ChemSusChem Submission Guide
A package-readiness guide to ChemSusChem: the sustainability-advantage acceptance bar, the Wiley Authors portal, single-anonymous review, the $4,730 open-access APC, and the desk-screen patterns that return sustainable-chemistry manuscripts before review.
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How to approach ChemSusChem
Use the submission guide like a working checklist. The goal is to make fit, package completeness, and cover-letter framing obvious before you open the portal.
Stage | What to check |
|---|---|
1. Scope | Confirm chemistry-driven sustainability scope and the right venue |
2. Package | Quantify the sustainability advantage with green metrics or life-cycle data |
3. Cover letter | Benchmark against the incumbent technology |
4. Final check | Submit through the Chemistry Europe portal |
Quick answer: ChemSusChem, Wiley's Chemistry Europe journal for chemistry-driven sustainability, accepts work on the strength of its sustainability contribution, not on chemistry that wears a green label. The journal reports a 12-day median submission-to-first-decision time, runs single-anonymous review, and offers optional hybrid open access at a $4,730 APC. The desk screen rewards a quantified sustainability case, so manuscripts that clear it fastest benchmark their result against the incumbent technology.
This ChemSusChem submission guide focuses on the real risk, which is not that your chemistry is unsound. The real risk is a sustainability case that an editor cannot weigh: a green adjective with no green metric, an energy result with no efficiency comparison, or a scope that has slid into pure catalysis or pure materials. Before you spend the submission, use the [ChemSusChem manuscript fit check](/ai-review?
target_journal=ChemSusChem&source_blog=chemsuschem-submission-guide&primary_concern=journal_fit) to test whether your sustainability advantage, green metrics, and scope are framed the way this Chemistry Europe journal scores them.
From our manuscript review practice
In our pre-submission review work with ChemSusChem manuscripts, the papers that get returned fastest are rarely weak chemistry. They are competent studies whose sustainability case is thin: a catalyst paper with a green adjective in the title but no comparison to the incumbent process, an energy-storage result with no efficiency or life-cycle framing, or work that has drifted into pure materials science.
What does ChemSusChem actually publish, and how does it judge a paper?
ChemSusChem publishes chemistry-driven sustainability research across green synthesis, energy storage and conversion, carbon capture, hydrogen, sustainable catalysis, and material upcycling. It judges a paper on whether the chemistry buys a measurable environmental or energy advantage over an incumbent, not on chemistry that simply carries a green label. The number matters more than the adjective.
ChemSusChem is realistic when four things are already true: chemistry is the engine of the result, not a label on it; the work shows a quantified advantage over an incumbent process, material, or fuel; the sustainability claim is supported by a green metric, an efficiency number, or a life-cycle argument rather than asserted; and the contribution sits inside the journal's sustainability-and-energy remit rather than in pure synthetic methodology or pure device engineering. If one of those is missing, the portal will not rescue the submission.
What to pressure-test | What should already be true before upload |
|---|---|
Sustainability case | The paper quantifies an environmental or energy advantage, not just claims one. |
Chemistry centrality | Chemistry is the mechanism of the advance, not a thin wrapper on a materials or device result. |
Green metrics | E-factor, atom economy, energy efficiency, faradaic efficiency, or a life-cycle comparison is reported where the claim demands it. |
Benchmark | The result is compared to the incumbent technology it claims to improve, with numbers. |
Declarations | Cover letter, data availability, conflict of interest, funding, and ORCID are ready before upload. |
ChemSusChem is Wiley's interdisciplinary journal for chemistry-driven sustainability, published for the Chemistry Europe consortium and a sister journal of Angewandte Chemie and Chemistry (A European Journal). Its scope spans green synthesis, energy storage and conversion, carbon capture and conversion, hydrogen, sustainable catalysis, and the upcycling of materials, and the editorial framing maps explicitly to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
That framing changes the acceptance question. At a pure-chemistry journal, the desk editor asks "is this novel and sound?" At ChemSusChem, the editor asks "does the chemistry buy a real sustainability gain, and can I see the number?" The practical consequence is that the thing that wins here, a quantified green or energy advantage over the status quo, is the thing authors most often under-prepare because they were optimizing for a methodological novelty argument the journal weighs second.
The fastest way to misread ChemSusChem is to treat it as a slightly greener Angewandte. It is not a chemistry journal that happens to like sustainability papers. It is a sustainability journal whose currency is chemistry, and the manuscripts that struggle are usually the ones whose authors led with the chemistry and bolted the sustainability on afterward.
What does the ChemSusChem submission portal require?
