Sustainability submission guide
Sustainability's submission process, first-decision timing, and the editorial checks that matter before peer review begins.
Readiness scan
Before you submit to Sustainability, pressure-test the manuscript.
Run the Free Readiness Scan to catch the issues most likely to stop the paper before peer review.
Key numbers before you submit to Sustainability
Acceptance rate, editorial speed, and cost context — the metrics that shape whether and how you submit.
What acceptance rate actually means here
- Sustainability accepts roughly ~35-45% of submissions — but desk rejection runs higher.
- Scope misfit and framing problems drive most early rejections, not weak methodology.
- Papers that reach peer review face a different bar: novelty, rigor, and fit with the journal's editorial identity.
What to check before you upload
- Scope fit — does your paper address the exact problem this journal publishes on?
- Desk decisions are fast; scope problems surface within days.
- Cover letter framing — editors use it to judge fit before reading the manuscript.
How to approach Sustainability
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 | Manuscript preparation |
2. Package | Submission via MDPI system |
3. Cover letter | Editorial assessment |
4. Final check | Peer review |
Quick answer: Submitting to Sustainability is operationally easy and strategically easy to mishandle. The journal is broad, interdisciplinary, and large, which makes some authors assume almost any sustainability-themed paper will fit.
The portal is simple, but the manuscript still needs a clear systems-level question, practical implication, and reason the work belongs here rather than in a narrower environmental or engineering venue.
Run a Sustainability pre-submission readiness check before clicking submit, or work through this guide manually.
Editorial detail (for desk-screen calibration).
Sustainability uses the MDPI SuSy submission system at MDPI SuSy submission system (the same submission infrastructure used across every MDPI title; the journal selector at the top of the SuSy intake routes to Sustainability).
The package must clear: 200-word abstract, 11,000-word main-text cap (flexible during peer review), explicit topical section assignment (the journal has 20+ sections covering Sustainable Engineering and Science, Sustainable Agriculture, Energy Sustainability, Tourism, Sustainable Education, etc.), and an explicit sustainability-framework alignment block (UN Sustainable Development Goals or comparable framework) in the introduction or methods.
Across our pre-submission reviews of Sustainability manuscripts, the editorial triage pattern is shaped by MDPI's high-volume, fast-turnaround model: editorial screening returns in 7 to 10 days, first peer-reviewed decisions typically arrive in 60 to 90 days, and the journal's desk-rejection rate sits around 30 to 40 percent, moderate compared to selective journals but real. The failure pattern that costs the most Sustainability submissions: narrow specialty work with a sustainability label rather than substance.
Editors routinely reject papers that document an environmental, economic, or social problem without offering solution-relevance or decision-relevance (the test: would a policymaker, manager; or systems-level decision maker know what to do differently after reading the paper?); where the work mentions sustainability in the title but the body is a single-discipline study without the systems integration the journal expects (a more specialty journal in the relevant field would be a better fit);
- where the cover letter pitches "we analyzed X" without naming which sustainability framework dimension (environmental, economic, social, governance) the work advances; where the abstract stays descriptive without explaining who should act differently; where the work is technically complete but conceptually too narrow for an interdisciplinary audience; or where the language quality fails MDPI's editorial screening (papers with significant English-language issues are returned without review).
The editorial culture rewards interdisciplinary work that connects sustainability theory to systems-level decisions; it filters out specialty work that uses "sustainability" as a framing keyword without substance.
From our manuscript review practice
Of manuscripts we've reviewed for Sustainability, sustainability studies where policy or behavioral recommendations lack empirical grounding in pilot data or case examples receive the most consistent desk rejections. The literature review is comprehensive and the logic is sound, but when recommendations are presented as general best practice without testing them in a specific context or showing precedent, editors see proposal without validation.
What official pages do not answer
Most current pages for Sustainability submission explain MDPI upload mechanics, open-access status, article types, templates, cover-letter requirements, reviewer suggestions, and publication policies. That helps authors submit files, but it does not answer the harder editorial question: whether the manuscript is actually a sustainability paper rather than a discipline-specific study with sustainability language added late.
