Before submission

We recommend that you consult our guide for authors to prepare your submission. If you consider publication in Peer Community Journal in case your article is recommended, we suggest you already format your preprint with our submission template for thematic PCI to save time. Before completing your submission, please read and take note of the following:

• PCI Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry is a preprint reviewing service and not a journal,
• You must first deposit your preprint on an open archive, such as bioRxiv or arXiv, to obtain a DOI or any unique identifier.
• If your preprint receives a positive evaluation from PCI Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry, it will be publicly recommended and you can then request its publication in the Peer Community Journal or submit it to a PCI-friendly journal, or to any journal of your choice accepting the submissions of preprint.
• If your preprint contains data, scripts (e.g. for statistical analysis, such as R scripts) and/or code (e.g. code for original programs or software), they should be made available to the reviewers at submission. Data, scripts or code must be carefully described so that another researcher can reuse them. If your preprint is eventually recommended, data and scripts should be made available to the readers either in the text or through a correctly versioned deposition in an open repository 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. Data, scripts or code must be carefully described such that another researcher can reuse them.
• Your preprint must not be published or under consideration for evaluation elsewhere at the time of its submission to PCI Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry. If your preprint is sent out for review by PCI Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry, you are not permitted to submit it to a journal until the PCI Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry evaluation process has been completed. You cannot, therefore, submit your preprint to a journal before its rejection or recommendation by PCI Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry.
• You and your co-authors should have no financial conflict of interest (see a definition here) relating to the articles you submit. If you are unsure about whether there are financial conflicts of interest associated with your article, please send an e-mail to contact@peercommunityin.org to request clarification.

Please note that:

• It can take up to 20 days before a recommender decides to handle your preprint and therefore to send it out for peer review.
• The median time between submission and the recommender's decision based on the first round of peer-review is currently about 50 days.
• The evaluation of your preprint may involve several rounds of review before the recommender takes the final decision to reject or recommend your preprint.
• Only the acceptance decision and the associated recommendation text, peer reviews and authors’ responses will be made public on the PCI website

Details about the evaluation & recommendation process can be found here.