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Impact factor: n/a
Time to first decision (all decisions): 26.0 days**
Time to first decision (peer-reviewed only): 39.0 days***
Gold open access, APCs waived until mid-2025
Editor-in-chief: Tom Welton
Publication frequency: every two months
Indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Scopus
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.
Hear from our Editor-in-Chief
With UNEP’s decision the create a Science-Policy Interface for Chemicals and Waste in March 2022, the time is ripe for the creation of RSC Sustainability. I believe this new journal has the potential to become the first choice for the publication of solutions-focussed research that informs this SPI, and, beyond this, welcome all chemical science contributions to enable any of the Sustainable Development Goals
Tom Welton, Editor-in-Chief, RSC Sustainability
Scope
RSC Sustainability welcomes all solutions-focused research dedicated to solving sustainability challenges. This includes, but is not limited to, technologies to achieve responsible consumption and production of chemical products (UN’s SDG:12), such as for the efficient use of nature’s resources, the elimination of hazardous substances in the production and use of chemical products (sustainable and green chemistry), their reuse and recycling (circular economy) and methods to analyse these (techno-enviro-economics). Beyond this, RSC Sustainability champions chemical science discoveries that contribute to and enable any of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
As an inclusive journal, we celebrate multidisciplinary collaboration as well as traditional chemical science contributions. And we will look at work from the academic, industry, regulatory and government sectors. We publish novel and significant research, so we assess the quality, interest and potential impact of any submission to come our way. Research claims to the greater sustainability of chemical entities should be evidence-based and include the appropriate measurements of toxicity, environmental persistence etc.
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.
Editor-in-chief
Imperial College London, UK
Associate Editor
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Associate Editor
Peking University, China
Associate Editor
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Associate Editor
Institute of Carboquimica (ICB-CSIC), Spain
Associate Editor
University of Lisbon, Portugal
Associate Editor
Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China
Editorial Board Member
University of St Andrews
Editorial Board Member
Lubrizol, UK
Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, University of Bath, UK
Jothi Kothandaraman, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
Adam Lee, Griffith University, Australia
Hong Li, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Chen Liao, Argonne National Laboratory, USA
Shengzhong Liu, Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, China
Greta Patzke, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Peter Styring, The University of Sheffield, UK
Gyorgy Szekely, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
Luigi Vaccaro, University of Perugia, Italy
Sónia Ventura, University of Aveiro, Portugal
Charlotte Williams, University of Oxford, UK
Iris Yu, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Emma Eley, Executive Editor ORCID: 0000-0002-6379-8502
Demitra Ellina, Deputy Editor
Lucy Argyle, Editorial Production Manager
Alex Holiday, Editorial Assistant
Jamie Purcell, Assistant Editor
Alexander John, Assistant Editor
Emily Ellison, Assistant Editor
Jack Pitchers, Assistant Editor
Clare Fitzgerald, Assistant Editor
Lee Colwill, Publishing Assistant
Neil Hammond, Publisher, ORCID: 0000-0001-6390-8874
Featured Articles
Peer review and editorial process
All articles published in RSC Sustainability are subject to external peer review by 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:
Phase 1: Your manuscript is initially assessed by an associate editor to determine its suitability for peer review.
Phase 2: If the manuscript passes the initial assessment process, the associate editor solicits recommendations from at least two reviewers who are experts in the field. They will provide a report along with their recommendation.
Phase 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.
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
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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**The median time from submission to first decision including manuscripts rejected without peer review from the previous calendar year
***The median time from submission to first decision for peer-reviewed manuscripts from the previous calendar year