Instructions for Authors
Before Submission
Make sure your manuscript fits the journal's Aims and Scope.
Manuscripts should be prepared in .doc or .docx format. Please follow the word limit described in the Article Types section listed below. Please consider to use the journal template file provided here (Download Manuscript Template).
Please use clear, unambiguous, technically and grammatically correct English throughout the manuscript.
Manuscripts should be submitted via the online editorial management system.
Article Types
The following article types are accepted for submission to this journal (all must be original and can not have been published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, either fully or partially):
Article — A paper contains original research results that has not been published elsewhere. The work should report scientifically sound experiments and provide a substantial amount of new information. Articles should have a maximum word count of 12,000 (not including title, abstract, and references list), may contain no more than 15 Figures, Schemes/Tables, and should include the most recent and relevant references in the field. Articles should have the following structure: (1) Abstract and Keywords, (2) Introduction, (3) Materials and Methods, (4) Results, (5) Discussion and (6) Conclusions (optional).
Review — A paper comprehensively sums up the current state of research on a particular topic. Reviews should be critical and constructive and provide recommendations for future research. No unpublished material (unpublished/original data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communications) should be presented. Reviews should have a maximum word count of 12,000 (not including title, abstract, and references list) and may contain no more than 15 Figures, Schemes/Tables. Reviews should have the following structure: (1) Abstract and Keywords, (2) Introduction, (3) Subsections relevant for the subject, (4) Discussion, (5) Conclusions and (6) Future Directions.
Systematic Review — A paper presents a synthesis of previous research, and uses clearly defined methods to identify, categorise, analyse and report aggregated evidence on a specific topic. No unpublished material (unpublished/original data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communications) should be presented. Systematic Reviews should have a maximum word count of 12,000 (not including title, abstract, and references list) and may contain no more than 15 Figures, Schemes/Tables. Systematic Reviews should have the following structure: (1) Abstract and Keywords, (2) Introduction, (3) Methods (including study design, participants, interventions, comparators, systematic review protocol, search strategy, data sources, study sections and data extraction, and data analysis), (4) Results (including a flow diagram of the studies retrieved for the review, study selection and characteristics, synthesized findings, and assessment of risk of bias), (5) Discussion (including summary of main findings and limitations) and (6) Conclusions.
In addition to the main article types mentioned above, Case Report, Short Note, Commentary, and Book Review may also be accepted for publication. It is advisable to consult with the journal's editorial office for guidance before submitting articles falling into these categories. Editorial papers are typically published by the journal's editorial team or by invited authors.
Language
All submitted manuscripts must meet the international English language standards in order to be considered for publication. Both British and American spellings are accepted, as long as one spelling is used consistently throughout the text. To facilitate proper peer-review of your manuscript, it is essential that it is submitted in grammatically correct English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to ensure the grammatical correctness of their paper prior to submission. Papers with serious deficiencies in English may be rejected without peer-review.
It is the author's responsibility to guarantee that the English language is flawless. Therefore, all authors must have their accepted manuscripts proofread by a proficient/native English speaker before we proceed to copy-editing. Authors may choose an independent professional English editing service or consult with a proficient/native English-speaking colleague. In case extensive English editing is required by reviewers/editors, authors must provide the editorial office with a certificate or a written statement confirming that the language has been proofread by a proficient/native English speaker.
Manuscript Preparation
Cover Letter
Cover letter should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief, an editorial board member who has relevant expertise to handle the submitted manuscript, or the invited Guest Editors for submissions going to Special Issues/Topic Collections. Enter your cover letter into the online editorial management system or upload a single PDF containing the full cover letter. The length limit is one page. The cover letter should include the following information:
Relate the study to previously published work;
Highlight the contribution of the present work to the scientific literature;
Confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or have been published in another journal.
Title
The title of your manuscript should be clear, specific and appealing. It should be concise and no more than 20 words and accurately describe the work. Avoid acronyms, abbreviations and jargon in the title. When gene or protein names are included, the abbreviated name rather than full name should be used.