The missing decision is editor screen logic. MDPI can tell you that Sustainability is cross-disciplinary, covers technical, environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability, and asks authors to provide full methodological detail. It cannot tell you whether your abstract, stakeholder framing, methods, tradeoff table, policy discussion, implementation evidence, and cover letter connect the data to a real sustainability decision.
How this page was created: our team reviewed Sustainability instructions for authors, the MDPI aims and scope page, publication-policy materials, adjacent Sustainability family pages, and 100 recent papers reviewed when this guide was built. Of the 100 papers our team reviewed for this guide, roughly 39% had a real environmental or social topic but still looked weak for Sustainability because the manuscript did not connect evidence to a policy, management, business, or systems-level decision.
In practice, editors screen for whether the sustainability claim is earned by the analysis, not merely whether the topic is socially or environmentally important.
Source limitations: this guide uses official MDPI Sustainability pages, public instructions for authors, Clarivate data, SciRev author-reported timing, and anonymized Manusights pre-submission review patterns. We did not inspect private MDPI editorial notes, reviewer reports, or confidential decision letters.
The central editorial question is not whether your paper mentions sustainability. It is whether the paper explains a real sustainability problem in a way that connects evidence to policy, management, business practice, or systems-level decision making.
Sustainability: Key Metrics
Metric | Value |
|---|---|
Impact Factor (per Clarivate JCR 2024) | 3.3 |
Acceptance rate | ~50% |
Publisher | MDPI |
Source: Clarivate Journal Citation Reports 2024; MDPI journal information
Sustainability is one of the largest and most broadly scoped peer-reviewed journals in environmental science and policy, publishing across environmental, economic, social, and governance dimensions. The comparatively high acceptance rate reflects volume rather than a lower editorial bar on interdisciplinary relevance.
Before you open the submission portal
Use this checklist before starting the upload:
- Make sure the paper frames a real sustainability decision, not just an environmental observation.
- Check that the title and abstract explain the system, stakeholders, and practical implication clearly.
- Confirm the methods and data support the policy or implementation claims in the discussion.
- Review whether the manuscript integrates environmental, economic, social, or governance dimensions where the question requires that breadth.
- Prepare a cover letter that explains why the journal's interdisciplinary audience should care.
- Verify data availability, funding, conflicts, and author metadata before entering the portal.
The biggest practical mistake here is entering the system with a manuscript that is technically complete but conceptually still too narrow.
Step-by-step submission flow
Step | What to do | What often slows authors down |
|---|---|---|
1. Choose article type and section | Route the paper to the most accurate topical area. | Broad sustainability journals still punish vague section fit. |
2. Finalize title, abstract, and keywords | Make the systems problem and practical consequence explicit. | The abstract stays descriptive and never explains who should act differently. |
3. Prepare figures, tables, and supplement | Highlight the decision-relevant results and assumptions clearly. | Supporting files become sprawling and hard to interpret. |
4. Upload manuscript and metadata | Enter authors, affiliations, funding, conflicts, and data statements carefully. | Metadata mistakes are common in large multi-author sustainability papers. |
5. Check the system proof | Confirm figures, tables, equations, and references render correctly. | Complex interdisciplinary tables often shift or break in proof form. |
6. Submit and answer follow-up quickly | Respond fast to any editorial admin requests. | Slow author responses make a broad-journal submission feel less organized. |
The mechanics are easy. The actual challenge is whether the package shows a coherent sustainability contribution rather than a theme-labeled specialty paper.
Before submitting to Sustainability, a Sustainability manuscript fit check identifies whether the package meets the editorial bar before you commit to the submission.
Common mistakes and avoidable delays
These problems appear often in Sustainability submissions:
- The paper documents a problem but offers weak solution or decision relevance.
- The manuscript claims systems thinking while analyzing only one isolated technical variable.
- The discussion makes policy recommendations that go well beyond the evidence.
- Economic or social feasibility is ignored even though the intervention clearly depends on it.
- The framing is too generic, so the paper could fit almost anywhere and therefore feels weakly positioned.
- The cover letter explains topic relevance but not audience relevance.
Editors can often see these issues before review, which means they function as desk-risk factors, not only reviewer complaints.
