Publishing policies

Every article we publish is free to read, download and reuse from the day it appears, and its authors keep the copyright.

All journals are gold open access: there is no subscription, embargo, registration wall or print-only content. Each article is published as an individual item in HTML and PDF at a persistent URL resolved by its Crossref DOI. This is open access in the sense of the Budapest Open Access Initiative: immediate, free of charge to readers, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

Licence

Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Anyone may copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build on the work, for any purpose including commercially, provided they credit the authors and the source, link to the licence and indicate any changes. The licence is stated on every article page and in the article PDF and XML, and applies from the date of publication. Third-party material reproduced with permission is marked as such and may carry a different licence.

Copyright

All research content is peer reviewed by independent experts before an editor decides whether to publish it. Our journals currently use single-blind review; the model of each journal is stated on its About page, and any change is announced there before it applies. Editorials and similar non-research items are assessed by the editors and labelled accordingly.

1. 1

   Editorial assessment

   The Editor-in-Chief, or an editor they assign, checks that the manuscript is within scope, complete, original (Crossref Similarity Check) and ethically sound. Manuscripts that do not meet these criteria are returned without review; editors may also ask for a desk revision before sending a paper to reviewers.

2. 2

   Reviewer selection

   The handling editor invites independent experts with no conflict of interest. We normally seek at least two reports. Reviewers see the authors’ names; authors do not see who reviewed their work.

3. 3

   Review

   Reviewers assess originality, soundness of methods and analysis, clarity of presentation and fit with the journal, using a structured form that separates comments for the authors from confidential notes to the editor.

4. 4

   Decision

   The editor with decision authority weighs the reports and reaches one of four decisions: Accept, Minor revision, Major revision or Reject. Decision letters include the reviewers’ comments for the authors.

5. 5

   Revision

   Authors respond point by point and upload a revised manuscript by the deadline in the decision letter. Revised papers may go back to the original reviewers. Revisions are handled on the same record, not as a new submission.

6. 6

   Acceptance & production

   Accepted manuscripts are typeset to JATS XML, checked, and returned to the corresponding author for proof approval. Articles appear Online First with a Crossref DOI and are later assigned to an issue.

What reviewers are asked, and how they are recognised, is described in Review for us. Timelines and what authors see at each stage are in Author resources.

Our journals follow the COPE Core Practices and use COPE flowcharts when a concern is raised. The commitments below apply to authors, reviewers and editors alike; each journal's Publication ethics page sets them out in full for its field.

• Authorship

  Every listed author must meet the ICMJE criteria and approve the final version. Co-authors confirm their participation by email during submission. Ghost, gift and purchased authorship are misconduct.

• Conflicts of interest & funding

  Authors declare competing interests and funding sources at submission; reviewers and editors declare conflicts before handling a paper and step aside where one exists.

• Originality

  Manuscripts are screened with Crossref Similarity Check before review. Plagiarism, redundant publication and undisclosed duplicate submission are not accepted.

• Research ethics

  Work involving humans, animals or hazardous procedures must state the approving body and consent obtained, and follow recognised guidelines.

• Misconduct

  Suspected fabrication, falsification, image manipulation or other misconduct is investigated following COPE flowcharts, before or after publication.

• Use of AI

  Generative AI cannot be an author. Its use in preparing a manuscript must be disclosed; reviewers may not upload manuscripts to AI tools.

Appeals

Authors who believe a decision rests on a misunderstanding of the science or a procedural error may appeal once, in writing to the Editor-in-Chief, within 30 days of the decision letter. The appeal must answer the reviewers' points and explain why the decision should be reconsidered; new data may be included. It is considered by an editor not involved in the original decision, who may consult a further reviewer. The outcome is final. Disagreement with the editors' judgement of priority or interest is not by itself grounds for appeal.

Complaints

Complaints about the editorial process, or about the conduct of an editor or reviewer, go to the journal's Editor-in-Chief. A complaint about the Editor-in-Chief, or one the journal has not resolved, may be escalated to the publisher at admin@greensus.org. Complaints are acknowledged promptly, investigated in confidence and answered in writing with the reasons for the outcome.

