About the Journal of Sustainable Soil and Environment
Journal of Sustainable Soil and Environment is a journal of Agricultural Research Wing of the Center for Research Innovation and Development (CRID).It is an international, open access and double-blind peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal that publishes original research on soil and environmental science.
Journal of Sustainable Soil and Environment seeks on better understanding how the soil itself can be rendered more resilient, and where soil will actually lead to a sustainable environment. Although the emphasis is on sustainable use of soil and environmental resources, the journal covers a wide range of topics from the soil physics, chemistry and biology to the social, cultural, and policy aspects.
Journal of Sustainable Soil and Environment also publishes short communications, meta-analysis and review articles which provide a clear and specific theoretical, conceptual or methodological approach to the existing literature on soil and the environment.
Open Access Statement
CRID’s philosophy is that all research is for the benefit of humankind. Research is the product of an investment by society and therefore its fruits should be returned to all people without borders or discrimination, serving society universally and in a transparent way. That is why CRID journals provide online free and open access to all of its research publications for readers, with article processing charges paid by the authors or their institutions.
CRID journals are fully compliant with open access mandates, by publishing its articles under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY). Authors retain copyright of their work and can deposit their publication in any repository. The work can be freely shared and adapted provided that appropriate credit is given and any changes specified.
Copyright Statement
Under the CRID journals Conditions for Website Use and the CRID journals General Conditions for Authors, authors of articles published in CRID journals retain copyright on their articles, except for any third-party images and other materials added by CRID journals, which are subject to copyright of their respective owners. Authors are therefore free to disseminate and re-publish their articles, subject to any requirements of third-party copyright owners and subject to the original publication being fully cited. Visitors may also download and forward articles subject to the citation requirements and subject to any fees CRID may charge for downloading licenses. The ability to copy, download, forward or otherwise distribute any materials is always subject to any copyright notices displayed. Copyright notices must be displayed prominently and may not be obliterated, deleted or hidden, totally or partially.
Double-Blind Peer Review
CRID journals uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.
To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity.
High visibility
The journal is applied forindexed by the major recognized indexing services and databases globally.
Rapid Publication
Manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision provided to authors approximately 15 days after submission and the whole publication process will take around 30 working days.
Recognition of Reviewers
Reviewers who provide timely, thorough peer-review reports receive vouchers entitling them to a discount on the APC of their next publication in any CRID journal as well as review certificate, in appreciation of the work done.
Quality
Each CRID journal article strives for the highest quality, thanks to genuinely collaborative interactions between authors, editors and reviewers, who include many of the world’s best scientists and scholars. CRID well aware of the potential impact of published research both on future research and on society and, hence, does not support superficial review, light review or no-review publishing models. Research must be certified by peers before entering a stream of knowledge that may eventually reach the public – and shape society. Therefore, we apply the most rigorous and unbiased reviews, established in the high standards of the review system.
CRID has a number of procedures in place to support and ensure the quality of the research articles that are published:
1) Only leading experts and established members of the research community are appointed to the CRID Editorial Boards. Chief Editors, Associate Editors and Review Editors are all listed with their names and affiliations on the Journal pages and are encouraged to publicly list their publication credentials.
2) Associate Editors oversee the peer-review and take the final acceptance decision on manuscripts. Editorial decision power is distributed in CRID, because we believe that many experts within a community should be able to shape the direction of science for the benefit of society.
3) Submitting authors can choose a preferred Associate Editor to handle their manuscript, because they can judge well who would be an appropriate expert in editing their manuscript. There is no guarantee for this preference of choice, Associate Editors can decline invitations any time, and the handling Associate Editor can also be over-ridden by the Chief Editor before she/he is invited to edit the article or at any other stage.
4) Associate Editors are mandated to only accept to edit a manuscript if they have no conflicts of interest.