What editors are actually screening for
Editorial criterion | What passes | Desk-rejection trigger |
|---|---|---|
Systems framing | The paper addresses a real sustainability decision, policy question, or management challenge; the research integrates environmental, economic, social, or governance dimensions where the question requires it | The paper mentions sustainability in the title and abstract but the analysis proceeds entirely within one technical discipline without engaging the interdisciplinary dimensions the journal requires |
Evidence-to-implication fit | The policy, management, or implementation conclusion is grounded in what the study actually demonstrated; the connection between data and recommendation is visible and defensible | The discussion recommends governance changes or regulatory interventions the study design did not evaluate; the distance between the evidence and the recommendation requires the reader to take a conceptual leap |
Interdisciplinary relevance | The paper explains why readers outside one narrow field should care; the audience spans policy, management, environmental science, engineering, or business | The work is technically rigorous but primarily interesting to one specialist community; a reader outside that community cannot see why the finding matters to sustainability broadly |
Practical implication | The manuscript connects evidence to realistic implementation, decision, or policy choices; the implications are specific enough to be actionable by a practitioner | The paper documents a sustainability challenge but does not show what the reader should do differently; the findings add descriptive data without decision relevance |
What a stronger Sustainability package looks like
A stronger package typically has:
- an abstract that states the problem, intervention or analysis, and real decision consequence
- figures that make tradeoffs, scenarios, or comparative outcomes easy to read
- a discussion that respects the limits of the data while still drawing actionable conclusions
- clear stakeholder relevance rather than vague appeals to sustainability
- a cover letter that explains why this belongs in Sustainability instead of a narrower field journal
That is useful because many borderline submissions are not poor papers. They are papers with weak positioning for an interdisciplinary audience.
What to emphasize in the cover letter
At Sustainability, the cover letter should explain the audience and decision relevance, not just restate the topic. Name the systems problem directly: editors should understand within the first few sentences whether the paper addresses climate mitigation, adaptation, circularity, governance, urban systems, resource use, or another sustainability problem with real downstream consequence.
Explain why the audience is genuinely interdisciplinary, spanning policy, management, engineering, environmental science, or business, rather than assuming the word sustainability does that work automatically. Show how the evidence helps a real decision-maker think differently, not just that sustainability is important.
If the manuscript could sit just as easily in a narrower specialist journal, explain what broader systems or stakeholder logic makes Sustainability the better fit. A letter that argues for the importance of sustainability as a field rather than for the importance of this specific result is consistently the weaker version.
A practical readiness check
Before submission, ask four blunt questions:
- Does the abstract identify a real sustainability decision or tradeoff?
- Does the analysis support the scale of the recommendation in the discussion?
- Would readers outside one narrow subfield still understand why this matters?
- Is the paper more than a technically competent specialty study with a sustainability label?
If two or more answers are no, the manuscript likely needs stronger positioning before submission.
Where authors usually lose the editor
Most weak Sustainability submissions fail in one of three ways:
- the problem statement is broad, but the evidence is too narrow to support the framing
- the paper documents a sustainability challenge but never shows what the reader should actually do with the result
- the system, stakeholder, or implementation angle is claimed rather than demonstrated
Those are submission problems before they become reviewer problems. The journal is broad, but it still expects a coherent editorial story.
Submit now or redirect
The final judgment is usually simple. Submit to Sustainability if the paper speaks to a systems problem with evidence that informs real policy, management, or implementation choices. Redirect or revise first if the manuscript still works mainly as a specialty paper with a broad sustainability wrapper.
Why this submission decision is often harder than it looks
Authors often misread broad journals as easier journals. Sustainability is broad, but that breadth creates a different standard rather than a lower one. The journal still expects the manuscript to explain why an interdisciplinary audience should care, why the conclusions travel beyond one narrow case, and why the practical implications are not overdrawn.
That means the submission decision is really a positioning decision. If the positioning is still fuzzy, the upload should wait.
How to choose the right section and editorial audience
One practical mistake in Sustainability submissions is assuming that any broad section choice will work because the journal itself is broad. In reality, the section choice shapes who first reads the paper and what kind of relevance they expect to see quickly.
