PCI Zoology

What is PCI Zoology ?

PCI Zoology has been launched in July 2020, replacing and broadening the scope of PCI Entomology. It is a community of recommenders playing the role of editors who recommend unpublished articles based on peer-reviews to make them complete, reliable and citable articles, without the need for publication in ‘traditional’ journals. Evaluation and recommendation by %(longname)s are free of charge. When a recommender decides to recommend an article, he/she writes a recommendation text that is published along with all the editorial correspondence (reviews, recommender's decisions, authors’ replies) by PCI Zoology. The article itself is not published by PCI Zoology; it remains in the preprint server where it has been posted by the authors. PCI Zoology recommenders can also recommend, but to a lesser extent, postprints..

PCI Zoology is a community of the parent project Peer Community In, an original idea of Denis Bourguet, Benoit Facon and Thomas Guillemaud.

PCI Zoology is not designed to be a free peer-reviewing service for authors aiming to improve their articles before submission to a journal. It is, of course, possible, for authors to then submit their recommended article to a traditional journal, but this is not the goal of PCI Zoology.

PCI Zoology is stimulating: it recommends remarkable articles.
PCI Zoology is free: there are no fees associated with the evaluation process, and no charge for access to the comments and recommendations. The website is freely accessible.
PCI Zoology is transparent: Reviews and recommendations (for unpublished articles) and recommendations (for published articles) are freely available for consultation. Recommendations are signed by the recommenders. Reviews may also be signed if the reviewers agree to do so.
PCI Zoology is not exclusive: An article may be recommended by different Peer Communities in X (a feature of particular interest for articles relating to multidisciplinary studies) and may even be published in a traditional journal (although this is not the goal of PCI Zoology).

Managing board of PCI Zoology

Dominique Adriaens (Univ Ghent, Belgium)
Ellen Decaestecker (KULeuven, Belgium)
Benoït Facon (Inrae, France)
Isabelle Schon (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium)
Bertanne Visser (UCLouvain, Belgium)

To contact the Managing Board please send a message to contact@zool.peercommunityin.org

Which manuscripts can be recommended?

PCI Zoology will recommend preprints, and to a lesser extent postrpints, dealing with all aspects of fundamental and applied research (anatomy, behavior, developmental biology, ecology, evolution, genetics, genomics and physiology) on all animal taxa. This PCI will focus on animals from natural populations, from sponges and invertebrates to vertebrates, both in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The preprints recommended may describe empirical or theoretical studies, and be based on observations from experiments or nature, or previously acquired data. They may also report the results of verbal, computer or mathematical models. Studies of methodologies for zoology as well as interdisciplinary research with innovative ideas are appreciated. Perspectives, reviews and opinions, as well as comments on previously published articles are also welcome. PCI Zoology can consider purely taxonomic preprints but it is noteworthy that a new taxon name is only valid if the name and description are published by an identified publisher (ISSN) in a classic journal with a single doi.

For work on domestic animal species and animals managed by humans, please consider PCI Animal Science.

The articles recommended may have diverse formats: reviews, comments, opinion papers, research articles, data papers, technical notes, computer notes, movies, etc. No editing, formatting or proofing of the recommended papers is required but we provide the authors with a template if they want to format their article. We also ask the authors of recommended article to add a sentence in the acknowledgements stating that their article has been recommended by PCI Zoology.

PCI Zoology welcomes anonymous submissions (see details).

PCI Zoology also welcomes submissions of preregistrations (see details).

Editorial Criteria

PCI Zoology recommends preprints covering all fields of biology, provided that the context of the study and the key question addressed relate to zoology. The preprint must not be published or under consideration for evaluation elsewhere at the time of its submission to PCI Zoology.

The preprints recommended may describe empirical or theoretical studies, and be based on observations from experiments or nature, or previously acquired data. They may also report the results of verbal, computer or mathematical models. Studies of methodologies are also appreciated. Perspectives, reviews and opinions, as well as comments on previously published articles are also welcome.

