Scientific Openness and Integrity: Two Decades of Interactive Open Access Publishing and Open Peer Review

From book printing to the free distribution of scientific publications on the internet developed in the City of Gutenberg: Celebrations at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz on 19 September 2022 

September 13, 2022

For more than 20 years, the scientific journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP) has been a pioneer in open access publishing and public peer review with interactive discussion. All articles published in it are accessible free of charge via the internet. By recording and opening up the peer review process, the interactive open access journals lead to an internet of knowledge or epistemic web that does not only reflect what we know but also how we know it, i.e., how well it has been validated in accordance with the principles of critical rationalism.

The achievements of ACP and further interactive open access sister journals of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) will be celebrated, reflected, and further developed at a special meeting of the ACP editorial board and the EGU publications committee on 19 September 2022 at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz. The meeting is supported by the open access publisher Copernicus, which operates the journal on behalf of EGU in a not-for-profit manner. 

Ensure free speech, critical discussion, and transparency in scientific communication and quality assurance

Since the journal launch in 2001, ACP has grown to become one of the major international journals in atmospheric science, now handling around a thousand submissions per year. ACP's success was not assured when it launched. Open peer review, in which the reviewer comments, author replies, and additional public comments from the scientific community are published immediately, was radical in 2001. “Our  guiding principle was to achieve highest levels of scientific integrity through free speech and transparency in scientific exchange and quality assurance”, says Max Planck Director Ulrich Pöschl, who had initiated ACP.

The interactive open access publishing concept was developed more than 20 years ago by researchers connected through  the MPI for Chemistry. "It has been a lot of joy and work to initiate, design, and establish interactive open-access publishing with an equally pleasant and strong team of friends and colleagues, including Paul Crutzen and Arne Richter, who are unfortunately not with us anymore but deserve special thanks for the swift initial gain of momentum", says Uli Pöschl, who led ACP until recently, chaired the EGU publications committee for many years, and continues to promote open access also through the global initiative OA2020 and related activities. 

 

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