Journal of Cleaner Production: Scopus, Scope & Author Guide

Quick Answer: What Is Journal of Cleaner Production?

Journal of Cleaner Production is an Elsevier journal for international, transdisciplinary research on cleaner production, environmental issues and sustainability. Elsevier describes its purpose as helping societies become more sustainable and frames cleaner production around preventing waste while improving efficiency in the use of energy, water, resources and human capital.

It is a current Scopus-indexed journal with print ISSN 0959-6526, online ISSN 1879-1786 and Scopus Source ID 19167. It supports both subscription publication and optional open access. Researchers should consider it when the manuscript’s central contribution clearly connects to the journal’s cleaner-production and sustainability scope rather than using sustainability only as a broad background theme.

Before submitting, confirm the latest author guide, current metrics, APC, article type, required files, ethics declarations and whether recent papers show a genuine topic and methodological fit.

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Elsevier; journal platform: ScienceDirect.
• Identifiers: print ISSN 0959-6526; online ISSN 1879-1786; Scopus Source ID 19167.
• Scope: cleaner production, environmental research, sustainability research and practice, with prevention and resource-efficiency at the core.
• Current publisher metrics: Elsevier’s current Cleaner Production family page lists CiteScore 21.3 and Impact Factor 10.7.
• Peer review: single-anonymized; suitable manuscripts are typically sent to at least two independent expert reviewers.
• Article types: original articles, commissioned review articles, technical notes and letters to the editor.
• Open access: hybrid; the ScienceDirect journal page lists an OA APC of USD 4,620 excluding taxes, while subscription publication is listed with no publication fee.
• Preparation: original articles are normally 6,000–8,000 words, abstracts up to 250 words, 1–7 English keywords, and 3–5 highlights of up to 85 characters each.

Journal Information at a Glance

Metrics can change between reporting cycles. CiteScore, Impact Factor, SJR, SNIP and quartile should therefore be cited with a year or current-source context rather than treated as permanent journal attributes.

What This Page Covers

• Journal aims, scope and subject coverage
• Scopus and other verified indexing information
• Current metrics and how to interpret quartiles
• Article types and manuscript requirements
• Submission workflow and single-anonymized peer review
• Open-access options, APC and publication timeline indicators
• Publication ethics and generative-AI requirements
• Journal-fit checks, common mismatch risks and Contentxprtz publication-readiness support

Methodology and Sources

This profile prioritizes current authoritative sources: the official ScienceDirect journal page, the official Guide for Authors, Elsevier’s Cleaner Production journal-family page, the supplied Scopus Source ID, and institutional records for Scopus SJR/SNIP context where public Scopus details are not fully accessible. Fees, metrics, editors, indexing and policies remain changeable and should be reconfirmed immediately before submission.

Journal of Cleaner Production Aims and Scope

The journal’s stated mission is to provide an international, transdisciplinary forum for cleaner production, environmental and sustainability research and practice. Its cleaner-production framing is preventive: reducing waste at source while improving efficiency in energy, water, resources and human capital. It covers theoretical and practical sustainability problems in corporations, governments, educational institutions, regions and societies.

Officially highlighted areas include cleaner production and technical processes; sustainable development and sustainability; sustainable consumption; environmental and sustainability assessment; sustainable products and services; corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility; education for sustainable development; and governance, legislation and policy for sustainability.

Editorial interpretation matters. A manuscript can be technically strong yet still be a weak match if it reports a narrow process improvement without demonstrating a cleaner-production or sustainability contribution beyond the isolated case. The journal’s own Cleaner family description emphasizes prevention, life-cycle thinking, holistic and systematic thinking, and methodological approaches that extend beyond a single application.

Representative topics that may fit

• Cleaner manufacturing and process redesign
• Waste prevention, resource efficiency and industrial symbiosis
• Life-cycle assessment and life-cycle thinking
• Circular economy and resource loops
• Renewable energy and industrial decarbonization
• Sustainable supply chains and operations
• Sustainable products, services and business models
• Environmental performance and sustainability assessment
• Water, energy and material efficiency
• Pollution prevention and cleaner technologies
• Sustainable consumption and production systems
• Corporate sustainability and responsible management
• Environmental governance, regulation and policy
• Education for sustainable development
• Regional and societal transitions toward sustainability

These examples are guidance derived from the verified scope, not an exhaustive official topic list. Authors should compare their manuscript with recent Journal of Cleaner Production papers before concluding that a topic is in scope.

