Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) is a high-impact, broad-reaching interdisciplinary environmental science and technology journal dedicated to investigating the depth, complexity, and sustainability of our environment and the development of new technologies to support that sustainability. The journal has a core commitment to remain a thought leader, publishing the latest advances of high novelty that significantly move the field forward in new directions and discoveries. Alongside this aim comes implicit expectations of excellence and quality, and these high standards underpin ES&T’s ability to publish the most important and impactful research advances in environmental science and technology. ES&T receives many thousands of submissions each year. Selecting which papers move through the initial assessment made by our team of expert Executive and Associate Editors and onto external peer review is based on whether the manuscript contains the basic expectations of quality for a given research field. General guidance for what ES&T is seeking in quality submissions was described in the editorial Why my Paper Was Rejected Without Review and includes fundamental expectations of appropriate scientific rigor, sound experimental setup and reporting, replicate samples, treatment groups and controls, analytical quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC), and other key considerations. However, for a given research topic within the broad umbrella of environmental science and technology there are also quality expectations unique to that particular field. This editorial provides insights into the basic quality expectations for submissions in public health and environmental exposures, ecotoxicology, and micro/nanoplastics research.

Peer reviewed