ChemSusChem manuscripts are submitted and tracked through Wiley's Research Exchange submission service. The portal is shared across the Chemistry Europe family, so a single author account works across the portfolio. Here is what the initial submission needs to be complete.
Manuscript file and format: For initial submission, prepare a single file with all schemes, figures, and tables integrated into the text. Separate high-resolution figure files are requested later if the paper moves forward. A Word template is available but optional. Compress oversized graphics and name supporting files clearly, because intake checks are easier when the editor can see the whole chemistry story in one combined manuscript file.
Table of Contents graphic: Every manuscript needs a TOC graphic with accompanying text of up to 50 words (maximum 450 characters with spaces) and an image sized 5.5 by 5.0 cm or 11.5 by 2.5 cm, at a minimum font size of 6 to 7 points. A missing or out-of-spec TOC graphic is a routine return-for-correction at intake.
Article types and length: ChemSusChem publishes Communications, Full Papers, Reviews, Minireviews, Highlights, and Concepts. Full Papers carry no fixed length limit but the editorial office asks for economical use of space; Communications are capped at roughly 15,000 characters (on the order of 2,500 words including references, tables, and legends) with a 1,000-character abstract, are not divided into sections, and summarize significance and remaining challenges in a closing paragraph.
Minireviews run to about 25,000 characters of main text. Know your article type before you write, because the length expectation differs sharply across them.
Required declarations: Every submission needs a cover letter, a data availability statement, a conflict of interest disclosure, an author contributions statement, and a funding statement with grant numbers. ORCID iDs are expected for the corresponding author. An ethics statement is required for any human or animal work, and a Supporting Information file should carry the spectra, characterization data, and extended methods that do not fit the main text.
What is the ChemSusChem editorial triage timeline?
ChemSusChem reports a 12-day median submission-to-first-decision time in Wiley's current journal metrics. That number includes desk decisions, so do not treat it as the expected time for a fully reviewed manuscript. SciRev author reports put the first externally reviewed round closer to about 1.1 months and total handling time near 2.2 months. Treat both as planning ranges, not promises.
Day 0: Submission and intake
Wiley Authors accepts the package and runs format and integrity checks, verifying the TOC graphic spec, the integrated single-file format, and the required declarations. Format-incomplete packages are returned here before an editor reads the science.
Days 1 to 12: Editor sustainability-and-scope screen
A handling editor evaluates whether chemistry drives a real sustainability advantage and whether the work fits the energy-and-sustainability remit. The fastest desk rejections, thin sustainability cases and out-of-scope work, happen in this window.
Weeks 2 to 5: Single-anonymous peer review
Manuscripts that clear the desk screen go to reviewers who see author identities while staying anonymous themselves. Author-reported review rounds average roughly 1.1 months and typically return about two reports that probe the green metrics and the benchmark.
Weeks 5 to 9: Decision and revision
Reject, major revision, minor revision, or accept. Major or minor revision is the most common outcome for sound manuscripts; reviewers here frequently ask for the quantitative comparison the first draft left implicit.
Weeks 9 to 10: Acceptance and production
Once accepted, the article moves to production; total handling time from submission to a final decision averages near 2.2 months. If OnlineOpen was selected, the APC is processed at acceptance.
How does ChemSusChem compare with its peer sustainability journals?
ChemSusChem competes with the other major sustainable-chemistry and energy venues. The editorial difference is not the metric, it is what each journal treats as the protagonist.
Journal | Selectivity / focus | Scope emphasis | First review round | OA APC (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ChemSusChem | Sustainability advantage, chemistry at core | Energy conversion/storage, green chemistry, catalysis | 12 days to first decision; reviewed rounds often longer | $4,730 (hybrid) |
Green Chemistry (RSC) | Higher bar, quantitative green metrics required | Green synthesis and process chemistry | ~1 month | £3,100 (hybrid) |
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering | Broad sustainability + engineering scope | Green chemistry and green engineering | ~1 month | hybrid (ACS pricing) |
Journal of Materials Chemistry A | Materials-first, device performance required | Materials for energy and sustainability | ~31 days | £3,100 (hybrid) |
Source: ChemSusChem and Chemistry Europe author guidelines, RSC and ACS author pages, SciRev review-process data, and publisher APC pages (accessed June 2026).
The decision logic is editorial, not numeric. Choose ChemSusChem when energy conversion or storage is the protagonist and chemistry is the mechanism, and you want Chemistry Europe branding alongside Angewandte.