Scopus Indexing and Other Major Databases

Journal of Cleaner Production is indexed in Scopus. The source record supplied with this task identifies Scopus Source ID 19167. Elsevier’s journal insights page also lists Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), while the current Elsevier Cleaner Production family page states indexing in Scopus and related journal-metric services.

For a university, PhD program, promotion dossier or funding requirement, do not rely only on a webpage saying “Scopus indexed.” Open the current Scopus source profile, confirm active coverage, and check whether your institution requires a particular category, quartile, year, or database edition.

Current Journal Metrics and Quartile

Elsevier’s current Cleaner Production family page lists CiteScore 21.3 and Impact Factor 10.7. An institutional research-portal record reporting 2025 Scopus metrics lists SJR 2.019 and SNIP 2.040. Recent category records place the journal in Q1 across its major Scopus subject categories, but quartile should always be reported with the relevant category and year.

Metrics indicate citation visibility and category positioning; they do not by themselves establish whether the journal is the right intellectual audience for a particular manuscript.

Publisher and Editorial Leadership

Elsevier publishes Journal of Cleaner Production on ScienceDirect. The journal homepage currently names co-Editors-in-Chief including Cecília Maria Almeida, Maria Teresa Moreira and Yutao Wang, and provides a full editorial-board page. Editorial memberships change, so authors should use the live board page rather than reproducing a static list in a submission document.

The journal also sits within Elsevier’s Cleaner Production family of titles. A manuscript that is scientifically sound but more disciplinary or narrowly targeted may sometimes be offered transfer to a companion journal. A transfer is not acceptance; the receiving journal independently evaluates the manuscript.

Types of Articles Published

The official author guide lists the following contribution types:

The current guide states that Conference Reports and Book Reviews are no longer published. Authors should select the article type in the submission system only after checking that their manuscript matches the live definition.

Who Should Consider Submitting?

The journal may suit PhD researchers, faculty, interdisciplinary teams, sustainability professionals and applied researchers when the manuscript makes a substantial cleaner-production or sustainability contribution for the journal’s international readership. Academic status is not the deciding factor; research fit is.

Journal-fit checklist

• Does the main research question sit clearly within the journal’s stated cleaner-production, environmental or sustainability scope?
• Is prevention, efficiency, life-cycle thinking, systems thinking or sustainable development central to the contribution rather than added in the conclusion?
• Does the journal publish the proposed article type?
• Have recent issues published related questions, methods or application contexts?
• Is the contribution broader than one isolated local case, or does the case yield transferable theoretical, methodological or practical insight?
• Can the manuscript explain why Journal of Cleaner Production readers need this result?
• Can the authors meet the journal’s reporting, ethics, file and declaration requirements?
• Have institutional Scopus, quartile or Impact Factor requirements been checked using the current reporting cycle?

Manuscript and Submission Requirements

Elsevier’s author guide requires editable source files: Word submissions should use .doc/.docx and LaTeX submissions .tex; PDF is not accepted as the source file. Word files should use a single-column layout. The title page must include a concise title, author names, affiliations and corresponding-author information.

The abstract must be concise and factual and must not exceed 250 words. Authors must provide 1–7 English keywords. The journal also requires 3–5 highlights in a separate editable file, with each bullet no longer than 85 characters including spaces. A graphical abstract is encouraged rather than universally mandatory.

Tables must remain editable, be cited in the text, numbered consecutively and accompanied by captions. Figures should be supplied as separate files, cited in the text and accompanied by captions. The guide gives resolution requirements by artwork type and asks authors to avoid low-resolution screen formats.