5) Should it become clear that the Associate Editor has a conflict of interest or is unable to perform the peer-review timely and adequately, a new Associate Editor can be assigned to the manuscript by the Chief Editor, who has full control to intervene in the peer-review process at any time.
6) The Associate Editor initially checks that the article meets basic quality standards and has no obvious objective errors.
7) The Associate Editor can then personally choose and invite the most appropriate reviewers to handle the peer-review of the manuscript, including Review Editors from the board or external reviewers.
8) Review Editors and reviewers are mandated to only accept to review a manuscript if they have no conflicts of interest and in their review invitation and assignment emails.
9) Should it become clear that a particular reviewer has a conflict of interest or is unable to perform the peer-review timely and adequately, he or she shall be replaced with an alternative reviewer by the Associate Editor or the Chief Editor, who will be alerted and has full control to intervene into the peer-review at any time.
10) In the Independent Review Stage, the assigned reviewers perform an in-depth review of the article independently of each other to safeguard complete freedom of opinion.
11) The Associate Editor assesses the reviews and activates the “Interactive Review” – informing the authors of the extent of revisions that are required to address the reviewers’ comments, and starting the Interactive Discussion Forum where authors and also the reviewers get full access to all review reports.
12) Manuscript and review quality at this stage are enhanced by allowing authors and reviewers to discuss directly with each other in real-time until they reach consensus and a final version of the manuscript is endorsed by the reviewers.
13) Reviewer identity is protected at this stage to safeguard complete freedom of opinion.
14) Reviewers can recommend rejection at this stage if their requests to correct objective errors are not being met by the authors or if they deem the article overall of insufficient quality.
15) Should a dispute arise, authors or reviewers can trigger an arbitration and will alert the Associate Editor, who can assign more reviewers and/or bring the dispute to the attention of the Chief Editor. The Associate Editor can also weigh in on the discussion and is asked to mediate the process to ensure a constructive revision stage.
16) The decision to accept an article needs to be unanimous amongst all reviewers and the handling Associate Editor.
17) The names of the Associate Editor and reviewers are disclosed on published articles to encourage in depth and rigorous reviews, acknowledge work well done on the article and to bring transparency and accountability into peer-review.
18) Associate Editors can recommend the rejection of an article to the Chief Editor, who needs to check that the authors’ rights have been upheld during the peer-review process, and who can then ultimately reject the article if it is of insufficient quality, has objective errors or if the authors were unreasonably unwilling to address the points raised during the review.
19) Chief Editors can at any stage of the peer-review step in to comment on the review process, change assigned editors, assign themselves as a reviewer and even as the handling editor for the manuscript, and therefore have full authority and all the mechanisms to act independently in their online editorial office to ensure quality.
20) Only leading researchers acting as Associate Editors, who are not part of CRID staff, can make acceptance decisions based on reviews performed by external experts acting as Review Editors or reviewers. None have a financial incentive to accept articles, i.e. they are not paid for their role to act as Associate or Review Editors, and any award scheme is not linked to acceptances of manuscripts.
21) Chief Editors receive an honorarium if their specialty section or field reaches certain submission levels. However, this honorarium is based on the total number of submitted articles during a calendar year, and not the number of accepted articles. Therefore, they also have no financial incentive to accept manuscripts.
22) The CRID platform enables post-publication commenting and discussions on papers and hence the possibility to critically evaluate articles even after the peer-review process.
27) CRID has a community retraction protocol in place to retract papers where serious concerns have been raised and validated by the community that warrant retraction, including ethical concerns, honest errors or scientific misconduct.
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Contact
Journal of Sustainable Soil and Environment
Center for Research Innovation and development (CRID)
Email: editor.sse@journal.cridglobal.org
Email: info@journal.cridglobal.org
Email: contact@cridglobal.org
[Feel free to contact for further cooperation or collaboration, submitting manuscript or joining with the journal team as Editorial Board Member, Reviewer Committee of the Journal of Sustainable Soil and Environment ]