On 17 December, Marta Moreno Ibáñez (leader of the last two group reviews of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports organised by APECS and its partners in 2020 and 2021) gave the oral presentation “Participation of Early Career Researchers in Group Reviews of the IPCC Reports: Outcomes and Lessons Learned” at the AGU Fall Meeting 2021.
The oral presentation was given during the online session “Preparing Next-Generation Researchers to Meet the Transdisciplinary Challenges of Climate Change (Including MultiSector Dynamics)”, and the primary convener was Ana Dyreson from Michigan Technological University. This session stressed the importance of working across disciplines to address the challenges posed by climate change and highlighted the need to provide Early Career Researchers (ECRs) with adequate training to conduct transdisciplinary research on climate change.
Marta provided the attendees with an overview of the six IPCC group reviews organised by APECS, Mountain Research Initiative (MRI), PAst Global ChangES Early-Career Network (PAGES-ECN), Permafrost Young Research Network (PYRN) and Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) between 2018 and 2021. She explained the main steps involved in the group review process, namely the release of the call for applications, the selection of applicants, the assignment of sections of the report to review, the individual review, the sorting and merging of comments, the submission of the comments to the IPCC, and sending a survey to participants to get feedback from them. Marta showed that there has been an increased interest of ECRs in participating in these group reviews, and that ECRs have provided the IPCC with a substantial number of comments of high quality. She also mentioned some of the challenges encountered when organising these group reviews. Finally, she stressed that these group reviews have shown that ECRs can make valuable contributions to the peer review of scientific reports on climate change and, therefore, ECRs should be provided with training opportunities to develop their reviewing skills.
This oral presentation is framed in the context of the activities by APECS and partners whose goal is to promote the engagement of ECRs as peer reviewers. The presentation had been prepared by the three group leaders of the IPCC group reviews (Marta Moreno Ibáñez, Gwenaëlle Gremion, Mathieu Casado, all three from APECS) and a representative from each partner organization (Valentina Rabanal, YESS; Helena Bergstedt, PYRN; Gabrielle Therese Vance, MRI; Paul Rosenbaum, PAGES ECN). The work of all people involved in the organization of these group reviews, without whom these group reviews would not have been possible, has also been acknowledged in the oral presentation.
Author: Marta Moreno Ibáñez
