable Pensoft- and ARPHA-managed social media accounts.

Social media posts are expected to:

  • Be limited to two short sentences or 280 characters (including links);
  • Be written in a conversational tone;
  • Contain minimal jargon;
  • Include the DOI link of the article;
  • Not duplicate the title or abstract of the article;
  • Include attractive non-copyright imagery;
  • Possibly include up to 10 social media accounts, e.g. co-authors (Twitter only), affiliations, funding bodies etc. relevant to the study.

Request our Custom social media content service by contacting our PR department (dissemination@pensoft.net).

Please note that our PR team reserves the right to edit your text at their discretion.


Media Center

Follow Rethinking Ecology on Twitter and Facebook.

Learn about some of the most notable research published in Rethinking Ecology on Pensoft's blog.

See top news stories from around the globe, mentioning research published in Rethinking Ecology, on BBCThe Conservation, IFLScience and Mongabay.

Boost the reach of your paper(s) to a larger audience by making the most of Pensoft's science communication services.

Download journal logo.


Journal Info

 

Journal Name Rethinking Ecology
Journal URL https://rethinkingecology.pensoft.net/
ISSN (online) 2534-9260
ISSN (print) -
Content Provider ARPHA
Publisher Pensoft Publishers
Journal Owner Pensoft Publishers
Owner URL https://pensoft.net
Start Year 2016
Review Type double-blind
Publication Frequency continuous
APC Accepted manuscripts are subject to APC (for more details see here)
License Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)

 


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