What does a PCI Zoology recommender do?

A PCI Zoology recommender is analogous to an associate editor at a peer reviewed journal. Each recommender is expected to manage the evaluation process for one or two articles per year, on average. Recommenders evaluate and may recommend articles that have not been published by or submitted to a journal. Evaluating a preprint means playing a role similar to that of a journal editor (finding reviewers, collecting reviews, making editorial decisions based on reviews) and, possibly, recommending the article after several rounds of review. Recommenders deciding to recommend a particular article write a “recommendation” for that article, which has its own DOI and is published by PCI Zoology. The recommendation is a short article, similar to a News & Views piece. It has its own title, contains between about 300 and 1500 words, describes the context and explains why the article is particularly interesting. This text also contains references (referring at least to the article recommended).

Recommenders typically handle submissions either within or close to their own specialty. They are expected to comply with PCI Zoology's code of conduct, they are eligible for selection as a member of the Managing Board, and can propose the nomination of new recommenders to the Managing Board. See the PCI Zoology Guidelines for Recommenders for more information.

Interested in becoming a recommender at PCI Zoology? 

New recommenders are nominated by current recommenders and approved by the Managing Board of PCI Zoology. If you are interested in becoming a recommender, please contact a current recommender in your field or send us an email: contact@zool.peercommunityin.org.

The Managing Board of PCI Zoology usually selects people who have completed a PhD, conduct independent research, and have at least a handful of first author articles (to ensure people have some experience with the publishing process). PCI has signed the Joint Statement of Principles of the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication, which we at PCI Zoology fully support this. We aim to have strong representation across fields of research, geographic regions, genders, and other areas in which some groups of people have been traditionally underrepresented in academia.