RSC Sustainability

What would you like to know about this journal?

For an open, green and inclusive future

How can sustainable chemistry make a difference?

You and your research have the power to make the world a better place. If you’re looking into developing new sustainable technologies, or finding cleaner chemical solutions, then we want to hear from you. RSC Sustainability is a dedicated forum for your quality discoveries, offering a space for research to grow and make an impact around the globe.

As an inclusive and interdisciplinary journal, RSC Sustainability welcomes research from all subject areas that are dedicated to solving sustainability challenges for a better, greener future. It also complements the Royal Society of Chemistry’s premier sustainability journal, Green Chemistry.

Submissions

Submissions are initially assessed and taken through peer-review by our high-profile, internationally-recognised Associate Editors. RSC Sustainability offers single-anonymised peer review, and a minimum of two reviewer reports are required.

See who's on the team

Meet RSC Sustainability's Editor-in-Chief and board members.

Featured Articles

Peer review and editorial process

All articles published in RSC Sustainability are subject to external peer review by anonymised experts in the field and all manuscripts submitted are handled by a team of internationally recognised Associate Editors, who are all practicing scientists in the field.

The peer review for all articles submitted to the journal consists of the following stages:

1. Your manuscript is initially assessed by an associate editor to determine its suitability for peer review
2. If the manuscript passes the initial assessment process, the associate editor solicits recommendations from at least two anonymous reviewers who are experts in the field. They will provide a report along with their recommendation
3. The associate editor handling your manuscript makes a decision based on the reviewer reports received. In the event that no clear decision can be made, another reviewer will be consulted

RSC Sustainability is committed to a rigorous peer review process and expert editorial oversight for all published content. Please refer to our processes and policies for full details including our appeals procedure.

Publication frequency

Articles accepted for publication in RSC Sustainability are published online with citeable DOIs as Advance Articles after they are edited and typeset. Articles are then assigned page numbers and published in an issue. As of July 2023 and following high levels of community interest, issues of RSC Sustainability are published monthly. The journal will publish a total of 9 issues in 2023, with 12 issues in 2024 and future years. Please find our most recent issue here.

Transparent peer review policy

To support increased transparency, we offer authors the option of transparent peer review, where the editor’s decision letter, reviewers’ comments and authors’ response for all versions of the manuscript will be published alongside the article under an Open Access Creative Commons licence (CC-BY). Reviewers are anonymous unless they choose to sign their report.

Find out more about our transparent peer review policy.

Ethical Requirements

RSC Sustainability authors, editors, reviewers and published works are required to uphold the Royal Society of Chemistry’s ethical standards. The Royal Society of Chemistry is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and our ethical standards follow COPE’s core practices and best practice guidelines. In cases where these guidelines are breached or appear to be so, the Royal Society of Chemistry will consult with COPE guidelines, and act accordingly.

When a study involves the use of live animals or human subjects, authors must include in the 'methods/experimental' section of the manuscript a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the author’s institute’s policy on animal use and ethics; where possible, details of compliance with national or international laws or guidelines should be included. The statement must name the institutional/local ethics committee which has approved the study; where possible, the approval or case number should be provided. A statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects is required. Reviewers may be asked to comment specifically on any cases in which concerns arise.

For further guidance on author responsibilities and code of conduct, which apply to RSC Sustainability and to all manuscripts submitted to Royal Society of Chemistry journals, please visit our author hub.

Themed collections

RSC Sustainability publishes a number of themed collections every year on timely and important topics, guest edited by members of the energy science community.

All submissions to our themed collections will undergo an initial assessment by the journal Editors and subsequent peer review as per the usual standards of RSC journals.

See previous themed collections. 

Open access

RSC Sustainability is a gold open access journal.

There are no submission charges for RSC Sustainability, and no article processing charges until mid-2025. As part of the submission process, authors will be asked to agree to the RSC Sustainability open access terms & conditions.

We offer RSC Sustainability authors a choice of two Creative Commons licences: CC BY or CC BY NC. Publication under these licences means that authors retain the copyright of their article, but users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Read our open access statement for further information.

All published articles are deposited with LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Portico and the British Library for archiving.

Dive into the benefits of open access publishing

Find out more about open access publishing routes

Explore Royal Society of Chemistry open access journals

Read our Researchers’ voice report in response to Plan S

Author guidelines

General author guidelines

For general guidance on preparing an article please visit our Prepare your article page, the content of which is relevant to all our journals. 

To learn more about the Royal Society of Chemistry's policies and processes, including licensing, peer review and formatting, please refer to our Resources for authors page.

Sustainability Spotlight Statement

All submitted manuscripts must include a Sustainability Spotlight Statement (120 words maximum) that should categorically state the sustainable advance of the work and how it aligns with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This statement should be different from the abstract and set the work in a broader context regarding sustainability. It should aim to answer the following questions.

• What is the situation and why is it important to address/understand this?
• What is the sustainable advancement of the work?
• Which UN SDG(s) does the work align with?

Please find examples in our recent publications and here: Clark et al., RSC Sustain. 2023, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/D2SU0001F

This statement will be seen by the reviewers and will help ascertain the relevance of the article for a broad but technical audience and authors should use it to show that they have given serious consideration to problems that are sustainable in nature. If the paper is accepted this statement will also be published. Manuscripts cannot be reviewed without this statement

Other

All papers must be written so as to be widely accessible (conceptually) to a broad audience of chemists and technologists as well as, for example, final-year undergraduates.

It is the responsibility of authors to provide fully convincing evidence for the homogeneity, purity and identity of all compounds they claim as new. This evidence is required to establish that the properties and constants reported are those of the compound with the new structure claimed. Referees will assess, as a whole, the evidence presented in support of the claims made by the authors.

Subscription information

RSC Sustainability is fully gold open access – articles can be downloaded free from the website with no barriers to access.

Online only: ISSN 2753-8125

Copyright

Copyright is retained by authors when an open access licence is accepted, as with our standard licence to publish agreement. Full and accurate attribution to the original author is required for any re-use of the work. Find out more about copyright, licences and re-use permission.

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