Environmental Science: Advances is an international and collaborative journal

Collaborations are becoming increasingly important for the environmental sciences. Environmental science doesn’t recognize boundaries, requiring interactions from researchers from different disciplines and different backgrounds to address research challenges. As an international journal, Environmental Science: Advances believes that international research enables us to publish and disseminate research findings to different populations, cultures, and regions. Collaborative research is the cornerstone for developing strong relationships and solving global challenges in the environmental sciences.

We are delighted to be sharing with you a selection of international and collaborative work published in the journal:

A baseline survey of potentially toxic elements in the soil of north-west Syria following a decade of conflict

Miassar Alhasan, Abdulkarim Lakmes, Mohammad Gazy Alobaidy, Safwan AlHaeek, Muhammed Assaf, Lorna Dawson, Duncan Pirrie, Ziad Abdeldayem and Jonathan Bridge

“Advanced materials” and the challenges on the horizon for testing their (eco)toxicity and assessing their hazard

Fazel Abdolahpur Monikh, Willie Peijnenburg, Agnes G. Oomen, Eugenia Valsami-Jones, Vicki Stone, Raine Kortet, Jarkko Akkanen, Peng Zhang, Jukka Kekäläinen, Alena Sevcu and Jussi V.K. Kukkonen

Application of neural network in metal adsorption using biomaterials (BMs): a review

Amrita Nighojkar, Karl Zimmermann, Mohamed Ateia, Benoit Barbeau, Madjid Mohseni, Satheesh Krishnamurthy, Fuhar Dixit and Balasubramanian Kandasubramanian

Factors affecting real-world applications of HEPA purifiers in improving indoor air quality

Scott D. Lowther, Wei Deng, Zheng Fang, Douglas Booker, J. Duncan Whyatt, Oliver Wild, Xinming Wang and Kevin C. Jones

There are many benefits to publishing with Environmental Science: Advances including:

• Free Gold Open Access publication – all article processing charges are waived until mid-2024
• Rapid times to publication – our average time to decision for peer-reviewed manuscripts is just 41 days†
• Flexible article types with no word count restrictions or colour charges
• Broad readership: our global audience provides maximum exposure for your work
• Publicity on Twitter and WeChat for featured articles

We would be delighted to hear from you if you are interested in submitting to the journal or if you would like any further information. If you are interested in publishing your next paper with us, please reply by return email so that we can send you an invited submission link.

World Water Day is about accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis. Water affects us all and everyone needs to take action. Environmental Science: Advances is committed to publishing research from any discipline related to the environmental sciences, including clean water and sanitation.

This World Water Day, read a collection of research on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Clean water and sanitation, published in Environmental Science: Advances.

Fluoride contamination, consequences and removal techniques in water: a review

Shaz Ahmad, Reena Singh, Tanvir Arfin and Krishna Neeti
Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2022,1, 620-661, DOI: 10.1039/D1VA00039J

Preparation of two kinds of membranes with reverse wettability from waste masks for continuous oil/water separation

Lianchao Ning, Yi Liu, Yang Luo, Yaxin Han, Longfei Zhang and Ming Zhang

Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2023,2, 473-483, DOI: 10.1039/D2VA00295G

Monitoring of phosphorus discharge in a sewage treatment plant with a phosphate automated analyzer

Adrian Cabo, Susana Gouveia, Claudio Cameselle and Keun-Heon Lee

Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2022,1, 483-490, DOI: 10.1039/D2VA00062H

Review of analytical techniques for arsenic detection and determination in drinking water

Abhijnan Bhat, Tony O Hara, Furong Tian and Baljit Singh

Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2023,2, 171-195, DOI: 10.1039/D2VA00218C

We hope you enjoy reading this collection of articles and if you want to contribute your work to our growing collection on SDG6: Clean water & sanitation, get in contact with our editorial office.

We’re delighted to share this fantastic infographic which explores the creation of a compostable bioleather with superior flame-retardance and low environmental impact. Their microbial nanocellulose leather has a significantly smaller carbon footprint than both synthetic leather and cotton, and marks a big step towards a circular materials economy. This paper was published in Issue 3 of Environmental Science: Advances. Read the entire open-access article here at:

‘Microbial nanocellulose biotextiles for a circular materials economy’ 

T. N. Schiros, H. H. Lu et al., Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2022,1, 276-284

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D2VA00050D

The Royal Society of Chemistry was proud to attend the 11^th National Conference on Environmental Chemistry, held in Harbin China, from the 25^th to the 29^th of July. The theme of this year’s conference was “Innovating Environmental Sciences, Low-Carbon Protecting Environment and Health” which fully reflected the interdisciplinary work presented.

