Science of The Total Environment Submission Guide: Requirements, Formatting and What Editors Want

The journal's scope is the "total environment," meaning interactions between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and anthroposphere. In practical terms, STOTEN publishes:

• Environmental chemistry and pollution monitoring
• Ecotoxicology and risk assessment
• Water quality and treatment
• Soil contamination and remediation
• Atmospheric pollutants and air quality
• Environmental epidemiology (pollution-health links)
• Waste management and circular economy
• Climate change impacts on ecosystems

What it doesn't publish: purely clinical studies, pure ecology without an environmental stressor, agricultural science without environmental context, or lab-scale synthesis without environmental application. This scope check is where most desk rejections happen.

Research Articles are the main format. No official word limit, but reviewers and editors prefer papers in the 5,000 to 8,000 word range. If your paper exceeds 10,000 words, move supplementary methods and data to the supporting information.

Short Communications present a single noteworthy finding in about 3,000 words. Good for time-sensitive results, pilot studies with clear implications, or methodological advances that don't need a full paper.

Review Articles should be proposed to the editor before submission. The journal publishes both systematic reviews and narrative reviews, but unsolicited reviews have a lower acceptance rate. If you want to write a review, send a 1-page proposal to the editor-in-chief outlining the topic, why it's timely, and your qualifications.

This is mandatory. Papers submitted without a graphical abstract get returned without review.

Specs:

• Single image, maximum 531 x 1328 pixels
• Summarize the key finding visually
• Minimal text (short labels only)
• White or light background preferred
• Submit as a separate TIFF, EPS, or high-res JPEG

For environmental science papers, effective graphical abstracts often show a conceptual diagram: source of contamination, pathway, effect, and the finding your study contributes. Avoid pasting a figure from the paper. Create something that tells the story at a glance.

STOTEN editors handle hundreds of papers. Your cover letter needs to work fast.

Include:

1. Title and article type
2. Two or three sentences on why this work is significant for the total environment
3. What's new compared to existing studies
4. Statement confirming no simultaneous submission
5. Four to five suggested reviewers with emails and affiliations

• Don't include: A rehash of the abstract, a long literature review, or generic statements about the importance of environmental research. Editors can spot padding immediately.

Structure: Title, Abstract (max 150 words), Keywords (4-6), Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion (can be separate or combined), Conclusions, Acknowledgments, References, Figure Captions.

Abstract: STOTEN prefers structured or semi-structured abstracts. Even if you don't use subheadings, cover background (1-2 sentences), methods (1-2 sentences), results (2-3 sentences), and implications (1 sentence). Stay under 150 words.

Keywords: Choose 4-6 keywords that someone would actually search for. Include the specific pollutant, organism, or method name, not just broad terms like "environment" or "pollution."

Figures: Submit separately at 300+ DPI. Use consistent font sizes across all figures (minimum 8 pt after scaling). Color is free online. For maps, include a scale bar and north arrow.

Tables: Editable format within the manuscript. One table per page at the end of the document. Avoid tables that duplicate figure data.

References: Elsevier numbered style. Include DOIs. No fixed reference limit, but 40-60 is typical for a research article.

STOTEN requires a data availability statement. The journal encourages, but doesn't yet mandate, public data deposit. Acceptable approaches:

• Data deposited in Mendeley Data, Figshare, Dryad, or a discipline-specific repository (best option)
• Data included as supplementary files
• Data available on request (acceptable but weaker, and some reviewers will push back)

For studies involving human subjects, animal experiments, or collection of protected species, include ethics committee approval numbers in the Methods section. Environmental sampling permits should be documented where relevant.

Based on published editorial notes and author experience, STOTEN editors prioritize:

• Environmental relevance. The paper must connect to a real environmental problem. Pure lab work without environmental context gets desk rejected even if the science is solid.

• Appropriate scale. Single-location studies are fine if the findings have broader implications. But if your results only apply to one specific site with no transferability, the paper is better suited for a regional journal.

