Environmental Science: Advances

Article types

Communications

These must report preliminary research findings that are novel and original, of immediate interest and are likely to have a high impact on the Environmental Science: Advances community. Authors must provide a short paragraph explaining why their work justifies rapid publication as a communication.

Full papers

Original research papers on any of the subjects outlined in the scope section and related areas are encouraged and welcomed. All papers should give due attention to overcoming limitations and to underlying principles. All contributions will be judged on the following four criteria.

1. Originality and insight
2. Quality and rigour of scientific work and content
3. Clarity of objectives and aims of the work
4. Appropriateness of length to content of new science

Perspectives

These may be articles providing a personal view of part of one discipline associated with Environmental Science: Advances or a philosophical look at a topic of relevance. Alternatively, Perspectives may be historical articles covering a particular subject area or the development of particular legislation, technologies, methodologies or other subjects within the scope of the journal.

Critical reviews

Critical reviews must be a critical evaluation of the existing state of knowledge on a particular facet of environmental science. They should be timely and provide insights based on existing literature. They should be of general interest to the journal's wide readership.

All critical reviews undergo a rigorous and full peer review procedure, in the same way as regular research papers. Authors are encouraged to identify areas in the field where further developments are imminent or of urgent need, and any areas that may be of significance to the community in general. Critical reviews should not contain any unpublished original research.

All review content should consist of original text and interpretation, avoiding any direct reproduction. If a significant amount of other people's material is to be used, either textual or image-based, permission must be sought by the author in accordance with copyright law and must be made clear in the manuscript.

Frontier reviews

These are shorter, more focused versions of critical reviews on a well-defined, specific topic area covering approximately the last two-three years. Articles should cover only the most interesting/significant developments in that specific subject area.

The article should be highly critical and selective in referencing published work. One or two paragraphs of speculation about possible future developments may also be appropriate in the conclusion section.

Frontier reviews may also cover techniques/technologies that are too new for a critical review or may address a subset of technologies available for a given area of research within the journal scope.

Frontier reviews should not contain unpublished original research.

All review content should consist of original text and interpretation, avoiding any direct reproduction. If a significant amount of other people's material is to be used, either textual or image-based, permission must be sought by the author in accordance with copyright law and must be made clear in the manuscript.

Tutorial reviews

Tutorial reviews should provide an introduction and overview of an important topic of relevance to the journal readership. The topic should be of relevance to both researchers who are new to the field as well as experts and provide a good introduction to the development of a subject, its current state and indications of future directions the field is expected to take. Tutorial reviews should not contain unpublished original research.

All review content should consist of original text and interpretation, avoiding any direct reproduction. If a significant amount of other people's material is to be used, either textual or image-based, permission must be sought by the author in accordance with copyright law and must be made clear in the manuscript.

Comments and Replies

Comments and replies are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions between authors and readers concerning material published in Environmental Science: Advances.

For publication, a comment should present an alternative analysis of and/or new insight into the previously published material. Any reply should further the discussion presented in the original article and the comment. Comments and replies that contain any form of personal attack are not suitable for publication. 

Comments that are acceptable for publication will be forwarded to the authors of the work being discussed, and these authors will be given the opportunity to submit a reply. The comment and reply will both be subject to rigorous peer review in consultation with the journal’s editorial board where appropriate. The comment and reply will be published together.

Cover Letter

Please supply a cover letter explaining the importance and environmental significance of the work, and why it is suitable for publication in Environmental Science: Advances.

Title

An article should have a short, straightforward title directed at the general reader. The use of non-standard abbreviations and acronyms, very specialised terms, and the full names of genes or proteins should be avoided where possible. Please bear in mind that readers increasingly use search engines to find literature; recognisable, keywords should be included in the title where possible, to maximise the impact and discoverability of your work. Brevity in a title, though desirable, should be balanced against its accuracy and usefulness.

Author names

Full names of all the authors of an article should be given. To give due acknowledgement to all workers contributing to the work, those who have contributed significantly to the research should be listed as co-authors. Authors who contributed equally can be noted with a Footnote and referenced with a symbol.

On submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author attests to the fact that those named as co-authors have agreed to its submission for publication and accept the responsibility for having properly included all (and only) co-authors. If there are more than 10 co-authors on the manuscript, the corresponding author should provide a statement to specify the contribution of each co-author. The corresponding author signs a copyright licence on behalf of all the authors. For further details, please refer to our authorship policy.

Table of contents entry

This entry should include a colour image (no larger than 8 cm wide x 4 cm high), and 20-30 words of text that highlight the novel aspects of your work to a broad environmental sciences readership. The image should be simple, informative and able to grab a reader’s attention. Logos, trademarks or brand names should be avoided. The graphic used in the table of contents entry need not necessarily appear in the article itself.