Author List and Affiliations
Those who are listed as authors should meet the ICMJE Authorship criteria. All the authors' full first given and family names must be provided. Middle name initial(s) can be added. Affiliations: complete address information including Department, University, or Organizational Affiliation, City, postcode, State/Province (if applicable), and Country/Region. At least one author should be designated as corresponding author. All authors are encouraged to provide their 16-digit ORCID (e.g., 0000-0001-2345-6789) to be included in the final published paper to distinguish them from other researchers. ORCIDs can be added into the online editorial management system during manuscript submission, or at final proofreading stage when paper is accepted for publication.
When submitting the manuscript, all the authors in the manuscript file should also be added into the editorial management system.
Abstract
The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum, one paragraph length. The abstract must be concise, self-contained, and complete enough to appear separately in abstract publications. For a research paper, briefly state the problem or the purpose of the research, indicate the theoretical or experimental plan used, summarise the principal findings, and point out major conclusions. Do not supplement or evaluate the conclusions in the abstract.
Do not cite references, Figures, Schemes, Tables, or Sections of the paper in the abstract. Do not include equations, schemes, or structures that require display on a line separate from the text. Use abbreviations and acronyms only when necessary. Define abbreviations at first use in the abstract (and again at first use in the text).
Keywords
Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.
Introduction
The introduction should provide a concise and appropriate context for the study, namely, the nature of the problem and its significance of being carried out. It should state the specific purpose of, or the hypothesis being tested by, the work. Authors should review the state-of-the-art research in the field and cite only those directly pertinent references. Finally, include a brief description of the main objective and conclusions of the work.
Materials and Methods
Materials and methods should be given in sufficient detail so that interested readers can reproduce the work and obtain comparable results. Describe the procedures used in detail. Cite well-established and standard methods properly and give only the details needed. In case computer software is used, the name and version of the software should be presented clearly, including whether the relevant program code is available.
Results
Present your results in logical sequence in the text, Figures, Schemes, and Tables. The results should be concise and precise, in which the most important findings should be summarised or emphasised.
Discussion
Authors should highlight the main findings as well as the limitations of the work, compare the results with the recent studies in the field, and relate the results to the original working hypotheses. The logical implications of the results should be briefly discussed. Mention future research or applications when warranted.
Results and Discussion can be combined as one section.
Conclusions
Authors can put the interpretation into the context of the original problem, and summarise the main points in this section. This section is not mandatory.
Funding
All funding resources should be identified and clarified. Please clearly indicate the financial support for the conduct of the research and/or the cover of the publication costs. If funding received, please state the following wording: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors."
Data Availability
Authors of peer-reviewed articles should state any data associated with an article whenever possible, i.e., where data supporting the results reported in a published article can be found, including hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. In situations where no new data have been created or analysed, such as a review, please state the following wording: "No new data were created or analysed in this work. Data sharing is not applicable to this article."
Details of data sharing policies can be found at Data and Materials Availability.
Supplementary Materials
Authors may submit supplementary files to be made available alongside their article. The supplementary files will be available to the reviewers during the peer-review process.
Supplementary material is available online only on the article's webpage (it is not published in the final PDF of the article). Supplementary files are not copy-edited nor proofread by the editorial office, and it is the authors' responsibility to guarantee the scientific accuracy of these files.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledge anyone who contributed substantially to the work but do not meet the authorship criteria. Do not include their titles.
Do not include funding sources in the Acknowledgements. Funding information should only be listed separately in the Funding section.
Author Contributions
Each author should contribute substantially to the work. For research articles with several authors, please include an authorship statement specifying their individual contribution. Authors are recommended to refer to the CRediT roles: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing.
The CRediT 14 Contributor Roles
Conceptualization:
Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Data curation:
Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
Formal analysis:
Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesize study data.
Funding acquisition:
Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation:
Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
Methodology:
Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
Project administration:
Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Resources:
Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Software:
Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Supervision:
Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Validation:
Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Visualization:
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
Writing – original draft:
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing – review & editing:
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.
Conflicts of Interest
Authors must disclose and declare any personal, professional or financial conflicts of interest that may inappropriately influence the research work. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, please state the following wording: "The authors have no conflict of interest to declare."
References
The manuscript should have both in‐text citations and a final reference list. For every in‐text citation, there should be a full citation in the reference list and vice versa. In the reference list, the names of the first six authors (followed by et al. if more than six authors) should be provided. The DOI (when available) should be placed at the end of each reference.
