1. Submission procedure and workflow

2. Editorial policy

3. Requirements for submission to the thematic PCIs

4. Formatting your article for the Peer Community Journal

5. Pressubmission checklist

6. What happens after your submission to PCJ?

 

1. Submission procedure and workflow

Peer Community Journal publishes only articles first peer-reviewed, accepted and recommended by one of the thematic Peer Communities In (PCIs, see current thematic PCIs). The editorial policy, evaluation process, editorial decisions and appeal process of the Peer Community Journal are those of the thematic PCIs.

 

 

1) Deposit your article on a preprint server or in an open archive and obtain a DOI (or another unique identifier). Data, statistical scripts, command lines and simulation code must made available to reviewers and recommenders at the time of submission and to readers after acceptance and recommendation. After recommendation, they must be available to readers, either in the text or through a correctly versioned deposit in an open repository with a DOI or another permanent identifier. Templates for preprints are available in docx, google doc and latex users.

2) Submit your article to one of the thematic PCIs according to their scope. Please consult the guide for authors of the corresponding PCI (eg see the guide for authors of PCI Ecology).

3) In case of acceptance by the thematic PCI, your article is recommended. 

4) Submit your article to the Peer Community Journal for publication by completing a basic form on the journal website and uploading a formatted version of your manuscript (see below section 4. Formatting your article for Peer Community Journal).

The instructions described below are those of the thematic PCIs.

2. Editorial policy​

2.1 Scope

2.2 Editorial criteria

2.3 Types of articles

2.4 Repeatability of science and open science

2.5 Ethics

2.6 New taxon names

2.1 Scope​​​

You should choose one of the thematic PCIs, according to the topic of your article, for submission. The scope of the PCIs is not exhaustive. Please look at the current thematic PCIs to decide which is the most suitable for your article.

2.2 Editorial criteria

​The Peer Community Journal publishes only preprints accepted and recommended by the thematic PCIs as of high scientific quality and methodologically and ethically sound. To this end, the thematic PCIs: 
- Require raw data, computer code and mathematical and statistical analysis scripts to be made available at the time of submission, at least to reviewers and recommenders, and to readers after recommendation. 
- Welcome reproductions of studies. 
- Welcome preprint submissions based on preregistrations (whether or not reviewed) 
- Welcome preprints reporting negative results, provided that the questions addressed and the methodology are sound. 
- Do not accept submissions of preprints presenting financial conflicts of interest. Other conflicts of interest must be minimal and declared. 
- Ensure that, as far as possible, the recommenders and referees have no conflict of interest with the content or authors of the study being evaluated. 

The thematic PCIs do not guarantee the evaluation of all submitted preprints. Only preprints considered interesting by at least one competent recommender (equivalent to an associate editor in a classical journal) from the thematic PCI to which the preprint is submitted will be peer-reviewed. The interest of the preprint, as determined by the recommender, can relate to its context, the scientific question addressed, the methodology, or the results. Each thematic PCI has a large number of recommenders, ensuring a considerable diversity of interests.

2.3 Types of article

The articles considered may be of different types: reviews, comments, opinion papers, research articles, data papers, technical notes, computer notes, etc. Preregistrations should be submitted to PCI Registered Reports.​

2.4 Repeatability of science and open science​

The Peer Community Journal wishes to promote scientific repeatability and reliability, to improve the overall robustness and integrity of science.

To this end, the Peer Community Journal has established three mandatory rules and makes two additional suggestions to authors:

Mandatory rules:​

Articles published by the Peer Community Journal must provide readers with: 

-Raw data, made available directly in the text or through an open repository, such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repository (see the Directory of Open Access Repositories) with a DOI. Data must be reusable, and the metadata and accompanying text must, therefore, carefully describe them.

-Details of quantitative analyses (e.g. data processing and statistical scripts in R, bioinformatic pipeline scripts, etc.) and simulations (scripts, code) must be provided either in the text or through a correctly versioned deposit in an open repository, such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repository (see the Directory of Open Access Repositories) with a DOI or another permanent identifier (such as a SWHID of Software heritage). Note that Git URLS are not permanent. Information on how to issue a DOI for a GitHub repository is given at https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content. The scripts or code must be carefully described such that another researcher can run them. 

