About Manufacturing Science & Sustainability

Manufacturing Science & Sustainability

Manufacturing Science & Sustainability (MSS) is an English-language, open-access journal published in Beijing by KeAi Communications, with publishing services by Elsevier, that aims to establish an international academic platform focused on the deep integration of manufacturing science and sustainable development goals. The journal is dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary research that connects manufacturing science with artificial intelligence, energy science, materials science, environmental science and systems science. By advancing research in manufacturing science for human sustainable development, it seeks to provide theoretical foundations and technological support for the sustainable development of global manufacturing — in short, to treat how things are made and whether that making can endure as a single research problem.

MSS arrives as manufacturing faces simultaneous pressures: decarbonisation of energy-intensive processes, the shift to electrified production, circular use of materials, and the spread of artificial intelligence through design, production and supply chains. The journal's answer is structural. Rather than publishing manufacturing research and sustainability research in separate venues, it defines twelve scope areas that bind the two together, and it staffs its editorial leadership from both sides of the divide — mechanical and manufacturing engineering on one side, industrial ecology, life-cycle assessment and sustainable systems on the other. It is published through KeAi, the Beijing-based joint venture cofounded by China Science Publishing & Media and Elsevier, repurposed in 2013 as an open-access publishing service provider and now home to more than 280 scholarly journals.

Aims: Manufacturing Science Meets Sustainable Development

The journal's aims statement is unusually explicit about interdisciplinarity. MSS does not define itself by a single process or industry; it defines itself by a junction — manufacturing science on one side, the sustainable development goals on the other — and by the fields it intends to connect: artificial intelligence, energy science, materials science, environmental science and systems science. Original research articles, reviews and perspectives are all welcomed. The practical meaning of that framing is that a paper on, for example, the energy demand of a machining process, the remanufacturing of a component, or the environmental, social and governance management of a supply chain can each be in scope here, provided the work speaks to both manufacturing and sustainability rather than to either alone.

The Twelve Scope Areas: Assessment, Design and Processes

The first four of the twelve scope areas concern how sustainable manufacturing is judged and how products and processes are made. Sustainability Assessment and Eco-Design covers the measurement of environmental and broader sustainability performance and the design of products with that performance in mind. Sustainable Manufacturing Process Technology covers the processes themselves — how machining, forming, joining and related operations can be made cleaner and more resource-efficient. Additive Manufacturing for Sustainability addresses 3D printing and related layer-by-layer technologies specifically in their sustainability aspect, from material efficiency to distributed production. Sustainable Materials, the seventh area, completes this cluster: the development and selection of materials whose production and use reduce environmental burden across the life cycle.

Energy, Circularity and Green Equipment

A second cluster of scope areas deals with energy and material flows. Green Power Chain and Transmission Systems addresses the drivetrains and transmission technologies through which power reaches machines and vehicles. Energy Efficiency, Electrification and Decarbonization addresses the reduction of energy use and carbon emissions in manufacturing, including the shift from fossil-fuelled to electric processes. Green Energy Equipment covers the machinery of the energy transition itself. Circular Economy & Remanufacturing — the eighth area — covers keeping products and materials in use: reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling systems that return end-of-life products to the factory rather than to landfill. Together these areas reflect the journal's premise that factories are simultaneously energy systems and material systems, and must be studied as both.

Intelligence, People and Supply Chains

The remaining scope areas bring in computation, people and organisation. AI for Sustainable Manufacturing covers the application of artificial intelligence and data-driven methods to production — optimisation, monitoring and decision-making in the service of sustainability. Human-centric Manufacturing for Sustainability places workers and human factors at the centre, in line with the "Industry 5.0" idea that automation should augment rather than merely replace people. HealthCare Manufacturing for Sustainability extends the journal's reach to the manufacture of medical and healthcare products. Finally, Supply Chain Sustainability and ESG Management addresses the networks beyond the factory gate: sourcing, logistics, supplier practices and the environmental, social and governance frameworks by which companies now report and are judged.