PCI Zoology recommends only preprints of high scientific quality that are methodologically and ethically sound. To this end, PCI Zoology:
- Requires data, computer codes and mathematical and statistical analysis scripts to be made available to reviewers and recommenders at the time of submission and to readers after recommendation.
- Welcomes reproductions of studies.
- Welcomes preregistration submissions and preprint submissions based on preregistrations (whether or not reviewed)
- Welcomes preprints reporting negative results, provided that the questions addressed and the methodology are sound.
- Does not accept submissions of preprints presenting financial conflicts of interest. Other conflicts of interest must be minimal and declared.
- Ensures that, as far as possible, the reviewers and referees have no conflict of interest with the content or authors of the study being evaluated.

PCI Zoology does not guarantee the evaluation or recommendation of all submitted preprints. Only preprints considered interesting by at least one competent recommender (equivalent to an associate editor in a classical journal) 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. PCI Zoology has a large number of recommenders, ensuring a considerable diversity of interests. The recommendations published by PCI Zoology are designed to draw the attention of the research community to the qualities of the article, including the subjective reasons for the recommender’s interest in it.

Peer Community In promotes the repeatability of science

PCI wants to promote scientific repeatability to improve the overall robustness and integrity of our scientific conclusions. To this aim, PCI has set up 3 mandatory rules and made 2 suggestions to authors:

Mandatory rules:

Articles recommended by PCI must provide the readers:
-Raw data by making them available either in the text or through an open data repository such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repositories (see Directory of Open Access Repositories). Data must be reusable, thus metadata and accompanying text must carefully describe the data.
-Details on the quantitative analyses (e.g., data treatment and statistical scripts in R, bioinformatic pipeline scripts, etc.) and details concerning simulations (scripts, codes) in the text, as appendices, or through an open data repository, such as Zenodo, Dryad or some other institutional repositories (see Directory of Open Access Repositories). The scripts or codes must be carefully described such that another researcher can run them.
-Details on experimental procedures. These details must be given in the text or as appendices at the end of the article.

Suggestions to authors:

-PCI 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. This provides a way for them to clarify their hypotheses, avoid confusing “postdictions” and predictions, and carefully plan appropriate statistical treatment of the data (eg see 10.1073/pnas.1708274114).
-PCI also welcomes submissions of preregistrations. Authors can submit their preregistrations to a PCI before beginning their study, and thus before acquiring the data. Preregistrations are then evaluated by recommenders based on independent reviews, in exactly the same way as preprint articles. Preregistrations can thus be rejected or undergo revisions, improving the quality and robustness of the experimental design. When a preregistration is accepted, the subsequent article submitted to the corresponding PCI would be recommended provided the study has been conducted as described in the preregistration (or with any modifications clearly justified). In this way, an article cannot be rejected due to the outcome of the study only. Details on preregistration submissions can be found for example here.

PCI Zoology friendly journals

The Editors-in-Chief of the following journals have indicated (or have been asked by their scientific Society) they will consider submissions of articles recommended by a PCI and that they may use PCI reviews and recommendations for their own review processes, if appropriate:

PLoS Biology
PeerJ
eLife
Trends in Ecology and Evolution
Evolution
Trends in Plant Science
Global Ecology and Biogeography
Ecology Letters
Evolution Letters
OIKOS
BMC Evolutionary Biology
Molecular Ecology
Journal of Evolutionary Biology
Nordic Journal of Botany
Journal of Avian Biology
Evolutionary Applications
Frontiers of Biogeography
Journal of Biogeography
Evolutionary Ecology
Ecography
Genetica
Rethinking Ecology
Molecular Ecology Resources

Attention! The following journals are NOT PCI friendly (they would not accept preprints recommended by PCI as submissions):
American Naturalist
Behavioral Ecology
Cladistics