-Details of experimental procedures must be provided in the text.​

Suggestions to authors:

-The Peer Community Journal encourages authors to use preregistrations. Authors may post their research questions and analysis plan to an independent registry before observing the research outcomes, and, thus, before writing and submitting their article to a thematic PCI. This provides a way of clarifying their hypotheses, avoiding confusing “postdictions” and predictions, and carefully planning appropriate statistical processing of the data (e.g. see 10.1073/pnas.1708274114).​​​ For evaluation and recommendation, preregistrations should be submitted to PCI Registered Reports.

-The Peer Community Journal welcomes articles proposing replication studies. All submissions are assessed by the thematic PCIs according to the same criteria, provided that the article is considered interesting by the recommender handling it and the research question is judged to be scientifically valid​​​

2.5 Ethics​

The Peer Community Journal is published by Peer Community In, which subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In addition, articles published by the Peer Community Journal should respect the ethical principles defined by the European Association for Science Editors (EASE) and by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The following guidelines are adapted from the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and of the EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to be Published in English. Peer Community In prepared this reprint. The ICMJE and the EASE have not endorsed nor approved the contents of this reprint. The official version of the ICMJE Recommendations and the EASE guidelines are located respectively at www.ICMJE.org and at https://ease.org.uk/.

Ethical oversight

The Managing Board of each thematic PCI (who belongs to the editorial board of the journal) is responsible for monitoring the ethical aspects of submitted articles. Reviewers are invited to expose their concerns (if any) about ethics or scientific misconduct during peer review. 
iThenticate’s CrossCheck software is used to detect plagiarism.

Original or acceptable secondary publication

  • No part of the manuscript (MS) has been published, except for passages that are properly cited.
  • In the MS, original data are clearly distinguished from published data. All information extracted from other publications is provided with citations.

Use of copyright material

If authors reproduce previously published materials (eg figures), they must ask the copyright owners for permission and mention them in the captions or in the acknowledgments.

Authorship

  • All people listed as authors of the MS meet the authorship criteria, i.e. they contributed substantially to study planning, data collection or the interpretation of results and wrote or critically revised the MS and approved its final submitted version and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work (ICMJE 2017).
  • All people listed as authors of the MS are aware of their authorship and have agreed to be listed.
  • No person who meets the authorship criteria has been omitted.

Ethical experimentation and interpretation

  • If the study reported in the MS involved human participants, it should meet the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA 2013).
  • If appropriate, the study reported in the MS should meet the Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare for Editors concerning the human treatment of animals and should be approved by an ethics review committee.
  • In fields of research requiring approval from an ethics committee or institutional review board, the authors should ensure that all the necessary approvals have been obtained before submission.
  • If applicable, the authors should include a statement in the manuscript indicating that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects.

Case reports and informed consent

As stated in the Rules for Submission of Articles to Biomedical Journals, proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, 2019), patients' right to privacy prohibits the publication of articles without informed consent. No information should identify patients, neither in text or photos, nor in an indirect manner (descriptions of individual case histories, photos, X-rays, genetic pedigrees…).

In the case of articles reporting on research involving human subjects, the authors must specifically describe their study's compliance with the ethical rules set up by the responsible Ethics Committee and by the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Association of Physicians (WMA 2013) revised in 2013. Unless written consent is obtained from the patient, identifying details must be removed before submission of the article (including illustrations and videos). This requirement also applies when a report involves deceased persons.

Should consent from a patient be requested, authors of the articles concerned must attest that the relevant form has been signed by the patient or a proxy.

The journal does not collect the signed patient forms: authors should attest that the original of the signed form is held by the treating institution.

Best research practices

  • The authors should do their best to avoid errors in experimental design, data presentation, interpretation, etc. However, should they nevertheless ​discover a serious error in the MS (before or after publication), they must alert the Peer Community Journal.
  • None of the data presented in the MS have been fabricated or distorted, and no valid data have been excluded. Images shown in figures have not been manipulated to give readers a false impression.
  • The study results have been interpreted objectively. Any findings that run contrary to the authors’ point of view are discussed in the MS.
  • The article does not, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, contain anything that is libelous, illegal, infringes anyone’s copyright or other rights, or poses a threat to public safety.

Acknowledgments

  • All sources of funding for the study described in the MS should be reported.
  • All people who are not listed as authors but made a major contribution to the study reported in the MS or who assisted in its writing (e.g. author’s editors, translators, medical writers) should be mentioned in the Acknowledgements.
  • All people named in the Acknowledgements must have agreed to be mentioned. They are not, however, responsible for the final version of the MS.
  • Consent must be obtained from the authors of any unpublished data cited in the MS.
  • The owners of the copyright to any previously published figures or tables must agree to their inclusion in the MS.

