About Environmental Science and Ecotechnology

Environmental Science and Ecotechnology

Environmental Science and Ecotechnology (ESE) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal publishing original research on environmental science and engineering, ecotechnology and relevant fields. Launched in 2020, it is published by Elsevier and co-organised by the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences in Beijing, supervised by the China Association for Science and Technology. Its online ISSN is 2666-4984, publicised by Elsevier on ScienceDirect and through KeAi. In a few years since its launch, ESE has moved from a new Chinese-organised title to an internationally indexed journal — covered by Scopus from 2020 and, as recorded in the commissioning brief for this profile, indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and PubMed Central as well — publishing work on pollution and its control, ecological engineering, environmental health and green technology.

The pairing in its title is the journal's programme. Environmental science identifies and explains environmental problems; ecotechnology — ecological technology — designs interventions that work with ecological processes rather than only against them. ESE was founded to publish both together, as a platform where the diagnosis of pollution and the engineering of remedies appear in the same journal.

Launch in 2020 and founding purpose

The preface to the inaugural issue of Environmental Science & Ecotechnology, written by Geping Qu of the China Environmental Protection Foundation and published online on 21 December 2019 ahead of the January 2020 first issue, announced that the international journal, co-organised by the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, was launched in 2020. ESE, the preface said, aimed to cover cutting-edge environmental science and ecotechnology research in a timely fashion, and was positioned to build an influential and professional exchange platform for the global scientific community. Qu framed the launch as an important step in building an ecological civilisation, achieving green and sustainable development, and fulfilling commitments to global environmental improvement, arguing that protecting the environment could no longer rest on legislation and moral imperatives alone but required vigorous development of environmental science and ecotechnology.

The journal's early publication pattern shows a title built to grow quickly: ScienceDirect lists volumes 1 to 4 in its first year, 2020, and volumes running into the high twenties and beyond by 2026. Its Editor-in-Chief is Professor Nan-Qi Ren of Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the three co-organising institutions, whose own research field is environmental engineering — a leadership choice consistent with the journal's emphasis on technology and engineering alongside basic environmental science.

Organisers, publisher and supervision

ESE's governance structure is stated in the same form on its ScienceDirect and KeAi pages: it is published by Elsevier, co-organised by the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, and supervised by the China Association for Science and Technology. Copyright is recorded to the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, with publication by Elsevier B.V.

Each organiser contributes a different kind of authority. The Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, based in Beijing, is a national environmental research academy, giving the journal a direct link to the institution charged with environmental scientific research in China. The Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences is the professional society for the field, and Harbin Institute of Technology is a leading engineering university with a major environmental engineering school. Publishing through Elsevier places the journal on ScienceDirect, the platform through which most of its international readers encounter it, while KeAi — Elsevier's publishing partnership in China — also presents the journal in its catalogue. For directory purposes the journal's Beijing connection runs through the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences as co-organiser, as stated in the commissioning brief and in the journal's own organisational description.

Aims: a platform across science, engineering and policy

The journal's stated aims and scope describe ESE as an international peer-reviewed and open access journal publishing original research on environmental science and engineering, ecotechnology and relevant fields. It aims, in its own words, to establish an influential communication platform for scientists and engineers, policymakers, stakeholders and professionals from academia and industry. It acknowledges the interdisciplinary nature of scientific research in environmental science and technology, and says it is specifically interested in frontier research and transdisciplinary topics, including global change ecology, environmental science, environmental technology and ecological technology.

That audience list is worth noting. Many environmental journals write for researchers alone; ESE explicitly includes policymakers, stakeholders and industry professionals among its intended readers. Its article types reflect the same breadth: its guide for authors provides for original research articles and for commentary articles, which may discuss issues of particular significance to the field, highlight significant papers in the journal or elsewhere, or present opinions and responses to previously published items. The journal also accepts research led by more than one corresponding author, in recognition of the cross-disciplinary and cross-regional character of much environmental work.

Pollution, control and remediation

Pollution research and its control form a central part of the journal's content. Environmental pollution — of air, water and soil — remains the most immediate form of environmental harm, and understanding it requires work on sources, transport, transformation, exposure and effect. ESE publishes research on pollutants and on the technologies that remove or neutralise them, including the remediation of contaminated environments, wastewater treatment, soil decontamination and air quality improvement. Its published research illustrates the contemporary frontier of that field: recent articles listed by the journal and its platforms include work on quorum sensing for carbon-neutral wastewater treatment, on micropollutant removal using engineered material systems, on bacteria–phage interactions driving the removal of the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole, and on phase-change photothermal materials enabling continuous desalination of hypersaline brine.