Editors-in-Chief and Executive Leadership

MSS is led by two Editors-in-Chief: Shuxin Wang of Chongqing University in China, and Hongchao Zhang of Texas Tech University in the United States — a pairing that joins a major Chinese engineering university with an American scholar long associated with environmentally conscious manufacturing and life-cycle research. The Executive Editor-in-Chief is Huajun Cao of Chongqing University, who also appears among the executive editors. The advisory board adds senior figures from both manufacturing and sustainability: Xuedong Chen of China National Machinery Industry Corporation; Huiling Duan of Peking University; Xiang Gao of Dalian University of Technology; Zuoren Nie of Beijing University of Technology; Shilong Wang and Fei Liu of Chongqing University; Bernard Hon of the University of Liverpool; Dimitris Mourtzis of the University of Patras in Greece; Steve Evans of the University of Cambridge; Sami Kara of the University of New South Wales in Australia; Duc Truong Pham of the University of Birmingham; Sang Gook Kim of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Zushu Li of the University of Warwick.

Executive Editors, Board and Early-Career Board

The executive editor team is large and international, including Ang Liu of the University of New South Wales; Zhifeng Liu of Hefei University of Technology; Ning He of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Paulo Jorge Da Silva Bartolo of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; Bo Song of Huazhong University of Science and Technology; Sheng Li of Wright State University in the United States; Paul Mativenga of the University of Manchester; George Q. Huang and Pai Zheng of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Fei Tao of Beihang University; Jianhua Liu of Beijing Institute of Technology; Zhong You of the University of Oxford; Emel Aktas of Cranfield University; and Qinghua Zhu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The editorial board includes A. Senthil Kumar of the National University of Singapore, Baicun Wang of Zhejiang University and Paulo Davim of the University of Aveiro in Portugal. A separate Early Career Editorial Board — with members at Cranfield, Chongqing University, the State University of New York at Binghamton, California State University, Aston University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the University of Rome Tor Vergata — signals a deliberate investment in the next generation of sustainable-manufacturing researchers.

Article Types and Lengths

The journal's guide for authors specifies five article formats with precise limits. Full Length Articles report cutting-edge original research, from fundamental theory to practical application, structured with abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion and conclusions; they may not exceed 10,000 words, 20 figures and 4 tables, with abstracts limited to 500 words. Reviews present a complete overview of a topic's foundation, historical progression and state of the art with a comprehensive bibliography, up to 20,000 words with 300 references. Short Communications report timely findings for rapid dissemination, capped at 5,000 words with 15 references, no more than 5 figures and 1 table, and abstracts of 300 words or fewer, with fast-track review intended. Perspectives offer new viewpoints or hypotheses in approximately 1,000 to 1,500 words of main text, with up to 30 references and 4 display items. Editorials, by the editor or guest editors, are limited to 600 words.

Peer Review, Open Access and Charges

Peer review at MSS is single anonymized: editors first assess suitability, suitable manuscripts go to a minimum of two reviewers, and the editors' decision is final. Editors do not decide on their own papers or those of family, colleagues or interested parties, and submissions are screened automatically using iThenticate's CrossCheck for plagiarism and overlap; ORCiD identifiers are supported and encouraged. The journal is fully open access — all articles immediately and permanently free to read and download — under Creative Commons licensing, with CC BY permitting reuse including commercial use with credit, and CC BY-NC-ND permitting non-commercial, unmodified sharing. Distinctively, the guide for authors states that open access at this journal is free of article processing fees: there is no APC, so authors pay nothing to publish and readers pay nothing to read.

Readership and Place in the Field

Manufacturing Science & Sustainability is aimed at researchers and practitioners working on sustainable production in all its forms: process engineers reducing energy and waste, materials scientists developing greener inputs, designers practising eco-design, operations scholars modelling circular supply chains, and managers implementing ESG frameworks. Its Chongqing University editorial anchor, its trans-Pacific pair of Editors-in-Chief and its fee-free open-access model give it a distinctive profile among sustainable-manufacturing titles. For WorldNM readers, it is catalogued as a scholarly magazine published in Beijing, China, under the name recorded in its clean listing, Manufacturing Science & Sustainability, with its official home on the KeAi Publishing website, where its aims, twelve scope areas, editorial boards and guide for authors are maintained.