Conflict of interest

  • Financial conflicts of interest are forbidden, see the PCI code of conduct.
  • Authors should declare any potential non-financial conflicts of interest.

Complaints and appeal process

Authors of rejected manuscripts can appeal against the thematic PCI decision within 30 days of receiving it, by contacting the managing board of the thematic PCI at the contact email address. Appeals will be considered by the specialist recommender(s) that handled the manuscript and the thematic PCI Managing Board. Decisions following appeal are final.

Data sharing and reproducibility

See the paragraph "2.4 Repeatability of science and open science" ​above.

Misconducts
Peer Community Journal will follow the recommendations of COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) in the event of misconduct. 
When the executive board of Peer Community Journal has knowledge of potential misconduct regarding a paper published in Peer Community Journal, it will ask an ad hoc committee of editors to investigate the case. The ad hoc committee will advise the Executive Board of the journal, and based on COPE's recommendations, the Executive Board will make a decision on what action to take.
Retractions, expressions of concern, or corrections may be published by the journal.

Intellectual property

The articles published by Peer Community Journal are published under a CC-BY 4.0 license. Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.

Post-publication discussions and corrections

Readers are invited to submit articles discussing articles published by Peer Community Journal. These submissions should be submitted to the corresponding thematic PCI for evaluation and then, in case of acceptance, transferred to Peer Community Journal for publication.
In case of misconduct, retractions, expressions of concern or corrections may be published by the journal.

Use of artificial intelligence for article writing and software code generation

-Authorship and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence cannot be considered an author of an article submitted to PCI because  "All people listed as authors of the MS meet the authorship criteria, i.e. they contributed substantially to study planning, data collection or the interpretation of results and wrote or critically revised the MS and approved its final submitted version and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work (ICMJE 2017)."

-Citing artificial intelligence
Scientists use sophisticated tools such as artificial intelligence to write text or software code. This is similar to using language proofreading services. Authors are invited to disclose such use in the acknowledgments of the article so that it is public information.

-Artificial intelligence and intellectual property
Plagiarism issues may arise when using artificial intelligence because they may generate texts identical to texts found in existing sources. Authors must ensure that no part of the manuscript has been published except for passages that are properly cited.

Reference Sources

https://www.ease.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/doi.10.20316.ESE_.2018.44.e1.pdf

https://www.wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DoH-Oct2013-JAMA.pdf

http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf

https://ethics.iit.edu/ecodes/node/5487

 

2.6 New taxon names​

Electronic publication of new taxonomic names is now permitted by the relevant codes of nomenclature. However, a certain number of requirements must be met for the electronic version of the work and the new names to be considered published. Authors of new zoological, botanical, and fungal names must comply with the following requirements.

Zoological names

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) allows electronic publication of new zoological names and nomenclatural acts as long as the work in which they appear is properly archived and registered. Details of the publication must be entered into Zoobank, the official ICZN registry. Peer Community Journal is archived in CLOCKSS and will appear as a known journal during the Zoobank registration process.

Authors must register their publication and their new names into Zoobank to obtain corresponding LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers). For nomenclatural acts other than a new species, genus, or family name, only the registration of the published work is currently mandatory.

In the Systematics or Results section, the LSID must be listed after each new species, genus, and family name, for example:

Homo naledi sp. nov.

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:C85CAAC2-658B-4189-B1D8-F9488F67E544

In the Methods section, authors must also include the following statement:

"The electronic version of this article conforms with the requirements of the amended International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). Hence the new names and nomenclatural acts contained herein are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone. This published work and the nomenclatural acts it contains have been registered in ZooBank, the online registration system for the ICZN. The ZooBank LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers) can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the LSID to the prefix “http://zoobank.org/”. The LSID for this publication is: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:XXXXXXX. The electronic edition of this work is archived and available from the following digital repositories: Peer Community Journal and CLOCKSS."

Botanical names

Since January 2012, the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) recognizes electronic work published with an ISSN or an ISBN as effectively published under the Code. It is also accepted that the description or diagnosis of a new taxon can be given in either Latin or English. For vascular plants and fungi, please see the additional requirements below.

For vascular plants

Peer Community Journal requires new names, new combinations, or replacement names to be registered into the International Plant Names Index (IPNI).

The LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers) obtained from the IPNI should be listed under the new names in the Systematics or Results section. And the following text should be added in the Methods section:

"The electronic version of this article conforms with the requirements of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). Hence the new names and nomenclatural acts contained herein are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone. In addition, new names contained in this work have been submitted to the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), from where they will be made available to the Global Names Index. The IPNI LSIDs can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the LSID to the prefix https://ipni.org/. The electronic edition of this work is archived and available from the following digital repositories: Peer Community Journal and CLOCKSS."