Regardless of the phase, there are no submission fees, page charges, colour-figure charges or withdrawal fees. Where a charge applies it is a single article processing charge (APC), paid after acceptance, that covers peer-review administration, typesetting, hosting, DOI registration and archiving.

After the launch phase

When a journal introduces an APC, the amount and the date it applies are published on that journal's About and Author guidelines pages before any manuscript is subject to it. Authors are told the applicable fee at submission and again at acceptance, never afterwards.

Waivers and discounts

Once fees apply, full or partial waivers will be available to corresponding authors based in low- and middle-income countries (World Bank classification), to authors in demonstrable financial hardship, and for invited reviews and editorials. Waiver requests are handled by the publisher, separately from the editorial process: editors are not told whether a waiver has been requested, and ability to pay never influences a decision.

The Green and Sustainable Materials Society is a non-profit association (perkumpulan) and publishes its journals itself, without a commercial publishing partner. No profit is distributed to individuals.

Revenue is used only for journal operations: editorial and production work, the publishing platform, DOI registration, preservation, and the Society's mission of making sustainable-materials research openly available. Our journals carry no advertising and sell no reprints or subscriptions (section 11). Editorial decisions are never linked to a journal's income or to whether an author can pay.

We support the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). Every submission includes a data availability statement, completed in the submission form, which is published with the article.

• Deposit the data underlying your results in a trusted public repository such as Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad or a discipline or institutional repository, and cite the dataset by DOI in the reference list.
• Share code and software through a versioned repository (for example GitHub archived to Zenodo) with a DOI where possible.
• If data cannot be shared, for legal, ethical or commercial reasons, say so in the statement and explain how a reader may request access.
• Editors and reviewers may ask to see underlying data during review, and may decline a manuscript whose central claims cannot be checked.

Published articles are part of the permanent record and are not silently changed. Post-publication issues are handled under the COPE retraction guidelines:

Every such notice is registered with Crossref and flagged through Crossmark, so readers checking a PDF or a citation can see whether the article has been updated. Authors are asked to co-sign notices where possible; where they disagree or cannot be reached, the notice says so.

Authors may deposit any version of their article, at any time, in any repository or on any website, without asking permission. There is no embargo.

Posting a preprint does not count as prior publication and does not affect consideration by our journals; authors state the preprint DOI at submission. Funder and institutional open-access mandates that accept CC BY publication with immediate deposit are met by this policy.

• Persistent identifiers. Every article receives a Crossref DOI (prefix 10.62755) that will continue to resolve to the article wherever it is hosted.
• Metadata deposit. Bibliographic metadata, references, licence and Crossmark update records are deposited with Crossref for every article, and the full record is exposed through OAI-PMH for harvesting by libraries and aggregators.
• Storage. Article files and XML are held on redundant, regularly backed-up storage by the publisher.

Each journal is owned by the Society and led by an Editor-in-Chief appointed by it, supported by an editorial board whose members are listed, with affiliations, on the journal's Editorial board page. Editors decide what is published on scholarly grounds alone; the Society, its officers and the platform operator do not intervene in individual decisions. The name, ISSN, DOI prefix and full publisher details of each journal are on its About page.

Journal websites do not imitate other titles, and we do not claim indexing, metrics or memberships we do not hold. Where this page or a journal page says a practice is planned, it has not yet happened.

We carry no advertising on this site or in our journals. Should that change, advertising would be clearly labelled, kept separate from editorial content and sold without any influence on what is published; this policy would be updated first.

Direct marketing

We do not buy mailing lists or send unsolicited invitations to submit. Calls for papers and journal news go to people who have asked for them: e-alert subscribers, RSS readers, Society members and authors and reviewers who have worked with a journal. Any such message identifies the sender, describes the journal truthfully (we never overstate indexing, metrics or acceptance rates) and can be stopped at any time from the unsubscribe page or by replying.

We collect the minimum personal data needed to run a scholarly publishing operation, and we say exactly what that is. Author names, affiliations and ORCID iDs are part of the published record; reviewer identities are confidential; reader analytics are collected without cookies and without identifying anyone.

These policies were last revised on 14 September 2026. Substantive changes are announced in News; the date above is updated with every change.