Effects of Science on Environment

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 criteria.

Novelty and insight
Quality of scientific work and content
Carity of objectives and aims of the work
Appropriateness of length to content of new science

is not an archive for large data sets - such papers are not within the scope of the journal. Papers reporting local studies are also not acceptable; all papers should provide insights that go beyond those of the original local interest.

All reported measurements should have their uncertainties and limitations clearly stated. It should be emphasised that it is mandatory to justify and/or reference all claims regarding health impairments or toxic consequences.

Referees of papers submitted to the journal are also asked to comment on the appropriateness of any optimization and/or experimental design procedures used and the correctness of any statistical procedures applied for the evaluation of results. Descriptions of methods should be supported by experimental results showing accuracy, precision, sensitivity and selectivity.

If the paper presents analytical results, these should be qualified by inclusion of quality control data, including certified reference materials where appropriate, spike recoveries, blanks and other relevant information for validation of the presented results.

Referees also give consideration to whether the length of an article is commensurate with its interest to the scientific community. Papers that do not give due consideration to any/all of these topics may be rejected.

Perspectives

These may be articles providing a personal view of part of one discipline associated with 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.

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.

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.

Comments/Replies

Comments are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions normally concerning material published in the journal.

Submitted Comments will normally be forwarded to the authors of the work being discussed, and these authors will be given the opportunity to submit a Reply for publication together with the Comment.

For publication of a Comment or Reply, they must be judged to be scientifically significant and of interest to the readership.

Comments should not be a personal attack on an individual or group of individuals and will undergo the usual peer review process. Comments will not normally exceed a length of one printed journal page. Publication will take place only when all parties have had an opportunity to respond appropriately.