Emerging contaminants are a characteristic concern. Where classical pollution control dealt with a known list of substances, current research confronts microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and other micropollutants whose effects are still being established — including, in one striking recent ESE article, microplastics accumulating in human bile. Publishing such work places the journal at the point where pollution science meets public health, a connection explored further below.

Ecotechnology and ecological engineering

The second half of the journal's title covers the design side: ecotechnology and ecological engineering, in which ecological processes are used, enhanced or imitated to solve environmental problems. Constructed wetlands, ecological treatment systems, resource recovery from waste streams, and nature-based approaches to water and land management all belong to this tradition. ESE's special issue activity shows how the theme is developed in practice: collections have addressed resource recovery for a more sustainable water cycle, and aquatic ecotechnology — understanding and advancing sustainable ecosystem solutions. Resource recovery is a revealing example of the ecotechnology outlook: wastewater ceases to be only a pollutant stream to be treated and becomes a source of water, energy and materials to be recovered, changing both the engineering and the economics of treatment.

Green technology more broadly — cleaner production, carbon reduction, and technologies for a circular use of resources — also falls within the journal's remit. A recent article on China's post-2030 transition pathway toward greenhouse gas neutrality, and another on how global data–water arrangements can reduce the carbon and water footprint of artificial intelligence infrastructure, show the journal publishing at the scale of national policy and global industry as well as at the scale of the treatment plant and the wetland.

Environmental health

Environmental health — the effects of environmental conditions on human health — is a third strand named in the journal's commissioning description and visible in its content. Pollution harms ecosystems and people through connected pathways: contaminants move through air, water, food and soil into human bodies. Research that traces those pathways, from the environmental behaviour of a pollutant to its biological effect, requires exactly the combination of environmental science, toxicology, medicine and engineering that an interdisciplinary journal can provide. The microplastics research noted above, examining accumulation in human bile and effects at the cellular level, is an example of an ESE article that begins as environmental science and ends as a health finding. For readers, this strand makes the journal relevant beyond environmental engineering, to public health researchers and regulators assessing the human cost of pollution.

Frontier and transdisciplinary topics

ESE says it is specifically interested in frontier and transdisciplinary topics, and its recent special issues and articles demonstrate what that means in practice. One collection addresses innovative environmental solutions toward green and sustainable artificial intelligence — an acknowledgement that digital infrastructure is now itself an environmental question, in energy, water and materials. Work on the carbon and water footprint of AI infrastructure, noted above, belongs to the same emerging area. Global change ecology, another named interest, connects the journal's pollution and technology content to climate change: how ecosystems respond to warming and altered cycles, and how environmental technology can contribute to mitigation and adaptation, including carbon-neutral treatment processes.

This openness to new problem areas is a deliberate strategy for a young journal. Rather than competing only on the established core of environmental science, ESE has sought topics — AI's environmental footprint, carbon-neutral wastewater treatment, contaminant effects in the human body — where a fast-growing literature needs a home and where Chinese research groups, its founding constituency, are particularly active.

Open access, charges and indexing

ESE is an open access journal: authors who publish in it make their work immediately, permanently and freely accessible. ScienceDirect's journal insights list an article publishing charge of USD 2,600, excluding taxes, for the journal; authors should check the current figure on the journal's official pages before submitting, as charges are revised over time. The journal's editorial office can be contacted about open access publishing, and its guide for authors on ScienceDirect sets out article types and preparation requirements.

Indexing has been secured quickly for a journal launched in 2020. Scopus coverage is recorded from 2020, the journal's first year, and the commissioning brief for this profile records indexing in the Science Citation Index Expanded, PubMed Central and Scopus. PubMed Central presence is consistent with the journal's environmental health content, making its health-relevant articles discoverable to biomedical readers and freely archived. Together, the three services cover the journal's three audiences: environmental scientists and engineers through Scopus and SCIE, and health researchers through PubMed Central.

Place in environmental publishing

Environmental science has many established journals, several of them also organised from Beijing or published in partnership with Chinese institutions. Environmental Science and Ecotechnology distinguishes itself by its founding combination: a national environmental research academy, a national professional society and a leading engineering university as co-organisers; Elsevier publication; an explicitly technological as well as scientific title; and a stated ambition to serve policymakers and industry alongside academics. Launched in 2020 with a preface invoking ecological civilisation and green development, it is a product of the period in which China moved from being primarily a subject of environmental research to being one of its largest producers and organisers.

For directory purposes, ESE should be recorded as an English-language, open access journal, online ISSN 2666-4984, published by Elsevier, co-organised in Beijing by the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences with its partners, launched in 2020 and edited by Professor Nan-Qi Ren of Harbin Institute of Technology — a journal of pollution and its control, ecological engineering, environmental health and green technology, aimed at the frontier where environmental science becomes environmental solution.