FAQ Launch Challenge

Over the past year, we have developed the basic ideas of Climanosco, have built up an initial community as well as an internet platform. Climanosco is now a registered non-profit association with a Board of Directors and an Editorial Board. We have tested our system with an initial manuscript and are now ready to accept our first submissions. In other words, we are launching our activities on Climanosco. This Challenge is our Launch Challenge.

Climanosco aims at offering articles for a general public reflecting the highest standards in science. Climanosco is independent at the financial and governance levels.
With its structure, Climanosco’s aim is to offer a direct, reliable and unbiased channel for climate scientists to communicate their research for the general public and to increase their impact.
Climate scientists who want to take a leadership role along side colleagues from around the world can engage and get elected to the Board of Directors.

This Challenge is our Launch Challenge. We are starting our activities and at this occasion, we are inviting climate scientists to rewrite, in non-scientific language, one of their scientific papers that appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.

Yes, we have what we think is a very exciting and well balanced collection of presents for our donors. In these presents, we place the emphasis on the engagement. We believe that donors are engaged people, people of action.

Requests for recommendations of early career scientists have been sent to 25 leading universities in America, Europe, and Asia. After reception of these recommendations, personal invitations were sent to 29 selected candidates. Candidates were asked to notify Climanosco as soon as possible but no later than 15 September if they accept to take part to the challenge.

The submission of manuscripts to Climanosco is generally open to all climate scientists who have published at least one article in a recognized peer-reviewed journal in the area of climate sciences. However, for this challenge specifically, we had to limit participation by issuing invitations. We have a good reason for this. We are still a small community and as such, there is a limit to the number of manuscripts we can streamline through our peer-review process while assuring its quality. For this reason, we have to limit the participation to this challenge to a number of around 25 main authors.

This initiative emerged through discussions with many colleagues, scientists and friends. The ideas took a coherent shape in 2013 and were presented at an American scientific conference in Colorado and the following year at a European conference in Vienna. We started in 2014 by building an initial, yet worldwide community, an Internet platform and then a non-profit organisation.

Yes, the best articles win exciting prizes. The best 10 articles win a paper certificate of the best manuscripts. The best 5 manuscripts win in addition a beautiful t-shirt with the manuscript’s title and a summary printed under the Climanosco logo. The best 3 manuscripts receive in addition a prize in cash, namely 500CHF for the third and second bests and 1000CHF for the first best. And all participants whose manuscript was published with Climanosco receive a paper certificate of participation.

We are launching our activities this fall 2015 with a Launch Challenge and a Crowdfunding campaign.

We offer prizes because this is the launch of Climanosco. This is a one time event and a very important milestone for Climanosco and the entire community it reflects. Through these prizes, our aim is to thank all the participants for their engagement, patience and trust.

The participants will be in contact by email with the administrator and then the editor in charge of their manuscript throughout the peer-review process. At the end of the peer-review, the editor will issue a recommendation as to whether the manuscript shall be nominated as finalist for the Challenge or not. If recommended as a finalist, the manuscript will be ranked by way of vote by the Jury. The winners are then contacted personally using the email address they entered on their registration page. The entire process is estimated to take a maximum of 4 months. The winners (and all participants) will be notified by the end of February 2016.

This challenge is organized at the occasion of the launch of Climanosco in the fall 2015. This is a unique event. However, it is in our plans to organize an award of the most popular article of the year.

Since this is our very first campaign, we don’t really know what to expect. So, we set the bar reasonably low. The more we receive during this campaign, the faster we will get to the next level and the longer we will hold until the next fundraising. Our strategy is a long term one. We learn by doing and we will progress one step at a time, whatever happens.

Yes, donors who give us their contact details will be regularly informed.

We have three basic pillars, namely independence/neutrality, individual participation and highest scientific standards. We are developing a solid organisation based on these pillars. We will use this money to bring our platform, our reach, and our community to the next level. More details are available on our Crowdfunding page.

In general, the only restriction that we impose on manuscripts submitted to Climanosco is that they must be based on scientific results that have already been published in recognized peer-reviewed journals in the area of climate sciences. However, for this challenge specifically, we had to require that authors submit what we called “paraphrased articles”. The reason is that we are still a small community and our capacity to peer-review manuscripts in a reasonable period of time and with quality is limited. Following our rules, “paraphrased articles” that are submitted by an author of the original scientific article do not need to be peer-reviewed by Scientific Referees. Having an original author onboard is normally sufficient to ensure that the content is consistent with the original scientific article. This is also overall verified by the Editor. The “paraphrased articles” nonetheless go through a non-scientific peer-review to ensure their accessibility to a large public. So, by restricting the challenge to this type of submissions, we were able to increase the number of admitted manuscript for this challenge.

As soon as the Crowdfunding campaign is over on 15 October, we will prepare all the perks and send them to you as a donor. You will receive them by 30 November.

The Jury of the Challenge is composed of all the scientific Editors who edited Manuscripts for this Challenge and of an equal number of members who are not climate scientists. The latter will be nominated by the Board of Directors in the coming months.

Yes, it is our first Crowdfunding campaign and it is also the first time we raise money!

Our internet platform has a multi-lingual capacity built in. We plan to switch to the multi-lingual mode when we have enough members in a few major linguistic regions to allow for the translation of our articles by our members and its verification.