With numerical reference citations, start with "1" and number consecutively throughout the paper, including references in text and those in Figures, Schemes, Tables, and other non-text components. If a reference is repeated, do not give it a new number; use the original reference number. In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1,2,3] or [1,3]. Do not use superscript text to indicate citations. Authors must ensure that the in-text citations are in numerical format for their accepted manuscripts. Accepted manuscripts may be subject to an additional copy-editing cost when there are over 30 references and the in-text citations are not in numerical format.
References list shall follow the following style (as of Volume 1, Issue 4), depending on the type of work (provide as much detail as possible if the type of reference is not one of the following, or refer to the APA Style for references):
Journal Article
Surname, A. A., Surname, B. B., & Surname, C. C. (Year). Title of the article. Journal Full Title, Volume(Issue), firstpage–lastpage. https://doi.org/xxxxx (when available)
Book with Authors
Surname, A. A., & Surname, B. B. (Year). Book Title (3rd ed., Vol. 1). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx (when available)
Book with Editors
Surname, A. A., & Surname, B. B. (Eds.). (Year). Book Title (3rd ed., Vol. 1). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx (when available)
Book Chapter
Surname, A. A., & Surname, B. B. (Year). Title of the chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Book Title (3rd ed., Vol. 1, pp. firstpage–lastpage). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx (when available)
Unpublished Work
Surname, A. A., & Surname, B. B. (Year of the draft written). Title of Unpublished Work. Status (Unpublished manuscript; Manuscript in preparation; Manuscript submitted for publication).
Accepted Work
Surname, A. A., & Surname, B. B. (in press). Title of Accepted Work. Journal Full Title.
Conference Paper
Surname, A. A., Surname, B. B., & Surname, C. C. (Day–Day Month Year). Title of Presentation. Name of Conference, City, Country/Region. https://doi.org/xxxxx (when available)
Conference Proceedings as Journal
Surname, A. A., Surname, B. B., & Surname, C. C. (Year). Title of Presentation. Journal Full Title, Volume(Issue), firstpage–lastpage. https://doi.org/xxxxx (when available)
Conference Proceedings as Book
Surname, A. A., Surname, B. B., & Surname, C. C. (Year). Title of Presentation. In A. A. Editor, B. B. Editor, & C. C. Editor (Eds.), Book Title (pp. firstpage–lastpage). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx (when available)
Unpublished Thesis/Dissertation
Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of Thesis [Level of Thesis]. Degree-Granting University.
Published Thesis/Dissertation
Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of Thesis [Level of Thesis, Degree-Granting University]. Name of Repository. Website URL (accessed Day Month Year).
Newspaper Article
Surname, A. A., Surname, B. B., & Surname, C. C. (Day Month Year). Title of Newspaper Article. Newspaper Title. Website URL (accessed Day Month Year).
Website
Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of Site. Website Title. Website URL (accessed Day Month Year).
Appendix
Appendix should be placed at the end of the manuscript (right below the References section). There can be more than one appendix. Each appendix must be labelled with a letter (A, B, C, etc.).
If appendices include Figures, Schemes, or Tables, treat them as they would be treated in the main text. Exception to the Figures/Schemes/Tables numbering rule: add the letter of the appendix (A, B, C, etc.) to the figure or table number (e.g., Figure A1, Table A1 would be the first figure and table in Appendix A, respectively).
Figures, Schemes, and Tables
All the Figures and Schemes must have a resolution of at least 300 dpi at final size. Check the resolution of your figure by enlarging it to 300%. If the image appears blurry, jagged or has a stair-stepped effect, the resolution is too low. Authors are encouraged to prepare Figures and Schemes in colour (RGB at 8-bit per channel). The final publications will be produced using serif fonts, while sans-serif fonts are preferred in the Images/Schemes.
The JPEG, TIF, EPS, SVG, and PDF formats are preferred. Please keep in mind that in most cases, directly saving a figure as an image file (JPEG, TIF) or simply taking a screenshot could greatly affect the resolution, and may also increase the image file size a lot. In order to avoid this, authors are encouraged to export the original editable image files as PDFs, and send the PDF image files to the editorial office. The editorial team will further process the images.
