Benefits of Open Peer Review Notebooks

Peer review should be seen as process that helps to improve the quality of the research and an important exercise in collaboration. It can be done on a wide variety of research outputs, including[2]:

• manuscripts

• software (including code, documentation, and examples)

• datasets

• communication and presentation materials

While no established criteria exist for evaluating notebooks, EDS book notebooks embraces Open Peer Review and their models (Open Content, Open Participation and Open Identities) (see[3] for more details) to offer a fully transparent process addressing the following challenges:

• Scoping: anyone following the Code of Conduct of EDS book community can provide feedback of notebooks from early stages (notebook idea) to late stages (post-publication). This process helps refining the scope and key messages of notebooks to a target audience, in this case the Environmental science community and users/readers of EDS book.

• Citation, Credits & Acknowledgments: we provide credits to everyone involved in the notebook publication. Authors and reviewers are listed in the citation with their respective contributions. Our guidelines provide also clear instructions how to give credit and acknowledgment to research data and/or software used in the notebook as well as relevant funding.

• Community: a fully transparency facilitates dialogue and collaboration within the community.