GreenFacts publishes clear and faithful summaries of existing scientific reports on environmental and health topics. Being strictly factual, the GreenFacts documents do not express any opinion on these reports, their content or conclusions.

All GreenFacts' summaries are peer-reviewed by independent experts under the control of a International Scientific Board. They are published on-line in a questions and answers format with some unique features, such as GreenFacts' proprietary Three-Level Structure of increasing detail, designed to help readers to easily find the depth of information they need.

The Level 1 Short summary is a digest of the original document in 7 to 10 questions and answers;

The Level 2 Detailed summary expands each level 1 answer through more precise sub-questions;

The Level 3 Source document refers directly to the original report with the technical information ;

How we do things

The Topics of our Digests are selected among the important environment and health topics for which an adequate source document exists.

The Source Document that we summarize is usually a recent scientific consensus publication, produced by an international panel of experts, and published by a independent international organization such as the institutions of the United Nations or of the European Union. It has to be approved by the  Scientific Board, which is composed exclusively of independent experts from academia as well as  national and international institutions.

The Summaries are written following a rigorous publication procedure, summarized below, to ensure that they are impartial and faithful to their Source Document:

• The draft summaries are generally written by a scientific expert in collaboration with our staff.
• The GreenFacts Staff structures the source document (constituing the Level 3) into questions and sub-questions ;
• The Editor then drafts the Level 1 and 2 summaries of the source document. The Staff works with the Editor to ensure that these summaries are clear and conform to its editorial needs.
• The Editor and the Staff prepare together the links and a glossary for the Digest.
• The language of the summaries is reviewed by a communication specialist to ensure that it is comprehensible for the non-specialist.
• They are sometimes pre-reviewed by stakeholder experts from both environmental or health associations and industry, to ensure that they are factual and do not express other opinions than those expressed in the original document.
• They are then peer-reviewed by at least three independent experts approved by the Scientific Board, to ensure their accuracy, impartiality and faithfulness to the source document.
• Final publication is authorized by the chairman of the  Scientific Board.

In the case of Co-publications prepared at the request of the European Commission, the process is similar but the choice of the source document, the peer review and the green light for the final publication are the responsability of the European Commission.

In the case of the news, only highlights of a recent report touching subject of public interest, is proposed,  mainly based on the summary of the original document itself. The aim is to quickly make the stakeholders aware of the existence of the document. Again, every effort is made to make this short presentation factual and strictly in line with the content of the document. These news are not peer reviewed.