Graphics

• Artwork should be submitted at its final size so that reduction is not required. The appearance of graphics is the responsibility of the author.
• Colour figure reproduction is provided free of charge.
• Images should fit within either single column (8.3 cm) or double column (17.1 cm) width, and must be no longer than 23.3 cm.
• Figures, charts and schemes should preferably be supplied as TIFF files at >600 dpi resolution; EPS or PDF files can also be supplied

You must obtain permission to use any figure or graphic belonging to someone else; see our guidance on using third party material in Royal Society of Chemistry publications.

Multimedia files and video abstracts

We welcome submission of multimedia files (including videos and animations) alongside articles for publication. Videos are an excellent medium to present elements of your work that can be difficult to communicate only in words and offer an engaging way of highlighting the environmental significance of your work.

Multimedia files and video abstracts can be submitted as ‘Electronic Supplementary Information’ when you submit your manuscript. Please supply the following:

• A clear file name for your video.
• A short descriptive title for the video, which can be used when uploading the video onto a streaming channel.
• A video legend of approximately 30 words long; this caption must be provided to aid discoverability.
• Five to 10 keywords that can be used to tag the video; the more accurate the tags are the better discoverability videos will have.

Any videos of general interest are shared with the wider community via the RSC Journals YouTube channel. Please notify the editorial team if you prefer for your video(s) not to be uploaded to YouTube.

Please minimise file sizes where you can, by considering the following points.

• The recommended maximum frame size is 640 x 480 pixels.
• Our recommended maximum file size is 5 Mb.
• Many packages output 30 frames per second (fps) as standard, but it's possible to specify a lower frame rate; this may not noticeably affect the quality of your video but will reduce the file size.
• Use a 256 colour palette, if that is suitable for the presentation of the material.

We also encourage the submission of video abstracts. If you submit a video abstract alongside your paper, please refer to it within your paper to draw it to the reader’s attention, and refer to the following specification.

Technical specifications

• Resolution/aspect ratio: 720p, 1080p or 4k.
• Frames per second: 25 to 30.
• Formats accepted: MPG, MOV, AVI, WMV, MP4.

Content

• Start by introducing the conclusion of your article and concentrate on the main results.
• Focus the video on how the article addresses global challenges and is of interest to a wide range of environmental scientists.
• Introduce relevant co-workers and mix in images/footage of your laboratory, experiment and equipment to make it more engaging.
• Videos should be approximately two-three minutes in length (no longer than four minutes).
• On screen text should be used sparingly and be large enough to read clearly.

Abstract

Every paper must be accompanied by a summary (50-250 words) setting out briefly and clearly the main objectives and results of the work; it should give a non-specialist reader a clear idea of what has been achieved. The summary should be essentially independent of the main text. In preparing an abstract, keep in mind that this should speak to the multidisciplinary readership of Environmental Science: Advances.

Please bear in mind that readers increasingly use search engines to find literature; recognisable, searchable terms and key words should be included in the abstract to enable readers to more effectively find your paper. The abstract should aim to address the following questions.

What is the research question and global challenge being addressed?
What approaches were taken to address the problem or question?
What key data and results were obtained?
What conclusions can be drawn from the results?
What are the broader implications for the study with respect to environmental sustainability?

Example Environmental Significance Statements

Below are some examples of Environmental Significance Statements which may help to guide you when preparing your submission:

Microbial vesicle-mediated communication: convergence to understand interactions within and between domains of life

Cells secrete extracellular vesicles (EVs), nanoscale biological packages that contain complex mixtures of molecular cargo. The multiple roles of microbial EVs include their function as carriers for molecular messengers that facilitate interspecies communication and have been studied extensively in mammalian systems. For environmental systems, however, the prevalence, characteristics, and functions of these biological particles are only now being revealed. Here, we argue that the study of microbial EVs in the environment requires biochemical insights from studies of donor and receiving organisms as well as knowledge of soft colloid mobility and interactions with other components of the environment. Such questions of EV function, transport, and environmental impact can be addressed best by harnessing theories and methodologies developed by the biological, colloid, and geochemical sciences.

Responsible science, engineering and education for water resource recovery and circularity

Water resource recovery is central to circular economy frameworks. Resource recovery and circularity concepts need inception into the engineer's daily vocabulary during university education. Novel higher education efforts require curriculum design in environmental engineering. University–utility–industry partnerships foster applied training and theory integration. Platforms need to be developed to bridge science, engineering, and education.

