Before you submit to Sustainable Polymer & Energy (SPE), please go through the following information carefully.
1.1. Submission Checklist
Please:
1.2. Open Access, License and Copyright
Sustainable Polymer & Energy is a peer-reviewed, fully open access journal. All articles published with open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy, and distribute as defined by Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Copyright is retained by authors. More information
1.3. Article Charge Processing (APC)
There is no article processing charge (APC) for authors publishing in Sustainable Polymer & Energy before 31 December 2023. There are no additional charges based on color, length, figures, or other items.
2.1. Types of Article
Manuscripts submitted to Sustainable Polymer & Energy should neither be published previously nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are as follows:
Other article types often invited by Editors are also considered, such as Editorial, Perspective, Commentary, Opinion, Letter to Editor, and so on.
2.2. Article Structure
2.2.1. Title Page
Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
Author names and affiliations. Please clearly indicate the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author and check that all names are accurately spelled. You can add your name between parentheses in your own script behind the English transliteration. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. This responsibility includes answering any future queries about Methodology and Materials. Ensure that the e-mail address is given and that contact details are kept up to date by the corresponding author.
Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a "Present address" (or "Permanent address") may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Publication history. The submission date, revised date, and accepted date will be included in this part.
Abstract. A concise and structured abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the main methods or treatments applied, the principal results and major conclusions. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article and it must not contain results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself. A single paragraph of about 200 words maximum.
Keywords. provide a maximum of 8 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts.
Copyright. Authors retain copyright of their works through Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license that clearly states how readers can copy, distribute, and use their attributed research, free of charge. A declaration "©The Author(s) Year." will be added to each article.
2.2.2. Main text
Introduction. State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
Material and Methods. Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarized, and indicated by a reference. If quoting directly from a previously published method, use quotation marks and also cite the source. Any modifications to existing methods should also be described.
Results. Results should be clear and concise. Each Figure, Table, Scheme and supplementary information with a short and concise caption should be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Table 1, etc.).
Discussion. This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.
Conclusions. The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.2.2.3. Back Matter
Supplementary. This refers to the supporting information. It will be named as Figure S1: title; Table S1: title; Video S1: title, etc.
Appendices. If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.
Acknowledgments. In this section, you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments).
Author Contributions. For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used "Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; Methodology, X.X.; Software, X.X.; Validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; Formal Analysis, X.X.; Investigation, X.X.; Resources, X.X.; Data Curation, X.X.; Writing – Original Draft Preparation, X.X.; Writing – Review & Editing, X.X.; Visualization, X.X.; Supervision, X.X.; Project Administration, X.X.; Funding Acquisition, Y.Y.”, please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation.
Ethics Statement. Interventionary studies involving animals or humans, and other studies that require ethical approval, must list the authority that provided approval and the corresponding ethical approval code in this section. Please add “The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF INSTITUTE (protocol code XXX and date of approval).” OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans or animals.
Informed Consent Statement. Any research article describing a study involving humans should contain this statement. Please add “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.” OR “Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans.
Funding. All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]” and “The APC was funded by [XXX]” in this section. Check carefully that the details given are accurate and use the standard spelling of funding agency names at https://search.crossref.org/funding, any errors may affect your future funding.
Declaration of Competing Interest. All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. If there are no interests to declare, please use the sentence: “The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper”.
References. References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including citations in tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. In the text, reference numbers should be placed as [XX]. If there are 6 or less authors in one reference, please list all authors’ names in the Reference part. If there are more than 6 authors for one reference, please use “et al.” following the tenth author’s name.3.1. Research Involving Human Subjects
All studies involving human subjects must be in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. The author should ensure that the manuscript contains a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) have approved them. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed. Manuscripts with suspected ethical problems will be investigated according to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines.
If the work involves the case details or other personal information/images of patients and any other individuals, appropriate consents and permissions must be obtained. Written consents must be retained by the author and copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided.3.2. Research Involving Animals
All experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. The author should ensure that the manuscript must contains a statement that the experimental research on animals of the study has been approved by the relevant ethical committee and that the whole research process complies with ethical guidelines.