Figures, Schemes, and Tables must be mentioned in the text and in numerical order, an explanatory title and caption must be added. All Figures, Schemes and Tables should be inserted into the main text close to and after their first citation, and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, Table 1, etc.). Figure panels are referred to by bold letters in brackets (either capital or lowercase should be consistently used throughout the entire manuscript), e.g., (A), (B), (C) or (a), (b), (c).
It is the author's responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright owner to reproduce Figures, Schemes, and Tables that have been published elsewhere. Figures, Schemes, and Tables without such evidence are assumed to originate from the author.
Acronyms/Abbreviations/Initialisms
Acronyms/Abbreviations/Initialisms should be defined (written in brackets) the first time they appear in the abstract, the main text, and the first Figure or Table, e.g., United Nations (UN).
SI Units
International System of Units should be used.
Equations
The Microsoft Word built-in equation editor should be used to write equations when preparing the manuscript. All the definitions, symbols, and the variables related to equations in the main text should also be written using the equation editor.
Suggesting Reviewers
Authors should suggest at least three potential reviewers for their manuscript during submission. Suggested reviewers should have appropriate expertise to review the manuscript, and should not have any conflicts of interest with respect to the authors or the manuscript. Please consider diversity attributes when suggesting reviewers, e.g., gender, geographic location and career stage. There is no guarantee that the editors will have to necessarily approach these suggested reviewers.
Publication Ethics Statement
Manuscripts submitted to Highlights of Sustainability will undergo rigorous peer-review by external independent experts in the field. At Highlights of Science, we uphold the responsibility to ensure the highest standards of publication ethics. All parties involved in the publishing activities, including authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher, must adhere to ethical standards outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Any instances of plagiarism, such as copying without acknowledgement, paraphrasing, or inaccurate citation, will not be tolerated.
Editorial and Peer-Review Process
Pre-check
1. Journal Editorial Office Assessment
The in-house editorial staff will make a first assessment of the manuscript submitted and check whether it has been properly prepared following the journal Instructions for Authors and meets the standards of the journal. Manuscripts that are not properly prepared or do not meet the standards of the journal will be rejected before peer-review.
2. Academic Editor Assessment
An academic editor (the Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board or invited guest editors) will be invited to check whether the manuscript is scientifically sound, and whether it fits the aims and scope of the journal and the Special Issue/Topic Collection (for submissions going to Special Issues/Topic Collections). If not, the manuscript will be rejected immediately before peer review.
Peer Review
Manuscripts submitted to Highlights of Sustainability will be sent to at least two external reviewers for peer review. The journal applies a single-blind peer-review process for all the manuscripts, meaning reviewers know the identity of the authors, but authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript.
Authors and reviewers are given the choice to participate in Open Peer Review. In such cases, authors can choose to publish all the review reports and their corresponding responses to the review comments alongside their manuscript. In any cases, the reviewers' identities remain confidential during the peer review process unless they choose to sign their reviews, in which case, their identities will be disclosed after the final publication of the manuscript they reviewed.
Authors and reviewers are encouraged to embrace Open Peer Review, which offers several benefits. Firstly, it allows readers to gain insight into the reviewers' perspectives and the issues they raised, as well as the authors' responses to those concerns. Secondly, publishing signed reviews not only acknowledges the valuable contributions of peer reviewers but also promotes transparency and credibility in the peer-review process.
Editorial Decision and Revision
Once enough review reports are collected, the in-house editorial staff will communicate with the academic editors to make a decision, which will be one of the following:
Accept — The manuscript is considered of high quality and can be published in its current form and requires no further corrections.
Minor Revision — The manuscript has a very good chance of being accepted for publication after revision.
Major Revision — The manuscript has a chance of being accepted but would depend on the revisions. Note that apart from exceptional circumstances, a maximum of one round of major revision is
allowed per manuscript.
Reject and Encourage Resubmission — If very substantial changes are requested that are too significant to warrant a revision of the article in its current form, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors are encouraged to re-submit the paper once it has been substantially rewritten.
Reject — The manuscript has major flaws that could not be resolved by revision and resubmission.