Antiviral-nanoparticle interactions and reactions

The emergence of novel pathogenic viruses is a grand challenge of our time that is generally unheeded due to the low pandemic frequency. During a pandemic event such as the present, viral research rapidly permeates into all areas of science and engineering and broad collaborative efforts are made to gain a better understanding of the challenge and to evaluate all potential solutions. A virus can be considered an evolving nanobiomachine, thus the environmental nanoscience community has an opportunity to boldly contribute to progress in areas such as virus fate, transport, and detection and antiviral nanotechnology. This paper through the review of antiviral nanomaterials attempts to support and invigorate this research progress.

Optimising air quality co-benefits in a hydrogen economy: a case for hydrogen-specific standards for NOx emissions

New more demanding hydrogen-specific NOx emissions standards are required for a range of appliance sectors to ensure that low carbon infrastructure associated with the adoption of hydrogen also delivers a step-change in air quality. Placing hydrogen power within existing air quality regulatory frameworks (for example for Ecodesign Directive or EURO vehicle standards) may see NOx emissions, efficiency and cost optimised in a way that leads to hydrogen appliances matching current fossil fuel emissions performance, but potentially not improving on them. This would be a major missed opportunity to further reduce NOx emissions and improve air quality as a co-benefit of net zero commitments and low carbon investment.

Introduction

This should describe clearly and briefly, with relevant references, both the nature of the problem under investigation and its background. This section should begin with a general introduction to the field(s) of investigation, followed by a discussion of the specific research question or problem being investigated. The current investigation should be set into context against the existing literature, and the novelty and importance to environmental science discussed.

We encourage the citation of primary research over review articles, where appropriate, in order to give credit to those who first reported a finding.

Methods

Descriptions of methods and/or experiments should be given in detail sufficient to enable experienced experimental workers to repeat them. Please see our Experimental reporting requirements and data sharing page for further information.

• We encourage making all data associated with a manuscript freely available in a public repository in an accessible, usable format.
• Standard techniques and methods used throughout the work should be stated at the beginning of the section.
• Any unusual or significant hazards associated with any experimental procedures or equipment should be clearly identified.
• Please refer to our Human & Animal Welfare policy for any studies using live animals or human subjects.

In general there is no need to report unsuccessful experiments. Authors are encouraged to make use of Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI) for lengthy sections.

Results and discussion

It is usual for the results to be presented first, followed by a discussion of their significance. Only the most relevant results should be presented in the text; figures, tables, charts and graphs should be used for purposes of clarity and brevity. Data must not be reproduced in more than one form - for example, in both figures and tables, without good reason.

The discussion should explain the meaning of your results and their importance to environmental science. Any claims should be supported by the results. State the impact of your results compared with recent work and relate it back to the research question you posed in your Introduction.

Conclusion

This is for interpretation and to highlight the novelty and significance of the work. Authors are encouraged to discuss the real world relevance of the work reported. The conclusions should not summarise information already present in the text or abstract.

Acknowledgements

Contributors other than co-authors may be acknowledged in a separate paragraph at the end of the paper; acknowledgements should be as brief as possible.

All sources of funding should be declared. For more information on how to acknowledge your funder, refer to our author guidelines.

Be aware that your institution may have certain requirements or mandates for open access publication – see our guidance for information relevant to your region.

Bibliographic references and notes

The bibliography should be formatted in Vancouver (number) style, see Endnote style files. Please do not use Harvard style for references.For Zotero, please use the Royal Society of Chemistry (with titles) template.

Bibliographic details should be cited in the order: year, volume, page, and must include the article title. The names and initials of all authors should always be given in the reference; they must not be replaced by the phrase et al. For example:

Katherine R. Martin, Nicole M. Robey, Shirley Ma, Leanne C. Powers, Andrew Heyes, Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin, William J. Cooper, Timothy G. Townsend and Michael Gonsior, Characterization of landfill leachate molecular composition using ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol., 2021, 7, 1250-1266.

We encourage the citation of primary research over review articles, where appropriate, in order to give credit to those who first reported a finding. Find out more about our commitments to the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Copies of any unpublished material referenced in your article should be provided to the editor and should only be referenced with the permission of those who completed the work.

More details can be found under "Bibliographic references & notes” here.

Journal covers

Authors who wish to have their artwork featured on a journal cover should contact the editorial office of the journal to which the article is being submitted. A contribution to the additional production costs will be requested.

If chosen for a cover:

• Your cover will illustrate the online contents page of the journal issue
• The image will appear on all PDFs of your article – anyone downloading it will see your work
• We will promote your article on social media to boost its visibility
• We will also send you high quality prints of the cover, and a digital version for you to use in presentations and your own promotion.

Use of such artwork is at the editor's discretion; the editor's decision is final. Examples of previous journal covers can be viewed via the journal homepage.