Science of The Total Environment Acceptance Rate

The 17% acceptance rate makes STOTEN selective enough that fit matters before polish. It is not a "send everything environmental" venue. A manuscript can be technically sound and still fail if it reads like a single-compartment monitoring report, a chemistry method paper with an environmental application paragraph, or a local case study without transferable environmental insight.

The guide for authors describes an editorial suitability check before peer review. That first screen is where many authors misread the acceptance rate. Papers that pass the scope screen are no longer competing with every submitted manuscript; papers that fail the screen never reach the reviewer stage where detailed methods and results can help.

ScienceDirect gives authors a useful acceptance-rate anchor, but it does not publish a desk-rejection rate by manuscript type. The STOTEN guide for authors gives the more actionable editorial rule: manuscripts must be appropriate for the journal and fit the total-environment scope before they move into review.

In practical terms, editors specifically screen the title, abstract, cover-letter framing, and first-page contribution claim for whether the paper belongs in a total-environment journal before reviewer assignment.

The current impact-factor context also needs a boundary. The dedicated metric owner treats 8.0 as the last available JIF and asks authors to verify live Clarivate or Master Journal List status before citing a current 2025 JIF. That is why this acceptance-rate page should not use the old phrase "2026 JCR release" as if the 8.0 number were a current JIF.

Use the 17% rate as a triage prompt. If the paper is a broad environmental-systems contribution, the number says the journal is competitive but possible. If the paper is local, descriptive, or method-first, the number is less useful than the scope screen.

The acceptance-rate question should lead to three manuscript checks:

• does the abstract state a transferable environmental question, not only a location and analyte?

• do the methods connect at least one source, pathway, compartment, receptor, or management consequence?

• does the discussion explain what changes for readers outside the study site?

The 17% figure is a journal-level rate, not an article-type forecast. A review article, a field monitoring study, a remediation experiment, and an exposure-health paper do not face the same editorial screen.

Do not say the STOTEN acceptance rate is up from 17% or down from 25-35% unless you have dated STOTEN sources using the same denominator. The current public source gives a 17% snapshot; it does not give a reliable acceptance-rate trend series, and the older 25-35% language was an estimate rather than a comparable journal-reported series.

Papers that clear both desk and peer review at STOTEN tend to share a few characteristics:

Pollutant fate and transport with mechanistic depth. Studies that explain where contaminants go and why - across environmental compartments, through food chains, or across spatial scales - fit STOTEN's scope precisely.

Environmental health linkages. Research connecting environmental contamination to human or ecosystem health outcomes, particularly with epidemiological or toxicological data, is core STOTEN territory.

Large-scale or multi-site studies. Work spanning multiple regions, seasons, or environmental media has an easier time making the breadth argument. Single-site studies can succeed, but they need to show why the findings generalize.

Emerging contaminants and new exposure pathways. STOTEN has a strong track record with microplastics, PFAS, pharmaceuticals in the environment, and other emerging concern chemicals. Novel contaminant categories with clear environmental relevance are well-received.

Climate-environment interactions. Research on how climate change affects contaminant behavior, ecosystem function, or environmental health is increasingly central to STOTEN's content.

Too narrow geographically. "Heavy metals in river sediments in [region]" without a broader framing about what drives that pattern, what it means for ecosystem function, or how it compares to global baselines.

Missing the total environment angle. Studies that measure contamination but don't trace it across environmental compartments or connect it to biological or health outcomes.

Incremental methodology. Studies using established methods to confirm expected results in a new location, without a compelling reason why the location or the finding changes what we know.

Scope mismatch. Purely ecological papers (community ecology, biodiversity assessment without pollution framing), purely atmospheric science without surface-level linkages, or work on individual organisms without ecosystem-level context.

Frame for scope from the abstract. The first two sentences of your abstract should make clear that this work contributes to understanding the total environment - not just a local problem. Editors make desk decisions fast; the abstract has to do the work.

Connect across compartments. If your study focuses on water contamination, show linkages to sediment, biota, or downstream human exposure. Cross-compartment framing is inherently more STOTEN-appropriate.

Quantify the broader significance. How does your site or scenario compare to regional or global baselines? Is the contamination level above regulatory thresholds? What does the pattern imply for management? Answers to these questions are the difference between a site study and a STOTEN paper.

