About Environmental Research Communications
Scope
Environmental Research Communications™ (ERC) is a high-quality, open access journal covering all branches of environmental research.
ERC welcomes submissions from all domains of the Earth’s system, including atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere as well as interdisciplinary studies between these. All environment-related research aimed at both disciplinary-specific and broad, multidisciplinary areas, and both global and regional, national, or even local studies (like case studies) are within the scope. All types of results can be published, provided they contribute to advancing knowledge in their field, including negative results, null results and replication studies.
The journal does not make a subjective assessment on the potential future significance and impact of a paper, instead it provides a platform for rapidly communicating research that meets high standards of scientific validity and rigour and contributes to the development of our knowledge of the environment.
All environment-related research is in scope, including interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary studies. Areas of interest within this broad and inclusive scope include (but are not limited to):
- Agriculture and food
- Atmospheric science
- Biodiversity and conservation
- Biogeochemistry
- Built environment
- Climate science
- Ecology
- Energy
- Environmental behaviour & psychology
- Environmental chemistry
- Environmental engineering & technology
- Environmental health
- Hydrology and water
- Natural resources and ecosystem services
- Ocean sciences
- Policy, socioeconomics, and law
- Pollution
- Solid earth sciences
- Waste treatment & disposal
Find out about some of the benefits and publishing services available to ERC authors.
Why publish in Environmental Research Communications?
- Broad scope: the journal scope extends across all areas of environmental science providing a home for disciplinary research within an interdisciplinary journal.
- Inclusive peer-review policy: no subjective assessment is made on the potential future significance or perceived novelty of your paper. Instead, we rigorously assess papers based on the validity of the research, the scientific methodology used, and to ensure all papers meet high ethical standards.
- High standards: ERC operates a transparent editorial selection and feedback process focused on scientific validity and rigour. Articles will be peer reviewed by IOP Publishing’s global network of expert reviewers.
- Fast publication: we are committed to providing you with a fast, professional service to ensure rapid first decision, acceptance and publication. Once accepted, your article will be accessible to readers within 24 hours, and will include a citable DOI.
- Open access: your paper will be published under a CC BY licence enabling immediate and perpetual access, and permitting the widest possible dissemination and reuse of your research, but only with clear attribution to you as the copyright owner.
- Transfer opportunities: as well as accepting direct submissions, the journal also offers you a quick and easy solution to transfer your manuscript from another IOP Publishing journal if it does not fit that journal’s scope or significance criteria. Articles are transferred along with peer review reports to save time and avoid duplication of work for reviewers.
- International Editorial Board: scientific leadership for ERC is provided by a Senior Advisory Panel of prominent researchers from across the full breadth of environmental research. A large and international Editorial Board of emerging leaders, with a broad scientific and geographical distribution, directly supports the peer review process.
- Society owned: IOP Publishing is a leading society publisher of advanced physics research. Any profits generated by IOP Publishing are invested in the Institute of Physics, helping to support research, education and outreach around the world.
Inclusive publishing and trusted science
As a society-owned publisher with a legacy of serving scientific communities, we are committed to offering a home to all scientifically valid and rigorously reviewed research. In doing so, we aim to accelerate the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the advancement of scholarly communications to benefit all.
Environmental Research Communications supports this mission and actively demonstrates our core values of inclusive publishing and trusted science:- Inclusive publishing: We welcome all papers on the basis of scientific validity and a strong methodology. Our scope is inclusive of many types of research including interdisciplinary, null and negative results, and replication studies.
- Trusted Science: Peer review is the backbone to trustworthy scientific scholarly communications. Our internal peer review process assesses all papers with strict scientific and ethical standards.
Article types
Environmental Research Communications welcomes submissions of the following article types:
- Letters: concise articles which communicate original research material. These are short and brief, and therefore often useful for scientists with results that are time sensitive and may encourage further research in the field.
- Technical Notes: brief articles focused on a new or established technique, method, protocol, procedure, software tool, or computational method that makes a valuable addition to the literature with wider environmental significance. These should describe important modifications or unique applications for the described method.
- Research Papers: reports of high-quality original research performed with high scientific rigour making a positive contribution to the field of research.
- Topical Reviews: articles presenting a snapshot of recent progress in a particular field.
Peer review
The following summary describes the peer review process for Environmental Research Communications, using the ANSI/NISO Standard Terminology for Peer Review:
- Identity transparency: single-anonymous, double-anonymous (author choice)
- Reviewer interacts with: Editor
- Review information published: review reports (author and reviewer opt in), author/editor communication, reviewer identities (reviewer opt in)
Our Publishing Support website provides more information on our reviewing process as well as checklists in both English and Chinese language to help authors prepare their manuscripts for submission.
If an article is not accepted for publication, we may offer the author the opportunity to transfer their submission to other suitable journals we publish.
Inclusivity and diversity
IOP Publishing recognises that there are inequalities within the scientific publishing and research ecosystems. We are committed to a progressive approach to inclusivity and diversity, and are working hard to eliminate discrimination to foster an equitable and welcoming publishing environment for all.
IOP Publishing follows Guidelines on Inclusive Language and Images in Scholarly Communication to ensure that journal articles use bias-free and culturally sensitive communication. We ask authors to please follow these guidelines in their manuscript submissions.
More information about our work on inclusivity is available on our Open Physics hub.
Ethics
Research data
Please note that this policy requires authors to include a data availability statement in their article.
For any questions about the policy please contact the journal.
Many research funders now require authors to make all data related to their research available in an online repository. Please refer to the policy for further information about research data, data repositories and data citation.
Open access
For more information on IOP Publishing’s open access policies please see our Open access page.
Publication charges
| GBP | EUR | USD | |
| Article publication charge* | £1400 | €1590 | $1895 |
| Reduced article publication charge* for Group B countries** | £500 | €575 | $675 |
| Reduced article publication charge for Group A countries** | £0 | €0 | $0 |
*excluding VAT where applicable
**eligibility criteria can be found here
APCs only apply to articles accepted for publication; there are no submission charges.
There are no other charges for publishing in Environmental Research Communications.
Transformative Agreements
Environmental Research Communications is included in our transformative agreements which allow authors from some institutions to publish open access without paying an APC.Find out if you’re covered by an agreement
If you are covered by an agreement, use our author guide to help you submit your paper.
Countries where we have transformative agreements include:
Austria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Germany, Poland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.
Paying for open access
Various discounts, waivers and funding arrangements are available to support our authors. Visit our Paying for open access page for further details.
Abstracting and Indexing services
We work with our authors to help make their work as easy to discover as possible. Environmental Research Communications is currently included in the following abstracting and discovery services:
- Baidu Scholar
- CAB Abstracts
- CNKI
- DOAJ
- GEOBASE
- GeoRef
- Inspec
- J-Gate
- JST
- MyScienceWork
- NASA Astrophysics Data System
- Naver Academic
- ProQuest; Central, Environmental Science Collection, Environmental Science Database, Natural Science Collection, SciTech Premium Collection
- R Discovery
- Scilit
- Scite
- Scopus
- Semantic Scholar
- Wanfang Data
- Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded, Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, Current Contents Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences, Essential Science Indicators)
- x-mol