• Sound statistics. Environmental data is often messy. Editors expect proper statistical treatment, including sample size justification, appropriate tests for your data distribution, and honest handling of variability.

• Novelty beyond monitoring. Monitoring data alone isn't enough. "We measured pollutant X at location Y" needs a twist: a new source, a new mechanism, an unexpected trend, or a policy-relevant finding.

• Scope mismatch (no environmental connection)
• Missing graphical abstract
• English quality below publication standard
• Monitoring data without novelty or mechanistic insight
• Incomplete methods (can't be reproduced)
• Sample sizes too small without justification
• Conclusions that exceed what the study design supports

Source: Clarivate JCR 2024

STOTEN sits at Q1 rank 39 out of 374 in Environmental Sciences (JCR 2024), which makes it a strong but not elite placement. The journal publishes roughly 6,240 articles per year, that's massive volume, and it means your paper won't get the same visibility bump you'd get from a lower-volume Q1 journal. The Cited Half-Life is 3.9 years, so papers here get picked up fast but don't accumulate citations as long as some competitors.

That volume is a double-edged sword. It's easier to get in than, say, Environmental Science & Technology (which publishes far fewer papers at a higher IF), but it also means your work competes with thousands of other papers for reader attention. If your study has genuine environmental scope, connecting multiple compartments (water, soil, air, biota) or linking exposure to health outcomes, STOTEN is a natural fit. If the work is narrowly focused on one pollutant at one site with no transferable insight, a regional or specialist journal might actually serve you better.

Submit to STOTEN when you've got interdisciplinary environmental data, a clear "total environment" angle, and you're comfortable with the $3,900 APC if you go open access. Think twice if the work fits cleanly into a single subdiscipline where a more focused journal would give you a better audience match.

Last verified against Elsevier author guidelines and Clarivate JCR 2024 (IF 8.0, JCI 1.50, Q1, rank 39/374 in Environmental Sciences).

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

In our experience, roughly 35% of desk rejections at Science of The Total Environment trace to scope or framing problems that prevent the paper from competing in this venue. In our experience, roughly 25% involve insufficient methodological rigor or missing validation evidence. In our experience, roughly 20% arise from a novelty claim that outpaces the supporting data.

• Missing graphical abstract or non-compliant graphical abstract. STOTEN's guide for authors states explicitly that a graphical abstract is mandatory for all submissions and specifies maximum dimensions (531 x 1328 pixels). The journal processes over 10,000 submissions per year, and handling editors return non-compliant submissions without review. We observe manuscripts submitted without a separate graphical abstract file, with graphical abstracts that reproduce a figure panel rather than summarizing the finding, and with graphical abstracts that exceed the dimension specification. These are administrative desk rejections that happen before scientific evaluation.

• Monitoring data without novelty or mechanistic insight. STOTEN's editorial criteria explicitly require that papers go beyond routine monitoring. The author instructions note that papers should present "significant new knowledge" relevant to the total environment. SciRev author reports consistently identify "insufficient novelty" as a primary rejection reason. We find manuscripts reporting contamination levels at a specific site with competent but standard analytical methods, where the finding is that a pollutant is present at levels that confirm what was already expected. The monitoring is real, the methods are sound, but the scientific contribution is a data point rather than an insight.

• Scope described as total environment but limited to one compartment. STOTEN's name reflects a commitment to multi-compartment environmental research: the interactions among atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. We observe manuscripts that frame their work as "total environment" research in the cover letter, but where all experiments are conducted in one compartment (water column only, soil only) without connecting to other environmental dimensions. Editors familiar with the journal's founding mission identify these as scope mismatches, and handling editors desk-reject on that basis.

Clarivate JCR 2024 bibliometric data provides additional benchmarks when evaluating journal fit.

SciRev author-reported data confirms STOTEN's moderately fast editorial process, with initial decisions typically within 2-4 weeks. A STOTEN submission readiness check can assess your graphical abstract, novelty framing, and multi-compartment scope alignment before submission.

Editors consistently screen submissions against these patterns before sending to peer review, so addressing them before upload reduces desk-rejection risk.