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About

Aims and scope

Environmental Evidence publishes objective scientific evidence to inform policy and practice by publishing evidence syntheses (including meta-analyses) relevant to environmental management. The journal is managed by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) and facilitates rapid publication of rigorous evidence syntheses, in the form of Systematic Reviews, Rapid Reviews and Systematic Maps, conducted to CEE Guidelines and Standards. Our scope covers all forms of environmental management interventions and human impacts on the environment, and therefore spans the natural and social sciences. Subjects include Climate change, water security, agriculture, food security, forestry, fisheries, natural resource management, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, pollution, invasive species, environmental impacts on human wellbeing, sustainable energy use, soil management, environmental legislation and environmental education. 

Environmental management is now a mainstream political activity with major resources being committed to growing challenges related to climate change, natural resource management, ecosystem services and human wellbeing. Despite the large and rapidly increasing amounts of primary environmental research, the potential of the data to address questions of concern to policy makers and managers has not been fully realised. CEE promotes and facilitates the conduct and use of evidence syntheses and seeks to make evidence more accessible to all through open access publishing of papers on all aspects of evidence-based environmental management. To this end we also publish the following paper types.

Objective use of scientific evidence to inform policy or practice is a major aim and to that end the Journal also publishes methodology papers and encourages submissions that promise advances in the field of evidence synthesis, including methodological contributions to advance co-design processes used in syntheses, communication of findings or evidence uptake.

Discussion of wider issues surrounding the production of evidence syntheses and use of research evidence in decision making are welcome in the form of commentary articles.

Research articles are welcome that are empirical natural or social science studies that examine various aspects of evidence generation, systhesis, use and impact. 

Evidence in Action articles should involve a discussion on the impact of evidence-based practice on environmental managers, of evidence synthesis on policy making, or a discussion of developments at the science-policy interface.

Proposals for Special Series of papers on a specific theme are welcomed and you should contact the Editor-in-Chief at an early stage.

Open access

All articles published by Environmental Evidence are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Environmental Evidence you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Environmental Evidence therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1990.00/$2590.00/€2190.00 for each article accepted for publication, plus VAT or local taxes where applicable. A proportion of these fees goes to the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence to help fund the work of the charity in providing free support services for authors of evidence syntheses (see www.environmentalevidence.org).

If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

BMC provides a free open access funding support service to help authors discover and apply for article processing charge funding. Visit our OA funding and policy support page to view our list of research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs, and to learn more about our email support service.

For more information on APCs please see our Journal Pricing FAQs

Indexing services

All articles published in Environmental Evidence are included in:

  • DOAJ
  • Scopus
  • Science Citation Index Expanded

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink. We are working closely with relevant indexing services including PubMed Central and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Environmental Evidence will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Environmental Evidence operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Environmental Evidence should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Citing articles in Environmental Evidence

Articles in Environmental Evidence should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Environ Evid [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Domedarius WE, Bactrician BU, Boson IB, Taurustic ME: The role of livestock in human identity and family naming practices. Environ Evid 2009, 1:115.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Environmental Evidence's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Environmental Evidence offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Environmental Evidence gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Environmental Evidence are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Environmental Evidence’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Environmental Evidence may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Environmental Evidence. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Environmental Evidence you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.

Official journal of

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    3.3 - 2-year Impact Factor
    5.1 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.084 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.967 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    11 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    148 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage
    729,126 downloads
    582 Altmetric mentions