If a study is granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, the name of the ethics committee granting the exemption and the reason(s) for the exemption should be detailed. Editors will take account of animal welfare issues and reserve the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research.3.3. Research Involving Cell Lines
Authors must indicate the origin of any cell lines they used so that the research can be replicated. For established cell lines, the provenance should be stated and references must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. If the study includes de novo cell lines unpublished previously, appropriate approval from an institutional review board or equivalent ethical committee, and written informed consent from human origin, should be obtained. Such statements should be listed on the “Ethics Statement” section in the manuscript.
Further information is available from the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC). Sustainable Polymer & Energy recommends that authors may refer to the NCBI database for misidentification and contamination of human cell lines.3.4. Research Involving Plants
All experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. Field studies should be conducted in accordance with local legislation, and the manuscript should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions and/or licenses. The journal recommends that authors comply with the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
For each submitted manuscript, supporting genetic information and origin must be provided for plants that were used. For research manuscripts involving rare and non-model plants (other than, e.g., Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicotiana benthamiana, Oriza sativa, or many other typical model plants), voucher specimens must be deposited in a public herbarium or other public collections providing access to deposited materials.3.5. Publication Ethics Statement
Sustainable Polymer & Energy fully follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of Committee.
The Editors enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to guarantee to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The Editors take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with zero tolerance policy.
Authors who want to publish their papers in Sustainable Polymer & Energy must abide to the following:
Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are unacceptable:
Sustainable Polymer & Energy reserves the right to contact the authors' institution(s) to investigate possible research or publication misconduct if the Editors find conclusive evidence of misconduct before or after publication.
The whole processing of the manuscript can be referred in this Figure:
Academic Editor (AE) Check
After the submission steps completed, the paper will go through plagiarism check. Then it will be sent to Academic Editors for pre-check. The paper will be sent for peer-review after the initial check by editors.Peer Review
This journal operates a single anonymized review process. All contributions will be initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Academic Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of articles. The Academic Editor's decision is final.
Academic Editors are not involved in decisions about papers that they have written themselves or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the academic editor has an interest. Any such submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures, with peer review handled independently of the relevant editor and their research groups.Revision
Based on the review reports and the decision by Academic Editor, the decision (Minor Revision/ Major Revision) will be provided to the authors.
Final Decision
The Academic Editor will make an overall editorial decision based on the reviewers’ comments.
Production and Publication
Once accepted, the manuscript will go through the production procedure: copy-editing, English editing, proofreading, final corrections, conversion, and publication on the website.
Authorship should only be granted to those who have made substantial contributions to a published study that meet the four requirements outlined below:
All those who meet these criteria should be identified as authors. Authors must specify their contributions in the section “Authors Contributions” of their manuscripts. Contributors who do not meet all the four criteria (like only involved in acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group, general administrative support, writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, proofreading, etc.) should be acknowledged in the section “Acknowledgements” in the manuscript rather than being listed as authors.
If a large multiple-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be authors before the work starts and confirm authors before submission. All authors of the group named as authors must meet all the four criteria for authorship.5.1. Changes to Authorship
This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above.
After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Editorial Office staff do not interfere with editorial decisions to ensure the editorial independence.
Sustainable Polymer & Energy requires authors to disclose all sources of financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article at the back matter of their manuscript and in the cover letter. If there are no any conflicts of interest, authors need to state "The authors declare no conflicts of interest". We also recognize that some authors may be bound by confidentiality agreements, in which cases authors need to sate "The authors declare that they are bound by confidentiality agreements that prevent them from disclosing their competing interests in this work".
For more information on format and style, please contact with the Editorial Office of Sustainable Polymer & Energy.
Journal Contact
E-mail: spe@sciepublish.orgPublisher
Ms. Jenny Wang
