Scientific Topics Focus (STF) is a collection of peer-reviewed reports whose curation is supported by the Maieutike Research Initiative. The collection is part of the Notes on Transdisciplinary Modelling for Environment. The aim of STF is to provide a robust background support for transdisciplinary research on environmental modelling with focused analysis on domain-specific aspects of computational/environmental science. 

Scientific Topics Focus (STF) is a collection of peer-reviewed reports whose curation is supported by the Maieutike Research Initiative. The collection is part of the Notes on Transdisciplinary Modelling for Environment and aims at supporting transdisciplinary research on environmental modelling with focused analysis on specific scientific and technical topics. Although the topics might deal with domain-specific aspects of computational/environmental science, their focused analysis is expected to support wider research in a transdisciplinary context.

STF follows a two-stage peer review process which requires discussion reports to be published so as to receive feedback from the scientific community before their possible finalisation. While anonymous review by domain experts drives the first publication, published discussion reports in addition remain open to public review. Depending on the specific goals of each research problem, the discussion may remain open for a short time interval, or instead for a noticeably longer period of time (even indefinitely, if appropriate: for example, whenever authors do consider publishing cumulative milestone versions as important). The published materials might be updated from time to time (at the authors' discretion), and - after peer-reviewing the changes - published so that the evolution is clear and available to others. When authors and editors consider the evolution of discussion updates to be complete, a final version is peer-reviewed with the specific focus to offer a solid stable contribution on the subject. Therefore, reports are subject to versioning under a continuous publication model, following either the stage-1 or stage-2 of the peer-review process.

This two-stage publication model supports two complementary needs for

• accurate, timely and continuously updated contributions to the continuously changing research questions of today: not static, and soon obsolescent, literature, but live works really linked to their authors’ evolving research, and potentially able to stay relevant until the specific answers they contribute remain relevant to science, society and policy;

• solid settled contributions to the scientific knowledge of tomorrow, aiming to be understood by and serve the education of future researchers.