For fungi

Authors need to contact either MycoBank or Index Fungorum to obtain a LSID (Life Science identifier) for their new name or nomenclatural act (mandatory since January 1st, 2013). The LSID must be included in the protologue. Authors must also add the following text in the Methods section (update as necessary):

"The electronic version of this article conforms with the requirements of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). Hence the new names and nomenclatural acts contained herein are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone. In addition, new names contained in this work have been submitted to the MycoBank / Index Fungorum, from where they will be made available to the Global Names Index. The LSIDs can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the LSID to the prefix https://www.MycoBank.org/MB/ OR http://www.indexfungorum.org/Names/NamesRecord.asp?RecordID=. The electronic edition of this work is archived and available from the following digital repositories: Peer Community Journal and CLOCKSS."

3. Requirements for submission to the thematic PCIs

3.1 Deposition of the MS and supplementary information, submission to a thematic PCI, recommendation by the thematic PCI

  • Authors should first post their article on a preprint server, such as bioRxiv or arXiv (see details). Templates for preprints are available in docx, google doc and latex users.
  • Data, statistical scripts, command lines and simulation code must made available to reviewers and recommenders at the time of submission and to readers after acceptance and recommendation. After acceptance and recommendation by the PCI, they must be available to readers, either in the text or through a correctly versioned deposit in an open repository, such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repository (see the Directory of Open Access Repositories) with a DOI or another permanent identifier (such as a SWHID of Software heritage). Note that Git URLS are not permanent. Information on how to issue a DOI for a GitHub repository is given at https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content. The scripts or code must be carefully described such that another researcher can run them.  
  • When the article has appeared on the preprint server and when the raw data, scripts and code have appeared on their repository (or at least are made available to reviewers and recommenders), authors can submit their article to a thematic PCI (see the guide for authors of the thematic PCI of your choice, eg the guide for authors of PCI Genomics).

3.2 Ethics

When submitting their manuscripts to a thematic PCI, authors should agree to respect the ethical principles described above.

4. Formatting your article for Peer Community Journal

4.1 Why do we ask you to format your article?

4.2 Structure of your article

4.3 If you formatted your article with the PCI submission template

4.4 If you did not use the PCI submission template

4.4.1 For LaTex users
4.4.2 For Microsoft Word or LibreOffice/OpenOffice users
4.4.3 For Google Docs users

4.1 Why do we ask you to format your article?

Articles submitted to Peer Community Journal must be in a standard format in order to be published. There are 3 ways to achieve this: Authors format their articles, we format the articles, or we pay staff to format the articles. Commercial journals usually use the 3rd option. Since Peer Community Journal is a diamond journal, it cannot afford this. Until now, we have assumed that we do not have the time to format all the articles submitted to Peer Community Journal ourselves. That's why we ask authors to format their articles themselves. However, we do format a fair number of them if the authors are unable to do so. If you cannot format your article yourself, just ask us.
Why do we ask for a Bibtex export of your references during the submission process?
We need to receive the references of each article in a structured form, i.e. with each element (year, title, volume, etc.) separated and tagged. This is to create the metadata associated with the article and to correctly declare the article to databases (e.g. Crossref). Most journals pay for an expensive service to convert the article references into structured references. At Peer Community Journal we cannot afford to pay for this service. We therefore ask authors to export their article references in bibtex format from their reference management software. If you have difficulty exporting your references, please contact us. For LaTex users, if you only have a colossal bib file containing the references of your entire life, you should reduce it to the references of your submitted article by using the instructions you can find there. 

4.2 Structure of your article

The text should begin with the introduction, with no cover page, header, footer, line number or page number. Templates are available in docx, Google Doc and LateX formats.
We will add a cover page, headers and footers to the PDF of your article after submission (an example of an article can be seen here).