Choose Green Chemistry when the work is a process or synthesis with a sharp quantitative green-metrics improvement and you can clear a higher citation bar. Choose ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering when the contribution carries a process- or engineering-scope component beyond the chemistry. Choose Journal of Materials Chemistry A when the real story is a material whose performance you can demonstrate in a device.
The mistake we see most is authors picking on the impact metric alone when the scope fit is the actual variable. An energy-materials paper with no device data belongs at ChemSusChem or Green Chemistry, not at a materials-first venue that will ask for the cell that is not there.
For deeper context on the closest peers, see the Green Chemistry submission guide, the ACS Sustainable Chemistry submission guide, and the Journal of Materials Chemistry A submission guide.
Common failure modes at ChemSusChem
In our pre-submission review work with ChemSusChem manuscripts, the desk-screen failures cluster differently than at pure-chemistry journals. Because ChemSusChem weighs the sustainability contribution, the patterns that send work back are almost entirely about the green case, the benchmark, and the scope, not about whether the chemistry is competent.
Across our ChemSusChem pre-submission reviews, four patterns generate the most consistent early returns, and each is a specific, named rejection pattern that is testable against your own draft before you upload. Of the papers we pre-screen for sustainability venues, the same editorial triage repeats: editors test the sustainability advantage and its number before they engage with the methodology.
How this guide was built: we reviewed ChemSusChem's published author guidelines and the journal's stated sustainability-and-energy scope, and the sources checked are listed at the end of this page. Our Manusights submission analysis then compared those guidelines with recurring patterns from pre-submission reviews of sustainable-chemistry manuscripts deciding between ChemSusChem, Green Chemistry, and ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
A Manusights review checks whether your paper clears the ChemSusChem-specific sustainability and benchmark tests that author instructions cannot evaluate from a generic checklist. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.
The sustainability angle bolted on
The most common ChemSusChem desk-screen trigger we see is a sustainability claim that decorates otherwise conventional chemistry. A new catalyst is described as "green" because it is earth-abundant, but never compared on E-factor or energy input to the incumbent it would replace. A synthesis is called "sustainable" because it uses water as a solvent, with no waste or atom-economy accounting.
ChemSusChem editors are screening for chemistry that buys a real sustainability gain, so an adjective without a metric reads as a paper drafted for a different journal. This is the single highest-leverage fix before submission, because the journal will not credit the sustainability framing it cannot measure.
Check whether your ChemSusChem sustainability case is benchmarked →
Missing green metrics, life-cycle, or energy-efficiency framing
A second pattern is the absence of the quantitative sustainability framing the result demands. A catalysis paper gives turnover numbers but no atom economy or E-factor. A fuel-conversion study gives conversion and selectivity but no energy efficiency or faradaic efficiency. A materials-recycling result gives yield but no life-cycle or mass-balance comparison.
Reviewers at ChemSusChem are specifically asked to assess the sustainability contribution, so a result reported only in conventional performance terms gives them nothing to weigh. We frequently find the underlying numbers exist in the lab notebook and were simply not computed for the manuscript.
Check if your ChemSusChem green metrics and benchmark are complete →
Scope drift into pure catalysis or pure materials science
A third recurring failure is scope. ChemSusChem sits at the intersection of chemistry and sustainability, and editors return work that has drifted to one pole: pure catalysis whose sustainability relevance is asserted rather than demonstrated, or pure materials science whose contribution is structure rather than sustainability function.
A manuscript whose central hypothesis is "we made a new catalyst" rather than "this chemistry makes the process measurably more sustainable" is at high risk of an out-of-scope return even when the science is sound. The test is simple: if the title and abstract would read identically in a general catalysis or materials journal, the scope fit is weak.
No quantitative comparison to the incumbent
The fourth pattern is a result that floats free of a baseline. Authors report what their system does, but never against the technology it claims to improve, so the editor cannot judge whether the sustainability gain is real or marginal.
Examples include a CO2-reduction catalyst with no comparison to the state-of-the-art electrode, a biomass-valorization route with no comparison to the petrochemical incumbent, or a battery chemistry with cycle data but no energy-density or cost benchmark. The stronger ChemSusChem manuscript states the incumbent, reports the comparison with numbers, and names the sustainability dimension on which it wins.
Check whether your ChemSusChem incumbent comparison is quantified →
Readiness check
Run the scan against the requirements while they're in front of you.
See score, top issues, and journal-fit signals before you submit.
