Environmental Development

The Transdisciplinary Journal of SCOPE

Environmental Development is a transdisciplinary, future-oriented journal focused on research and practices that contribute to globally relevant environment and development issues at local and regional scales.

The immense task of reversing deteriorating environmental trends attributable to unsustainable development practices requires globally relevant solutions at the local and regional scale. Strategies to address the impediments to sustainable development include mitigation of climate change, adaptation to its impacts, and innovative responses to the problems of over-consumption or failures to manage the negative impacts of economic activities.

Environmental Development provides a channel for theoretical knowledge contributions and empirical, practice-based applications addressing issues related to the environmental dimension of sustainable development. Environmental Development is interested in bold and innovative research applications, methods and practices that balance the need for development with the long term needs of society and the natural environment. The journal seeks to provide a platform for scientific and experiential knowledge exchange among researchers, development practitioners, policy professionals, and communities working at the interface of research and society. With its interest in research and practices that contribute to globally relevant environment and development issues at local and regional scales, the journal offers an international forum for research, communication, discussion and global action on environmental development.

Environmental Development publishes research that strengthens the collaboration between the developed and developing world and links environmental research to broader issues of economic and social-cultural development. Environmental Development serves as a reference resource for information and learning from established and emerging researchers, strengthening the connections among fundamental research, policy development and applications in environmental management. Environmental Development is open to a broad range of disciplines and authors. The journal welcomes contributions from a younger generation of researchers, and papers expanding the trans- and interdisciplinary frontiers of the environmentally relevant sciences.

All submissions to Environmental Development are reviewed using the criteria of quality, originality, precision and coherence, clarity of exposition, and the importance of the topic and insights, in accordance with the Journal's aims and scope. New insights and approaches to environmental development that contribute to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are welcomed. The long-term implications for society and the natural environment are of deep and abiding interest.

Each submission should be accompanied by a covering letter to the editor (see instructions to authors). In addition, the letter should:

address the societal and scientific relevance of the manuscript in the context of environmental development, i.e. explain how the submission aligns with the aims and scope.

explain why the submission can be considered trans- or interdisciplinary, and

clarify how the local or regional issue is scalable, globally applicable and/or has policy, management or practical relevance.

Submissions to the journal may be rejected based on an internal review by the Editors-in-Chief under the general category, "out-of-scope" if they fail to satisfy one or more of the above set of criteria. Other reasons why this may occur include:

The submission is exclusively (bio)technical without a case-based application or thorough consideration of policy or practice implications.

The submission is an (nominally environmental) econometric analysis.

The methods in literature review submissions are inadequately described.

Data sources are not clearly documented and/or are uncited.

Research involving human subjects has not demonstrably adhered to ethical standards (see instructions to authors).

The grammar and spelling do not meet academic standards.

The submission is insufficiently novel or innovative.

The following categories of submission are invited (see guide for authors) : Original research papers, original reviews of literature, perspective articles and letters to the Editor.

The journal will consider hosting special issues with guest editors or an organised series of papers on a focused area of research. However, assessment of applications for these will be based on the quality and fit of an existing set of abstracts (or papers), or a pre-determined set of author contributions. Arrangements to publish a Special Issue may be negotiated with the organisers of a planned event, conference or workshop aligned with the scope of Environmental Development. Speculative proposals for special issues will not be considered. For more information, and to submit a proposed Special Issue please complete this Application form and submit it to the Commissioning Editor. Since the total number of annual submissions to the journal continues to grow rapidly, we will not be able to provide detailed explanations of reasons for desk rejection of individual submissions. Once a manuscript has been accepted for peer review, we will do our utmost to expedite the review process and inform authors of the outcome as quickly as possible.