Reference requirements

At initial submission, the journal does not impose strict reference formatting if the chosen style is complete and consistent. The journal uses an author–year citation convention in published papers. Elsevier recommends DOI links where available and applies the journal’s final reference style at proof stage after acceptance.

Submission checklist essentials

• Designate one corresponding author and provide complete contact details.
• Upload all manuscript files, keywords, captions, tables and supplementary materials.
• Check spelling and grammar.
• Ensure every in-text citation appears in the reference list and vice versa.
• Obtain permission for copyrighted third-party material.
• Complete competing-interest and other required declarations.
• Confirm that all authors approve the submission and that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere.

Peer-Review Process

Journal of Cleaner Production uses single-anonymized peer review. Authors’ identities are available to reviewers, while reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors. Editors first assess whether the submission is suitable for the journal. If it passes that stage, the manuscript is typically sent to at least two independent expert reviewers for scientific assessment. Editors make the final decision.

The journal’s editorial material describes topic-based handling by editors with domain expertise and notes that manuscripts may go through substantial revision. Authors should therefore treat scope alignment, methodological transparency and response-to-reviewer quality as integral parts of publication readiness.

Current journal-level timeline indicators

Elsevier’s insights page lists approximately 8 days to first decision, 61 days to a decision after review, and 145 days from submission to acceptance. These are journal-level indicators, not promises for an individual paper; reviewer availability, revision rounds, manuscript complexity and editorial workload can change the timeline.

The journal does not provide a current official acceptance rate on the live journal page. Older editorial news reported historical rejection/publishing proportions, but those figures should not be treated as the present acceptance rate.

Open Access and Publication Fees

Journal of Cleaner Production is a hybrid journal. Authors may choose open-access publication or the subscription route. The official ScienceDirect page lists an open-access APC of USD 4,620 excluding taxes; it also states that the amount may be reduced where applicable. For subscription publication, the page states that no publication fee is charged to authors and the article is available to subscribers.

APCs can change. Institutional agreements, funder arrangements or publisher eligibility rules may alter the amount an author pays. Confirm the fee and licence during the submission/acceptance workflow rather than budgeting from an old screenshot or third-party metric site.

Publication Ethics and Generative-AI Policies

The journal follows Elsevier’s publishing-ethics policies. Submission implies that the work has not been published in the same form previously except for permitted forms such as a preprint, abstract, thesis or registered report; it is not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere; and all authors and responsible authorities approve publication.

Authors must disclose relevant financial and personal competing interests. Authorship changes are controlled and generally require editor approval and agreement from affected authors. Research involving people, animals, protected data or other regulated contexts should include the applicable approvals, consent and reporting required by the study and publisher policies.

For generative AI, the current author guide requires authors to declare substantive use of AI tools in manuscript preparation in a statement before the references. Basic grammar, spelling and reference-checking tools do not require disclosure. Authors remain responsible for accuracy and integrity. Elsevier also states that reviewers and editors may not use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT in peer review or manuscript evaluation because of confidentiality and author-rights concerns. The guide also restricts generative-AI creation or alteration of manuscript images except when AI use is part of the research method and is transparently reproducible.

Common Reasons a Manuscript May Be Unsuitable

These are practical publication-readiness risks, not official rejection statistics:

• The paper uses sustainability language but the core research question is outside cleaner production or environmental sustainability.
• The contribution is a narrow case without transferable insight, system-level significance or clear cleaner-production relevance.
• The manuscript does not show what is new relative to current cleaner-production or sustainability literature.
• Methods, system boundaries, assumptions or data are insufficiently transparent to support the claims.
• Conclusions exceed the evidence or ignore environmental, economic or social trade-offs.
• The article type is wrong—for example, an unsolicited review is submitted despite the journal’s commissioned-review policy.
• Required highlights, declarations, files, references or ethics information are incomplete.
• Language or structure makes the scientific contribution difficult for an interdisciplinary audience to evaluate.

Practical Journal-Fit Examples

Example 1 — Stronger scope match

A manufacturing study compares alternative process configurations using material, energy and emissions data, explains prevention at source, quantifies trade-offs, and connects findings to scalable cleaner-production decisions. This is conceptually aligned, although novelty and methods still determine editorial interest.