The following sections are mandatory: 

  • Acknowledgments
  • Funding
  • Conflict of interest disclosure
  • Data, script, code, and supplementary information availability
  • References

4.3 If you formatted your article with the PCI submission template

Just follow this procedure after the recommendation:

  • Remove the first page
  • Remove the line numbers
  • Remove the page numbers
  • For latex users, simply add the option mode=plain to the classcopy in the PCJ-sample.tex file.
  • In the “Acknowledgements” section, add the following sentence: “Preprint version XXXX of this article has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In XXX [replace XXX by the name of the PCI] (https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.xxx [replace by the right doi of the recommendation]; XXXRecommender, XXXYear [replace by the citation of the recommendation, eg. “Fragata, 2021”]).
  • Export as PDF. Do not use the PDF file downloaded from the preprint server to submit your article to Peer Community Journal

Prepare a bibtex export of your article’s references (not of your whole reference collection). Such export file is easily obtained from your reference management software (Endnote, Zotero, Mendeley, …). For LaTex users, if you only have a colossal bib file containing the references of your entire life, you should reduce it to the references of your submitted article by using the instructions you can find there.

4.4 If you did not use the PCI submission template

Your article should be prepared with the Peer Community Journal templates available on https://osf.io/kmwfv. These templates are available in docx, Google Doc and LateX formats. 

4.4.1 For LaTex users

Simply download and use the Peer Community Journal latex package. Edit the PCJ-sample.tex file and please add the option mode=plain to the classcopy. Paste your text, figures, tables, etc. into the PCJ-sample.tex file, change the PCJ-sample.bib file, add the required image files. Do not fill the metadata fields (names, affiliations, emails, etc.).

Prepare a bibtex file of your article’s references (not of your whole reference collection). If you only have a colossal bib file containing the references of your entire life, you should reduce it to the references of your submitted article by using the instructions you can find there.

4.4.2 For Microsoft Word or LibreOffice/OpenOffice users

Download the docx template file, save it into your working folder, and follow the instructions below.

4.4.2.1 If you start a document from scratch

  • Open the PCJ.dotx template by double-clicking on it in your file browser to create a new docx document
  • Save this new document in .docx format. This is the file you will be working on.

4.4.2.2 If you want to format an existing document

  • Open your doc or docx article, and copy its whole content (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C).
  • Open the PCJ.dotx template by double-clicking on it in your file browser to create a new docx document. Select all its content (Ctr+A) and delete it. Paste the content of your document and save this new file in docx format. This is the file you will be working on.

4.4.2.3 Format your text

Re-open the PCJ.dotx template to see how the document should be structured and to see all the annotations that we made to help you prepare your article according to the template. It also shows you some mandatory content.

==> Do not include any front page containing the title, authors' names and affiliations, keywords, and abstract. We will insert these items ourselves after the submission of your article.

==> Do not include any footer, line number, page numbers, or header. We will insert these items ourselves after the submission of your article.

==> Do not insert blank lines or tabs; just use the predefined styles. You may exceptionally use blank lines to avoid big empty spaces before or after figures or to avoid cutting tables into 2 parts.

==> Add the mandatory content (in the acknowledgments, funding, conflict of interest, and data, code, script, and supplementary information availability sections) as shown in the template file.

==> Check that all the margins of all sections are set (top, left, right, bottom) to 2.54 cm

==> Use the predefined PCJ styles to format your document:

The PCJ styles appear in the style gallery of your . You may have to make the style gallery appear.

Click on the text you want to format (e.g. a section title) and then click on the corresponding predefined PCJ style in the style gallery (e.g. “PCJ Section”).

Use the following predefined PCJ styles in the corresponding parts of the document:

  • PCJ Text. This style is used to format the text into sections, subsections, sub-subsections, etc.
  • PCJ Section. This style is used to format the names of the different sections (i.e. “Introduction”, “Material and methods”, “Results” and “Discussion”). It should also be used to format the names of the final sections (i.e. “Data, script, code and supplementary information availability”, “Acknowledgements”, “Funding”, “Conflict of interest disclosure” and “References”).
  • PCJ Subsection and PCJ sub-subsection. These styles are used to format the names of the different subsections and sub-subsections, respectively.
  • PCJ Table. This style may be used to format the text in tables. Please note: Tables should be centered and adapted to fit into the space delimited by the margins. It may be necessary to create a section in landscape layout. If the table is too large and overlaps the margin, use the Table > AutoFit Windows option of your word processor program. If inserted as images, tables should be positioned "In line with text".  If your original table contained bold or italics font, do not forget to apply again these font types to the tables once formatted with the PCI table style.
  • PCJ Table legend. This style is used to format the legends above tables. It also puts the title "Table x." in bold typeface.
  • PCJ note Table. This style is used to format the notes below the table.
  • PCJ Figure. This style simply defines the space before and after figures. Figures should be adapted to fit into the space delimited by the margins. It may be necessary to create a section in landscape layout. Figures should be positioned "in line with text".
  • PCJ Caption Figure. This style is used to format the captions below the figure. It also puts "Figure x." in bold typeface.
  • PCJ Reference. This style should be used to format the Reference section of your article
  • PCJ Equation. This style can be used optionally to format isolated equations (i.e. equations not included in the text).