At the conference more than 50 different branches of environmental science, including toxicology and health, remediation technology and environmental policy, met to present their work and participate in conference exhibitions.

RSC representatives at the National Conference on Environmental Chemistry hosted a booth and engaged with researchers and answered questions about our portfolio of hybrid and Gold Open Access environmental journals.

Dr. Guanqun Song presented a talk on “Publishing with the Royal Society of Chemistry” in a session chaired by Professor Defeng Xing (Advisory Board Member, Environmental Science Water Research & Technology). The audience were able to ask insightful questions that they might have about the peer review process and tips on how to publish in our journals.

In addition, RSC editorial board members were able to find time in between presentations for a lunch and catch up. This included board members from Environmental Science Advances (Editor in Chief Zongwei Cai, Associate Editor Liwu Zhang) and advisory board members from Environmental Science: Atmospheres, Environmental Science Water & Technology, Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts and Environmental Science: Nano.

If you attended the conference and still have questions about our journals that you would like answered, please feel free to reach out to the editorial office or find a home for your research in our environmental portfolio.

Urgent action is needed to combat the climate emergency and associated impacts – and across the world, our community are collaborating to address UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We have put together a collection of leading content on marine litter and microplastics from across our energy and environmental science journals. This diverse collection features work on the detection of microplastics in water, their fate and mitigation pathways– vital information that will help us to combat climate change and address SDG14.

Read on to discover this exciting collection, featuring:

Fluorogenic hyaluronan nanogels for detection of micro- and nanoplastics in water by Luca Prodi, Damiano Genovese et al. Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2022,9, 582-588

The fate of plastic in the ocean environment – a minireview by Helge Niemann et al. Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2021,23, 198-212

Microplastics in ecosystems: their implications and mitigation pathways by Manjusri Misra and Amar K. Mohanty et al .Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2022,1, 9-29

Join us in tackling the climate crisis

Contribute to our cross-journal collection showcasing research advancing UN SDGs

The principles of the UN SDGs align closely with our own – to help the chemical science community make the world a better place. So that we can achieve this, we are curating a cross-journal collection across our energy and environmental science journals.

This collection will cover studies which advance our understanding of the climate situation, and present new technologies & innovations to combat climate change – inclusive of environmental engineering, materials science, energy science disciplines and beyond.

We invite you to publish your next paper in this collection – quote ‘XXSDGN1422’ when submitting your manuscript. You can put your trust in both our rigorous peer review process and fast times to publication – which are less than 9 weeks after submission across all our journals.

If you have some exciting results to publish on these topics, we would be delighted to hear from you – we are also very happy to guide you on which RSC journal would be the most appropriate for your paper.

We are delighted to be sharing with you recent Advance Articles from Environmental Science: Advances.

Environmental Science: Advances is an interdisciplinary, gold open access journal that publishes advances in all areas related to environmental sustainability. The journal welcomes and celebrates research that contributes to our understanding of the environment, and to the advancement of several UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Read our recent Advance Articles now

We have recently accepted several papers across the full spectrum of environmental science, ranging from insights into coccolithophore electrochemistry to pollutant emissions and implications for policy. Read on to hear from one of our authors, Richard Compton, about their work.

Single-entity coccolithophore electrochemistry shows size is no guide to the degree of calcification

Richard Compton et al.

Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2022, Advance Article

DOI: 10.1039/D2VA00025C

Professor Richard Compton on the work: Marine phytoplankton play a crucial but largely unexplored role in the global carbon cycle sequestering in excess of 10¹⁵ g of CaCO₃ to the deep ocean each year. This is directly comparable to the flux of carbon dioxide released by mankind. Plankton in the ocean play at least as important a role as do trees on land in fixing carbon dioxide!

Data, essential for realistic climate models, on the calcium carbonate content of plankton populations has hitherto been limited to sampling followed by wet chemistry or crude estimates via 2-dimensional microscopy imaging.

Our paper shows how electrochemistry can be used to provide a high throughput single entity measurement of particulate inorganic carbon and reports that different coccolithophores, E.huxleyi, G.oceanica and C.baarudii have widely different CaCO₃ masses ranging over three orders of magnitude from 2.6 pg to 8.3 ng per plankton, and that surprisingly within a species the calcium carbonate content is NOT related to the cell size.

The implication is that the speciation of plankton populations must be monitored not simply their extent such as results from the commonly used satellite monitoring of plankton fluorescence.

The work, a collaboration between Oxford Chemistry and Earth Sciences, entitled Monitoring Ocean Ecosystems,  is supported by the Oxford Martin School (https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/programmes/ ) and is also addressing the use of electrochemistry for easy plankton speciation sensing. 

We hope you enjoy reading these articles – get future articles delivered straight to your inbox by signing up to E-alerts.