Peer reviewers are enabling people in developing countries to access safe drinking water as the result of a collaboration between Springer’s journal Environmental Earth Sciences and the non-profit humanitarian organization “Filter of Hope”. Since the start of the initiative at the beginning of 2017, almost 600 water filters have been distributed in Liberia, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Russia, Cuba and India. This scheme is the first of its kind to acknowledge the fundamental contribution of peer reviewers in the scientific publishing industry through a non-profit partnership.

When a reviewer completes a peer review for Environmental Earth Sciences, it is tracked in the manuscript submission system so that it corresponds to a donation made by Springer Nature to Filter of Hope. The reviewer can also choose whether they would like to be acknowledged for their review in a special Editorial to the journal which is published at the end of the year.

“Filter of Hope – Clean Water for Life” is a non-profit organization that serves people in over 40 countries. Their goal is to change the world through the distribution of highly effective and affordable water filters. The water filters remove bacteria, protozoa and microorganisms from contaminated water sources, making it completely safe to drink. The work of Filter of Hope depends on global distribution organizations and funding partners that include foundations, corporations, philanthropic families, schools, churches, humanitarian groups and young people all across the world. Read Full Text on Springer

German universities have coped “easily” when cut off from Elsevier journals and do not need to rely on pirate article-sharing sites such as Sci-Hub, according to a negotiator from Germany’s biggest network of research centres.

Martin Köhler, who has helped to lead negotiations between the Dutch publishing giant and the Helmholtz Association, gave Times Higher Education details of Germany’s strategy to survive “no deal” with Elsevier – shedding some light on whether other countries could take a similar stance.

A consortium of all German research organisations is locked in hostile and so far unsuccessful contract negotiations with Elsevier, demanding full open access for German-authored papers and a model in which they pay per article published, not a flat journal subscription fee.

Part of their strategy is to demonstrate that German academics can operate without Elsevier subscriptions, and an increasing number of institutions have said they will not renew their contracts at the end of the year, now including the vast majority of Helmholtz centres, which have a combined revenue of €4.38 billion (£4 billion).

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