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About

Aims and scope

Sustainability is a global challenge identified by the United Nations. There is a uniform drive in every region of the world to invest time and money into developing solutions to meet this global challenge. Consequently, sustainability research is one of the fastest growing scientific fields today. 

Sustainable Earth Reviews aims to serve this field of research by publishing high-quality, open access analyses, overview papers, and reviews. As a community-focused journal, Sustainable Earth Reviews serves both the realms of academia and the general public and strives to strengthen the bond between them through traditional and innovative scientific communication. To further this vision, the journal will engage authors and readers in contemporary topics in the public eye or of critical socio-economic importance through the publication of thematic series. 

The journal particularly welcomes submissions that may influence policy or alter social paradigms. Sustainable Earth Reviews offers a variety of content types to cater to novel debates in the field, including: Analyses, Guidelines, Debates, Systematic Reviews and Protocols, and Scoping Reviews.

Why publish your article in Sustainable Earth Reviews?

  • Join a connected community of scientists, policy makers and citizens, offering a platform for discussion and a forum for change.
  • Our highly regarded Editorial Board is comprised of some of the world's leading voices in sustainability research.
  • By combining rigorous expert assessment with our extensive peer review network, we provide a service with the highest standards.
  • Our renowned editorial team offers expert early guidance for researchers, helping transform ideas into discoveries.

Discover more about the journal’s ethos and aspirations in the Editor-in-Chief’s blog and video interview series.

Open access

All articles published by Sustainable Earth Reviews are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Sustainable Earth Reviews you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Sustainable Earth Reviews are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £990.00/$1290.00/€1190.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Sustainable Earth Reviews are included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BMC on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services including PubMed Central and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Sustainable Earth Reviews will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Sustainable Earth Reviews operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically  sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The  Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Sustainable Earth Reviews also publishes special issues. The peer review process of any submission associated with a special issue is handled by Guest Editors who are responsible for assigning at least two referees to each article and evaluating the reviews. Like our Associate Editors, Guest Editors make recommendations and request and evaluate revisions, but only the Editors-in-Chief can make final decisions of accept or reject on any special issue article. Any articles submitted to a special issue by Guest Editors are also handled confidentially by Associate Editors outside of the normal refereeing process of the special issue to ensure that the evaluation of these articles is completely objective.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Sustainable Earth Reviews should adhere to BMC's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Sustainable Earth Reviews

Articles in Sustainable Earth Reviews should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Sustain Earth [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Meyer K and Newman P: The Planetary Accounting Framework: a novel, quota-based approach to understanding the impacts of any scale of human activity in the context of the Planetary Boundaries. Sustain Earth 2018, 1:4.

1:4 refers to article 4 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Sustainable Earth Reviews's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Sustainable Earth Reviews offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Sustainable Earth Reviews gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Sustainable Earth Reviews are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Sustainable Earth Reviews’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Sustainable Earth Reviews may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Sustainable Earth Reviews. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Sustainable Earth Reviews you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.

Article Types

Sustainable Earth Reviews accepts the following article types:

Review
- Analysis
- Systematic Review 
- Systematic Review Protocol
- Guidelines
- Debate
- Commentary


 


Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2023 Speed
    18 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    70 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage 
    150,498 downloads
    53 Altmetric mentions 

Institutional membership

Visit the membership page to check if your institution is a member and learn how you could save on article-processing charges (APCs).

Funding your APC

Open access funding and policy support by SpringerOpen​​

​​​​We offer a free open access support service to make it easier for you to discover and apply for article-processing charge (APC) funding. Learn more here