Example 2 — Weak scope match

A paper reports the mechanical performance of a new material but only adds one paragraph claiming it is “sustainable” without life-cycle, resource, waste, emissions, systems or policy evidence. A materials journal may be a better match unless the sustainability contribution is genuinely developed.

Example 3 — Article-type problem

A PhD scholar prepares a systematic review and uploads it as an unsolicited review article. Because the guide states that review articles are commissioned, the author should not assume a normal unsolicited review route is available; an innovative review idea can instead be discussed with the Editors-in-Chief.

Example 4 — Good science, weak presentation

An ESL researcher has strong data but an unclear abstract, inconsistent terminology and poorly connected figures. Academic editing can improve readability and journal alignment, but it does not change the underlying evidence or guarantee that editors will send the paper for review.

Example 5 — Major revision

An author receives requests for clearer system boundaries, sensitivity analysis and moderated claims. A strong response should reproduce each reviewer point, state the action taken, identify where the manuscript changed, and give evidence-based reasons for any respectfully declined suggestion.

Pre-Submission Checklist

• Scope checked against the live aims and scope page
• Current Scopus status and institutional requirements verified
• Correct article type selected
• Original article length checked against the 6,000–8,000-word guidance where applicable
• Abstract is no more than 250 words
• 1–7 English keywords prepared
• 3–5 highlights prepared, each within 85 characters including spaces
• Editable manuscript source file prepared
• Tables editable, numbered and captioned
• Figures supplied separately at suitable resolution with captions
• References complete, consistent and cross-checked; DOIs added where available
• Competing-interest declaration completed
• Funding, authorship and data statements included where applicable
• Ethics approval and consent information included where required
• Generative-AI use disclosed if required by Elsevier policy
• All authors approve the submission
• Open-access versus subscription route and possible APC understood
• Cover letter explains journal fit and contribution without exaggerated claims

How Contentxprtz Can Support Journal of Cleaner Production Authors

Contentxprtz can help authors prepare a clearer, more polished and journal-aligned manuscript while all editorial and publication decisions remain solely with Journal of Cleaner Production. Support may include scope-alignment review, manuscript assessment, academic editing, ESL language polishing, title and abstract refinement, journal formatting, reference consistency, figure/table language review, cover-letter editing, submission-document checks and reviewer-response editing.

For a Journal of Cleaner Production submission, useful preparation work often includes checking whether the cleaner-production contribution is visible in the title, abstract, highlights and discussion; whether the article type matches the author guide; whether references and declarations are complete; and whether the manuscript communicates methods and sustainability implications clearly to a transdisciplinary audience.

Explore Contentxprtz journal publication services. Professional support does not guarantee journal acceptance, peer-review success or publication.

Summary: Journal of Cleaner Production

Journal of Cleaner Production is an Elsevier journal for transdisciplinary cleaner-production, environmental and sustainability research. It is indexed in Scopus under Source ID 19167 and uses print ISSN 0959-6526 and online ISSN 1879-1786. Current Elsevier information lists CiteScore 21.3 and Impact Factor 10.7. The journal publishes original articles, commissioned reviews, technical notes and letters, uses single-anonymized peer review, and supports both subscription and optional open-access publication.

For authors, the decisive question is not whether the journal is visible or highly cited, but whether the manuscript genuinely belongs in its cleaner-production and sustainability conversation. Verify the current author instructions and fees, compare the paper with recent journal content, and submit only when scope, article type, evidence, ethics and presentation are all aligned.

Conclusion: Evaluate Fit Before You Submit

Journal of Cleaner Production offers broad international visibility for cleaner-production and sustainability research, but breadth does not mean every environmental manuscript is a fit. Authors should make the preventive, resource-efficiency, systems, life-cycle or sustainability contribution explicit, follow the current Elsevier author instructions, and treat metrics and indexing as decision inputs rather than substitutes for scholarly fit.

For current decisions, use the official journal homepage, Guide for Authors, and Scopus source profile. Reconfirm fees, metrics, editors and policies immediately before submission.