Check the submission route before relying on old instructions. STOTEN uses Elsevier Editorial Manager for submissions. If a private institutional checklist mentions a different route, use the current journal page and guide for authors instead.

This table exists to keep the selectivity discussion from drifting into stale metric claims. Use it as a source checklist, not as a reason to choose the journal.

Recent issue spot-checks should be refreshed before citing specific article examples in public copy. For this page, the safer public guidance is source-category based: cross-compartment environmental monitoring, pollutant fate and transport, environmental exposure, remediation realism, and health/ecosystem linkage are the STOTEN-shaped manuscript patterns to verify.

In our pre-submission review work with STOTEN-targeted manuscripts, the useful acceptance-rate question is not "am I inside the 17%?" It is whether the abstract, introduction, methods, figures, tables, data availability statement, and discussion give an editor enough evidence to see a total-environment paper before sending it to reviewers. This is Manusights submission analysis, not an Elsevier policy statement. We observe a specific rejection pattern: authors often treat STOTEN as a broad environmental fallback after a narrower journal feels too risky. That can work, but only when the manuscript's environmental-system argument is visible in the first screen.

STOTEN specific rejection pattern: the site study has no transferable claim.

The manuscript measures contaminant concentrations at one river, lake, city, mine tailing, wastewater plant, or agricultural region, but the abstract and introduction never explain why the result should matter outside that location. In STOTEN terms, the weakness is not the geography itself. The weakness is that the methods, tables, maps, and discussion do not connect the site to a broader fate, exposure, ecosystem, or management question. A stronger STOTEN package compares the site with regional or global baselines, names the source pathway, explains why the measured matrix matters, and uses the conclusion to make a transferable environmental claim.

STOTEN editorial triage pattern: one compartment is framed as the total environment.

We often see water-only, soil-only, air-only, or sediment-only manuscripts that use total-environment language without showing movement across compartments. The title and abstract may promise environmental relevance, but the figures stop at concentration maps or removal efficiency curves. For STOTEN, the methods and results should make at least one pathway visible: source to receptor, water to sediment, soil to plant, air to deposition, pollutant to organism, or exposure to health endpoint. If the figure set cannot show that pathway, the acceptance-rate number is not the controllable lever.

STOTEN specific risk pattern: remediation experiments ignore environmental realism.

Materials-adjacent STOTEN submissions often have strong synthesis, characterization, and performance claims, but weak environmental conditions. The manuscript may report high removal efficiency in clean water at unrealistic contaminant concentration, with no natural organic matter, no competing ions, no real matrix, no toxicity check, and no reuse or stability test. Editors can see this quickly in the methods table and main figures. A stronger STOTEN argument names the environmental concentration range, tests a realistic matrix, reports controls, and explains whether the material changes contaminant fate rather than only achieving a lab performance number.

STOTEN specific rejection pattern: the article type is wrong for the evidence.

Some papers are better as a focused Environmental Pollution, Chemosphere, Journal of Hazardous Materials, or Water Research submission because the evidence package is narrower than STOTEN's broad frame. The acceptance-rate implication changes by article type: a review article needs a real synthesis gap, a field study needs transferable environmental logic, a remediation paper needs realistic conditions, and an exposure paper needs a defensible pathway from environment to receptor. If the cover letter cannot name that article-type-specific value in one paragraph, the target is not ready.

A Science of the Total Environment submission readiness check can assess whether the manuscript's abstract, methods, figures, tables, controls, and discussion support the STOTEN acceptance-risk argument before submission.

The acceptance rate for Science of The Total Environment does not distinguish between desk rejections and post-review rejections. A paper desk-rejected in 2 weeks and a paper rejected after 4 months of review both count the same. The rate also does not reveal how acceptance varies by article type, geographic origin, or research area within the journal's scope.

Acceptance rates cannot predict your individual odds. A strong paper with clear scope fit, complete data, and solid methodology has substantially better odds than the headline number suggests. A weak paper with methodology gaps will be rejected regardless of the journal's overall rate.

Before submitting, a STOTEN scope fit and desk-rejection risk check assesses desk-reject risk for your specific manuscript.