Rejected from International Journal of Hydrogen Energy? The 7 Best Journals to Submit Next

Source: Clarivate JCR 2024 via journal IF reporting, Elsevier/ScienceDirect and ACS journal pages and guides for authors (accessed June 2026). APCs are list prices excluding tax and may be reduced at submission.

1. Journal of Power Sources. This is the cleanest sibling for fuel-cell, electrolyzer, or electrochemical hydrogen-device work. It wants the electrochemical device performance to be the contribution, so it fits best when your protagonist is a PEM stack, a SOEC, or an electrode system rather than a hydrogen-production reaction studied in isolation.

2. Journal of Energy Storage. If your work is really about storing hydrogen, whether metal hydrides, compressed or liquid storage, or carrier chemistries such as ammonia, this venue frames storage as the contribution rather than treating it as a side note inside a production paper.

3. Applied Energy. Reach for this when the real advance is system-level. It rewards a paper that models hydrogen inside a realistic energy system and backs it with a techno-economic or efficiency analysis. It is a step up in selectivity, so bring the system framing IJHE may have found missing.

4. Energy. A good home when the contribution is broad energy science, thermodynamics, or process-system analysis rather than a single device. Its bar is the energy-system consequence, so it suits work where the system, not the catalyst, is the story.

5. Fuel. Strong for hydrogen, ammonia, or synfuel work that connects to combustion, reforming, or fuel processing. It fits best when downstream fuel behavior or conversion is part of the story, not just material characterization.

6. Renewable Energy. The right venue when hydrogen is the storage medium or vector inside a renewable-power system, for example electrolysis driven by wind or solar in a power-to-gas study. Its scope screen rewards papers that actually measure the energy generated or stored.

7. International Journal of Energy Research. A broad-energy step down for technically sound work that did not clear IJHE's novelty bar. The IF is the lowest on this list and the acceptance rate is more forgiving, so it suits incremental but rigorous results that need a home, not a reach.

Elsevier runs the Article Transfer Service (ATS), and a rejecting IJHE editor (working in the journal's Editorial Manager portal at Editorial Manager submission portal) can offer a one-click transfer that carries your manuscript files, and often the reviewer reports, to a more suitable journal. The matching uses editor recommendations plus algorithms that weigh topic, citation patterns, and acceptance rates. Thousands of Elsevier journals participate.

You can accept, decline all suggestions, or ignore the offer and submit manually. A transfer offer is a routing suggestion, not a quality endorsement, so treat the destination as you would any other target.

Practical ladder by rejection reason:

• Desk-rejected for scope (pure electrochemistry, catalysis, or materials with a thin hydrogen-energy wrapper)? Do not cascade to another hydrogen venue unchanged. The scope problem follows the paper. Pick the journal whose scope actually matches the work: Journal of Power Sources for device electrochemistry, Journal of Energy Storage for storage, Fuel for combustion, or a materials journal if hydrogen is genuinely peripheral.

• Rejected for incremental novelty but sound science? This is the classic step-down case.

International Journal of Energy Research, or a fitting specialist such as Journal of Power Sources or Journal of Energy Storage, is the next tier. Accept an ATS offer here if the suggested journal fits.

• Rejected after review for a missing benchmark, missing durability data, or thin scale-up logic? Fix it before resubmitting anywhere. Every serious energy venue will raise the same point. Carry the revised analysis into the transfer or the manual resubmission.

In our pre-submission review work with International Journal of Hydrogen Energy manuscripts, the rejections we see most often cluster into four named patterns. Each is journal-specific and testable against your own manuscript, which is what makes them worth checking before you resubmit anywhere.

The missing hydrogen-energy consequence. Across our International Journal of Hydrogen Energy pre-submission reviews, the single most common scope trigger is a result that is really electrochemistry, catalysis, or materials characterization with hydrogen mentioned but no energy outcome. The Methods and Results describe a synthesis and an activity measurement, but no section ties the work to hydrogen production rate, storage capacity, fuel-cell power output, or system efficiency.

IJHE publishes work meant to advance hydrogen energy, so editors expect the abstract and discussion to make the energy consequence explicit. Add one section that connects your material or reaction to a hydrogen-energy metric, and a borderline paper often clears the desk. Without it, the manuscript reads as a chemistry paper in the wrong journal. This is testable: read your abstract and ask whether a reader could state the hydrogen-energy outcome from it alone.

No benchmark against the state of the art. A second recurring pattern in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy manuscripts we review is a performance number, an overpotential, a current density, a storage capacity, reported in isolation with no comparison to a current best-in-class result. The editorial question at this journal is not "does it work?" but "is it better than what exists?"

Reviewers consistently flag the absence of a benchmark table or a head-to-head figure against published baselines. The fix is a comparison that places your result among the leading reported values, so a reviewer can see at a glance whether the contribution is an advance.

Single-point claims with no durability or cycling data. We see manuscripts where the central performance claim rests on one measurement with no stability over cycles, no degradation curve, and no statistical treatment of repeated runs. A catalyst that "outperforms" a baseline needs durability data under realistic conditions and enough replication to support the effect.

IJHE editors specifically screen for snapshot results early, and reviewers reject when the data cannot distinguish a real advance from variability or short-run optimism. Check that every headline performance claim has a stability measurement and a defensible number of replicates.

Incremental optimization framed as a scalable advance. The fourth pattern is bench-scale data, a new catalyst formulation or a tweaked electrolyzer condition, framed in the abstract as a deployable or scalable solution with no techno-economic, energy-balance, or scale-up discussion. In a very high-volume journal, a new-material-plus-familiar-method-plus-yield result reads as routine optimization. Reviewers flag the gap between the deployment claim and the supporting data.

The fix is an honest paragraph on what changes at scale and a one-line cost or energy argument, or a reframing of the contribution as a mechanistic finding rather than a deployable process.

Don't just resubmit the same file down the ladder. The fastest way to collect a second rejection is to send an unrevised manuscript to a journal that screens for the same thing IJHE did, and some manuscripts need real work, not a faster next submission. A desk rejection for scope is a routing problem you can fix by choosing the right journal and reformatting to its template.

A post-review rejection for a missing benchmark, weak durability data, or thin scale-up logic is a substance problem, and the same concerns will reappear at any serious venue. Be honest about which one you got.

Two cases call for real work before resubmitting, not a faster next submission. First, if reviewers questioned whether the result is a genuine advance, the manuscript needs the benchmark comparison and the durability data it was missing. Second, if the deployment or scalability claim was challenged, a techno-economic or energy-balance paragraph (and sometimes new experiments) is the only fix.

Appealing is rarely worth it: a scope or novelty rejection is an editorial judgment, not a factual error, and the appeal queue is slower than a clean resubmission to a better-fit journal. One IJHE-specific note: if your rejection letter pressed you to add citations to the journal's own prior papers, that is a known and criticized pattern, and it is not a reason to pad your reference list at the next venue.