Science of the Total Environment Impact Factor

An IF of 8.0 places STOTEN solidly in Q1, the top quarter of 374 Environmental Sciences journals. But rank 39 means there are 38 journals above it, many of them more selective. Nature Climate Change (IF 30+), ES&T (IF 11.3), and Water Research (IF 12.4) all sit higher.

The Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) of 1.52 is worth checking separately. JCI normalizes across fields, so a 1.52 means STOTEN papers are cited 52% more than the global average for environmental science. That's respectable but not exceptional, ES&T's JCI runs closer to 2.5.

STOTEN's Immediacy Index (2.1) tells you that papers get cited quickly after publication. The Cited Half-Life of 5.4 years is moderate, STOTEN papers keep accumulating citations for several years, but they aren't the kind of long-tail references that some geochemistry or ecology journals produce (those often have half-lives above 8 years).

The five-year JIF (8.6) running above the two-year (8.0) confirms that STOTEN papers continue gathering citations beyond the initial two-year window. Environmental policy papers in particular tend to pick up citations as regulations evolve and meta-analyses cite them.

Two things stand out. First, ES&T and Water Research both have longer Cited Half-Lives, their papers stay in circulation longer. Second, ES&T publishes about half as many articles at a higher IF, which means higher per-paper visibility. If you're choosing between STOTEN and ES&T, the gap isn't just the IF number, it's how long each paper stays visible and how crowded the venue is.

STOTEN grew steadily from ~4.6 in 2017 to a peak of ~10.8 in 2021. The 2021 spike happened across environmental science, pandemic-related research on air quality, water contamination, and environmental health drove a citation surge. The correction since then has been gradual, landing at 8.0 for 2024. That's still nearly double the 2017 value.

The trend line is normalizing, not declining. An IF of 8.0 in a field of 374 journals is strong. Don't confuse a post-peak correction with journal decline.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Science of the Total Environment, three patterns generate the most consistent desk rejections.

Scope mismatch: chemistry or materials science submitted as environmental science. STOTEN's aims and scope state the journal publishes research covering "the environment as a whole" with explicit emphasis on "interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and anthroposphere." The most common desk-rejection trigger: papers about novel adsorbent materials, catalysts, or analytical methods that include a paragraph about "potential environmental applications" without actual environmental data. STOTEN editors identify this pattern within the abstract. A new nanocomposite tested only in pure aqueous solution is a materials science paper; the same material tested in real wastewater, sediment, or soil with environmental fate data is an environmental science paper. The distinction must be visible in the methods and results, not just the framing.

Regional case study without a generalizable finding or novel methodology. STOTEN's editorial guidelines state that papers should "add new knowledge to a field by providing novel findings." The journal receives a large volume of monitoring and contamination surveys from single regions or localities. These papers are desk-rejected unless they introduce a novel methodology, identify a new exposure pathway, or produce a finding that challenges existing assumptions about contamination dynamics at a category-level. "Heavy metals in agricultural soil from [province]" using standard ICP-MS and established extraction methods, where concentrations fall within the published range for comparable regions, generates no new knowledge. The introduction must articulate what question this geography or dataset answers that the existing literature could not.

Single-compartment study when the journal's identity is cross-compartment connections. STOTEN's name and stated scope reflect a specific editorial philosophy: understanding contaminant behavior across soil, water, air, and biota simultaneously. Papers that measure contamination in one compartment without addressing transport, transformation, or exposure to adjacent compartments are consistently redirected to more narrowly scoped journals like Water Research, Atmospheric Environment, or Chemosphere. The journal's reviewers are specifically looking for cross-compartment evidence or a mechanistic argument explaining why the finding has implications beyond the measured matrix.

A STOTEN environmental systems framing check can assess whether the manuscript's framing meets the scope and whether the contribution is distinct enough from existing regional monitoring literature.

Submit if:

• the work takes a holistic environmental approach connecting multiple systems or compartments
• ES&T is too selective for this particular paper
• you value the broad environmental science readership
• the "total environment" framing genuinely describes the scope
• you have a substantial dataset with real environmental samples

Think twice if:

• ES&T would accept the paper (higher per-paper visibility and longer citation half-life)
• a narrower journal (Water Research, Atmospheric Environment) reaches your specific audience better
• the paper is primarily chemistry, materials science, or engineering without a genuine environmental systems angle
• the work is a regional case study without a generalizable finding
• individual paper visibility matters more than journal IF