This guide for authors can help you carry out a final check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review.
Types of articles:
The Sustainable Earth Trends publishes original research and review articles.
Ensure that the following items have been present:
Cover letter:
In the cover letter, the corresponding author (one author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details: e-mail address and Full postal address) should confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal. In covering letter authors can suggest potential reviewers' names and addresses (affiliations and email addresses).
Click here to access the cover letter form.
Also, other forms required for submitting the article:
Authorship and Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form.
Manuscript structure:
The maximum number of words should be 10,000 and 12,000 words for original research and review articles, respectively. If MS Word is used to typeset the manuscript, use 11 pt. Times New Roman and format the manuscript in a single column. Include title, authors and their affiliations (Mandatory academic email for the corresponding author), abstract, keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, conclusion, acknowledgment, references, figures (include relevant captions), and tables (including titles, description, and footnotes). Ensure all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided. The manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'. All references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa.
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2,), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line.
Highlights:
Highlighting is mandatory for the Journal of Sustainable Earth Trends as it helps increase your article's discoverability through search engines. They include a short summary of important points that show the new results of your research and the new methods used during the header study. Highlights should be written in the "manuscript" before the abstract. Please use 3-5 bullet points for "highlights sentences" (up to 85 characters, including spaces, per point).
Abstract:
A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results, and major 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. Set the abstract as a single paragraph and use 10 pt Times New Roman. The minimum and maximum words for the abstract should be 150 and 250 words, respectively. Also, keywords should be written at the end of the abstract in the number of 3 to 5 words.
1. Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. Also, the introduction should be brief, useful, and clear, and the subsection should not be used. In the introduction's last paragraph, the research's purpose and innovation should be explained.
2. 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.
3. Results and discussion
Results should be clear and concise. 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.
4. Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section.
Tables:
Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Tables can be placed either next to the relevant text in the article, or on separate page(s) at the end. Number tables consecutively by their appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Please avoid using vertical rules and shading in table cells and use 8 pt Times New Roman for table captions.
Figures:
For printing, we need high-resolution photographs (300 dpi at published size) or line drawings at 600 dpi and use 8 pt Times New Roman for figure caption. Also, the figures should be written as Fig in the text and title of the figure (for example, Fig. 1).
Acknowledgments:
In this section, the source of financial grants and funding must be acknowledged. The contribution of institutions or colleagues should also be acknowledged. Personal thanks and thanks to anonymous reviewers are considered inappropriate. If there is no source of financial support, it should be stated that this article was not under any financial support.
References:
EndNote software can be used for easy referencing of articles. To do so, please first download SET (Sustainable Earth Trends) EndNote style here, and then copy the EndNote style file into the EndNote "Styles" folder on your computer, which should be accessible at Program Files [folder] > Endnote [folder] > Styles [folder]. And or, click on download for the SER style > open. The style file will open in EndNote. In EndNote go to File > Save As > remove the word copy > Save.
Citation in the Text:
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). The EndNote citation management software package can be used to ensure that your manuscript has the least mistakes in the citation when you write. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list, they should follow the standard reference style of the journal. They should include substituting the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal communication'. The citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication. Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references can be listed either first alphabetically, then chronologically, or vice versa.
Examples: 'as demonstrated (Nosrati, 2013a, 2013b; Surian and Rinaldi, 2003; Yazdi et al., 2013)
References list style:
References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.
Text: All citations in the text should refer to:
1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication,
2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication, and
3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by 'et al.' and the year of publication.
Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references can be listed either first alphabetically, then chronologically, or vice versa.
Please see some examples:
Reference to a journal article:
Nosrati, K., 2013. Assessing soil quality indicators under different land use and soil erosion using multivariate statistical techniques. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 185(4), 2895-2907.
Surian, N. & Rinaldi, M., 2003. Morphological response to river engineering and management in alluvial channels in Italy. Geomorphology, 50(4), 307-326.
Yazdi, M., Taheri, M., Navi, P. & Sadati, N., 2013. Landsat ETM+ imaging for mineral potential mapping: application to Avaj area, Qazvin, Iran. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 34(16), 5778-5795.
Reference to a conference proceeding:
Alidoust, S. & Sabetraftar, K., 2013. Environmental effects of removal of sand from the river bed (case study in Shiroud River). Third International Conference on Environmental Planning and Management, Tehran on December 5th (In Persian).
Reference to a book:
Leopold, L.B., Wolman, M.G. & Miller, J.P., 1995. Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology. Courier Corporation.522p.
Reference to a book chapter in an edited book:
Milani, A.S., 2018. Mangrove forests of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. In: Makowski, C. & Finkl, C.W(Eds.), Threats to Mangrove Forests: Hazards, Vulnerability, and Management. (pp. 53-75). Springer, Cham.
Reference to a website:
Cancer Research UK, 1975. Cancer statistics reports for the UK.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/aboutcancer/statistics/cancerstatsreport/ (accessed 13 March 2003).
Reference to a dataset:
[Dataset] Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., Nakashizuka, T., 2015. Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions. Mendeley Data, v1. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.
Reference to Thesis:
Walker, B., 2014. The Interaction of Aeolian and Fluvial Processes in Dry Washes on the Colorado Plateau, USA. M.Sc. Dissertation, Brigham Young University.
Eskandari Thani, M., 2014. Tehran Poverty in General, Challenges and Approaches to Deal with it Emphasis on the Development of Local Communities, Ph.D. Dissertation, Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran (In Persian).
Having an ORCID identifier is mandatory for all authors. You can register at https://orcid.org/register.