In recognition of the theme of 2022's Open Access Week “Open for Climate Justice” we interviewed Dr Jamie Cleverly, Chief Editor of Advances in Meteorology, and asked her to curate a selection of articles highlighting the topics of climate justice, climate change, sustainable agriculture and renewable energy from across our portfolio.
What is the focus of your research and what’s your background?
Jamie Cleverly: My background actually started in ecology and plant physiology but then I went into ecohydrology and meteorology. I'm really closely connected with FLUXNET and the global and Australian Flux communities so I have focused a lot more on micrometeorological and ecosystem processes. I run a couple of field sites here in Australia with flux towers and other ancillary measures including groundwater studies. We’re focused on the critical zone from the groundwater and bedrock up to the atmosphere as an integrated system for the biosphere.
What is your understanding of the climate justice movement?
JC: The problem with climate, and particularly with climate change, is that it most affects the people who are already marginalized, and who have really had no input into the factors that created the problem in the first place. There's an uneven distribution of cause and effect.
How does climate justice relate to open science?
JC: There are a lot of people who aren't trained or active scientists who are keenly interested in understanding what's going on and they yearn for the information. I'm really glad that we get a lot of submissions from lower income nations because of the waiver policy. That's a really effective way to help contribute to climate justice, because it's the people in less wealthy nations who are reporting what's happening on the ground where climate change is really impacting people.
Webinars might be a good idea because a lot of people nowadays are quite comfortable with learning from video.
Really what we need is something that connects what is best for society - especially indigenous peoples and inhabitants of lower socioeconomic countries who are disproportionately affected by climate change - with what the authors get out of it—essentially learning how to improve your chances of getting your paper accepted and improve your citations.
Should all climate justice research be open access?
JC: Yes, I think it's the correct way forward because in most of the world, possibly all of the world, it's the public who paid for the research meaning that they have a right to know what's going on. And at the same time, the chances of impacting on governmental policy go up a lot more if non-scientists, and particularly policymakers, have access to the information in a way that they can understand.
The US recently announced that all federally-funded research must be published open access, what do you think about that?
JC: Well, they've got similar policies in Europe too, so the movement is really spreading and what's hopeful about what you mentioned in America and in Europe is that it's the people with the money. We're pushing for Open Access publishing so we would hope that they're also helping to fund publication of these papers Open Access because it does require some money.
What can Open Science do for the climate justice movement?
JC: The advantage of the digital age is that you can find papers that are published on a single topic over a longer time frame. I know that for a lot of us, we're limited on the time we have available to go searching for papers and so we tend to stick with what we know. These collections can help us find what we know and then connect it to something new. And with a publisher like Hindawi that has diversity of topics and titles, you can have a collection that spans across journals, so we could have papers published in another journal at Hindawi that cover some aspect of climate justice. Showcasing articles from across different journals demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of climate change research.
How did you choose the articles in your climate science collection?
JC: I wanted to focus on climate justice first, then mitigation which would have a primary impact on marginalised people and finally, mitigation which would be more relevant to wealthy countries.
Article Highlights: Climate Change >>
This blog post is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). Illustration adapted from Adobe Stock by David Jury.