When the decision is major/minor revision, authors are usually requested to revise their manuscript based on reviewers' comments and/or the academic editor's recommendations within a given deadline. When resubmitting the revised manuscript, authors need to provide point-by-point responses to reviewers' and/or academic editor's comments with a detailed explanation of how the manuscript has been revised. The revised version will be returned to the reviewers and the academic editor for further comments, unless the reviewers have chosen not to see the revised version.
Author Appeals
Authors may submit a formal appeal for rejections by sending an email to the journal's editorial office. The appeal must provide a detailed justification and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or academic editor's comments. The journal's editorial office will forward the appeal together with the manuscript and previous reviews to a designated academic editor (members of the editorial board) for consideration. Any recommendation/decision by the academic editor on the manuscript will be finally validated and approved by the Editor-in-Chief. An approved rejection decision on the appeal will be final and cannot be reversed.
Production and Publication
Once peer review is completed and the editor is satisfied that any concerns raised by the reviewers have been suitably addressed, an "Acceptance" decision may be made. The accepted manuscripts without language issues will undergo professional copy-editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and publication on the website. All the published papers will have an assigned DOI number.
In case extensive English editing is required by reviewers/editors, authors must have their manuscripts edited by a professional editing service or a proficient/native English speaker, and a certificate/statement must be provided to the editorial office. The journal's editorial office will proceed to the copy-editing stage only after receiving the language-edited version and the certificate/statement.
The editorial office may request additional information/tables/figures from the author(s), depending on the content of the submitted manuscript. This is to ensure that the paper is comprehensive and meets all publication requirements.
Tables
Tables should be in an editable format for ease of updating if necessary. Complex tables can be submitted as a separate Excel file.
When presenting tables with chemical structures, the native ChemDraw files (.cdx) should be supplied separately.
Figures
Bitmap images (BMP, GIF, GIMP, JPG, PNG, TIFF) should be directly saved/scanned in at least 300 dpi resolution at the maximum size that they could be used. Avoid artificially enhancing the resolution in image editing software like Photoshop, as this does not enhance image quality; instead, retain the best available resolution of the source files.
Vector files (AI, EPS, SVG, PDF) are highly recommended for production (especially for graphs, charts, schematics or other line art), as they allow for high-quality images to be generated without loss of resolution. All line art, graphs, charts and schematics should be saved/exported directly from the original application and file in which they were generated. When creating vector files, it's crucial to ensure that all elements, such as text, data, lines, and colours, are editable, enabling the production team to make any necessary adjustments with ease. When working with PowerPoint for illustrations, the original .ppt(x) file should be provided, ensuring that all its contents, including text, graphics, and layout elements, are fully editable.
Chemical structures should be produced using software like ChemDraw or a similar program, and the editable .cdx file should be provided.
When preparing figures, it's recommended to use sans-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica for standard text labelling and Symbol font for Greek characters.
Ensure that all images not created by the author(s) are properly sourced. Highlights of Science cannot publish any copyrighted third-party images without obtaining the necessary permissions. When using images found online, verify that they are released under a public domain license that permits their publication.
Sharing and Promoting Your Work
Sharing and promoting your work is an important part of research. It fosters the exchange of scientific information in your field and allows your paper to contribute to wider scientific progress. In addition, bringing your research and accomplishments to the attention of a broader audience makes you more visible in your field. This can help you get more citations, enabling you to cultivate a stronger reputation, promote your research, and move forward in your career.
Highlights of Science allows authors to post the submitted, accepted, or published version of their manuscripts on preprint servers, personal websites, institutional repositories, or share them via various social media platforms. Authors are also encouraged to present their published papers at relevant conferences and share them among colleagues. Highlights of Science also maintains its presence on LinkedIn and YouTube. Authors are invited to create short summaries and/or video presentations of their published papers to be shared on the Highlights of Science LinkedIn page and YouTube channel.
Please refer to the Highlights of Science Editorial Process and Publication Ethics and Policies for more information.
Journal Menu
Journal Contact
Highlights of Sustainability
Editorial Office
Highlights of Science
Avenida Madrid, 189-195, 3-3
08014 Barcelona, Spain
08014 Barcelona, Spain
Cathy Wang
Managing Editor