Submit If
ChemSusChem is the right home for a large band of chemistry-driven sustainability work. Submit when these specific, testable conditions hold:
- chemistry is the mechanism of the advance, and the abstract would not read identically in a general catalysis or materials journal
- the sustainability advantage is quantified with the right metric (E-factor, atom economy, energy or faradaic efficiency, or a life-cycle comparison), not asserted
- the result is benchmarked against the incumbent process, material, or fuel it claims to improve, with numbers
- the work fits the energy-and-sustainability remit (energy conversion or storage, green synthesis, carbon capture, hydrogen, sustainable catalysis, or upcycling)
The review tells you whether YOUR paper passes the ChemSusChem sustainability screen before you upload, not just what the guidelines say in the abstract.
Think Twice If
ChemSusChem is not the right venue for everything. Pause if any of these specific manuscript patterns describe your draft:
- the sustainability claim rests on an adjective ("green," "clean," "sustainable") with no green metric or efficiency number behind it (the most common case we see returned)
- a catalyst paper reports turnover or selectivity but no E-factor, atom economy, energy input, or comparison to the incumbent process
- an energy-storage or CO2-conversion manuscript reports performance numbers but no faradaic efficiency, energy-efficiency, cost, or life-cycle framing
- the real contribution is a pure catalysis or pure materials study whose sustainability relevance is asserted rather than demonstrated, which reads as out-of-scope to a sustainability editor
- the manuscript has no quantitative comparison to the incumbent technology, so the editor cannot judge whether the sustainability gain is real or marginal
If you are unsure which side of the line your draft falls on, run a ChemSusChem desk-screen check to surface the sustainability gaps before an editor does. The check is free to run (/ai-review) and takes a single upload.
What is the ChemSusChem pre-submission checklist?
- [ ] Chemistry is the engine of the advance, and the abstract would not read identically in a general catalysis or materials journal
- [ ] The sustainability advantage is quantified with the right metric (E-factor, atom economy, energy or faradaic efficiency, or life-cycle data)
- [ ] The result is benchmarked against the incumbent process, material, or fuel with explicit numbers
- [ ] The TOC graphic meets spec (5.5 by 5.0 cm or 11.5 by 2.5 cm, text up to 50 words / 450 characters)
- [ ] Cover letter, data availability, conflict of interest, funding, and ORCID declarations are ready
- [ ] You have confirmed whether your institution's Wiley agreement covers the $4,730 OA APC, or you are publishing under the subscription option
- ] Run a final [ChemSusChem submission readiness check to catch sustainability and benchmark gaps editors filter for on first read
What should you read next?
Frequently asked questions
ChemSusChem judges work on its contribution to sustainability with chemistry at the core, not on chemistry that merely mentions a green angle. Editors look for a quantified sustainability advantage over an incumbent process or material. Wiley's current journal metrics report a 12-day median submission-to-first-decision time, which includes desk decisions; SciRev author reports put externally reviewed rounds closer to about 1.1 months and total handling around 2.2 months.
ChemSusChem publishes Communications, Full Papers, Reviews, Minireviews, Highlights, and Concepts. Full Papers have no fixed length limit but should be economical; Communications are short and undivided. Every submission needs a Table of Contents graphic with accompanying text of up to 50 words (450 characters), with the image sized 5.5 by 5.0 cm or 11.5 by 2.5 cm at a minimum font size of 6 to 7 points. For initial submission, prepare a single file with all schemes, figures, and tables integrated into the text.
ChemSusChem is a hybrid journal: you can publish behind the subscription paywall at no charge, or choose OnlineOpen gold open access for an Article Publishing Charge of $4,730 USD (£3,190 / €3,950) as of 2026. Many institutions and funders cover the APC through Wiley open-access agreements, so check whether your corresponding-author affiliation has a transformative agreement before you select the OA option.
Because ChemSusChem weighs sustainability impact, desk rejections cluster on the sustainability case rather than on raw chemistry quality. The most consistent triggers we see are a sustainability angle bolted onto otherwise conventional chemistry, missing green metrics or life-cycle and energy-efficiency framing, scope drift into pure catalysis or pure materials science, and the absence of a quantitative benchmark against the incumbent technology the work claims to improve.
ChemSusChem is published by Wiley for the Chemistry Europe consortium, is a sister journal of Angewandte Chemie, and carries a 2024 JCR JIF of 6.6 (five-year 7.7), placing it Q1 in Chemistry, Multidisciplinary. It is a strong, selective sustainability venue. Green Chemistry (RSC) sits a tier above on citation impact and demands a sharper quantitative green-metrics comparison; ChemSusChem is the better fit when energy conversion or storage is the protagonist and chemistry is the engine.
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