4.4.2.4 Format your references

Please carefully check that all the references cited in the text are in the reference list, and reciprocally. 

Please also check that the references are complete (with authors, title, year, volume number, page number or article number and DOI at the end) and correct. If any of the preprints listed in your reference list have been published in a journal in the meantime, you may either leave the reference to the preprint or indicate the reference to the journal - in the latter case, please update your reference list accordingly.

References may be formatted using the following styles (right-click and save as...):

hese styles should first be imported into your reference management software (Zotero, Mendeley, Endnote).

References should mandatorily:

  • Contain their DOI (e.g. https://doi.org/10111/100.1023). A simple way to obtain the DOI at the end of each reference is to copy/paste your list of references into https://apps.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery. Some DOIs cannot be found in this way, but a Google search with the title of the article generally finds the corresponding DOI.
  • Contain authors' names and first name initials, year, title, volume and page numbers for articles; authors' names and first name initials, year, chapter title, book title, publisher name, page numbers for book chapters; authors' names and first name initials, year, chapter title, publisher name for books; 
  • Be listed in alphabetical order;
  • Be cited as follows: 2 authors or less: (Does & Smith, 2010); 3 authors or more: (Smith et al., 2010). Several citations can be cited together with a semicolon (Doe & Smith, 2010; Jones et al., 2013; Kalinkat, 2023)

Note that, during the submission process, you will be asked to provide a bibtex export of your article’s references (not of your whole reference collection). Such export file is easily obtained from your reference management software (Endnote, Zotero, Mendeley, …). For LaTex users, if you only have a colossal bib file containing the references of your entire life, you should reduce it to the references of your submitted article by using the instructions you can find there.

4.4.2.5 Save your document

Once your document is fully formatted, save it as a .docx file and then as a PDF file.

4.4.3 For Google Docs users

Use the Google Docs template. Use the predefined PCJ styles to format your document (see 4.4.2 - For Microsoft Word or LibreOffice/OpenOffice users).

5. Presubmission checklist

Before submitting your recommended article to Peer Community Journal, please make sure that:

  • You have a PDF version of your article that is correctly formatted (see previous items). 
  • You have a doc, docx, odt or tex version of your article (correctly formatted).
  • You have a bibtex export of your article’s references (not your entire reference collection please).
  • You have a picture (png or jpeg files) for which you own the rights to illustrate the article page.
  • A perennial identifier is available for the data and scripts and code of your article (DOI or SWHID of Software heritage) through a correctly versioned deposit in an open repository, such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repository (see the Directory of Open Access Repositories). Note that Git URLS are not permanent. Information on how to issue a DOI for a GitHub repository is given at https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content. Wherever possible, data, scripts, code, and supplementary information should be provided in machine-readable formats. Avoid PDFs other than for textual or figure supplementary information.
  • The open repository includes a readme file that describes the data, scripts, and code and explains how to use/read them.
  • If data are not directly accessible, the reason should be given in the "Data, scripts, code, and supplementary information availability" section of your article. 
  • The script runs on the data and produces the same results as in the article.
  • The reference of the data, scripts, and code record is listed in the references list and cited in the “data, script, code, and supplementary information availability section” of your article.
  • The references are correct, accurate, as complete as possible, and have a fully developed DOI when existing (e.g. https://doi.org/10xxxx). A simple way to obtain the URL for the DOI at the end of each reference is to copy/paste your list of references into https://apps.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery. Some DOIs cannot be found in this way, but a Google search with the title of the article generally finds the corresponding DOI.
  • All the citations in the text are cited in the references and reciprocally.

6. What happens after submission to PCJ?

After you submit your article to Peer Community Journal, we will:

  • check that your article is correctly formatted using the journal templates
  • check the metadata (author names, affiliations, title, abstract) are correct
  • prepare the references metadata from the bibtex export of your references to publish the references on the Peer Community Journal website
  • prepare the proofs by adding a cover page, headers, and footers to the PDF of your article and send them to you for validation (an example can be seen here).

These editorial tasks are done by the journal managing co-ordinator, and by voluntary researchers who kindly agreed to help supporting Peer Community Journal this way. Unlike journal published by big publishers, Peer Community Journal does not outsource formating tasks to private companies. 

Thanks in advance for easing their work ;-)!