Choose the section that matches the decision-maker
If the manuscript is mainly about management or governance, the package should make that visible from the title and abstract onward. If it is fundamentally about engineering implementation, systems optimization, or environmental assessment, the section and framing should reflect that. Editors notice when authors select a section that sounds broad enough to hide weak audience fit.
Keep the disciplinary language under control
Broad-journal submissions become easier when the manuscript uses specialist language carefully. The methods can still be technical, but the framing should make the practical question intelligible to a cross-disciplinary editor on the first read. Sustainability draws readers from engineering, environmental science, social science, economics, and policy. A manuscript that uses heavy technical notation or discipline-specific vocabulary in the abstract and introduction without defining key terms will lose traction early in the editorial process, even when the underlying work is sound.
Align the cover letter with the section choice
The cover letter should explain why the manuscript belongs in the chosen section and why that section's readers are the right audience. That is much stronger than repeating that the paper is “important for sustainability” in general terms. Editors in different sections evaluate relevance differently: a paper submitted to the governance and urban sustainability section needs to show governance or urban systems consequence, not just general environmental framing.
What the final submission package should prove
Before pressing submit, the package should make three things easy for an editor to see:
- what real-world system, policy, or management problem the paper addresses
- what evidence supports the recommendation or implication
- why the paper belongs in a broad sustainability venue rather than a narrow technical journal
If those three points are visible in the title, abstract, figures, and discussion without the editor having to infer them, the submission is in much better shape.
Readiness check
Run the scan while Sustainability's requirements are in front of you.
See how this manuscript scores against Sustainability's requirements before you submit.
Submit If
- the paper addresses a real systems or policy problem
- the practical implication is visible from the abstract onward
- the evidence supports the scale of the recommendation
- the manuscript explains why multiple stakeholder groups should care
- the paper clearly belongs in a broad sustainability venue
Fix first if
- the manuscript is mainly descriptive and the action point is still vague
- the systems framing is stronger in the introduction than in the analysis
- the policy or management recommendations outrun the actual evidence
- the paper would look more natural in a narrower environmental, engineering, or policy journal
- the title and abstract still sound like a specialty paper with “sustainability” added later
What to read next
Before you upload, run your manuscript through a Sustainability submission readiness check to catch the issues editors filter for on first read.
Submit If This Is Your Main Journal Target
- the paper addresses a real systems or policy problem with evidence that informs realistic policy, management, or implementation choices
- the practical implication is visible in the abstract and conclusion: readers understand what decision or practice should change because of the finding
- the evidence supports the scale of the recommendation in the discussion without the distance between data and policy suggestion requiring editorial inference
- the manuscript integrates environmental, economic, social, or governance dimensions where the question requires that breadth
Think Twice If
- the abstract uses sustainability language, but the methods and results table analyze only one technical variable without stakeholder, policy, management, or systems relevance
- the discussion recommends governance, business, or implementation action that the study design did not evaluate
- the tradeoff, scenario, or feasibility evidence is missing, so readers cannot tell who should act differently because of the finding
- the cover letter argues that the topic is important but does not explain why Sustainability is a better venue than a narrower environmental, engineering, or policy journal
Final checklist before submission
- Does the title identify the sustainability system or decision, not only the study object?
- Does the abstract state who should use the finding and what decision it informs?
- Do the methods support the scale of the policy, management, business, or implementation claim?
- Does at least one figure or table make the tradeoff, stakeholder, or systems implication visible?
- Does the discussion separate what the data show from what the authors recommend?
- Does the cover letter explain why the journal's cross-disciplinary audience is the right audience?
Read the public instructions for mechanics, then pressure-test the package the way an editor will see it. The review tells you whether your paper clears the Sustainability fit check before upload, especially around scope-fit ambiguity in the abstract, methods package incomplete for the journal's reviewer pool, and reference-list and clean-citation failure mode. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.
Decision risks before submitting to Sustainability
For Sustainability-targeted manuscripts, three patterns consistently predict desk-screen failure at Sustainability (MDPI). The patterns below are the same ones the journal's handling editors and outside reviewers flag at first-pass triage.
Scope-fit ambiguity in the abstract
Sustainability editors move fastest on manuscripts whose contribution is obviously aligned with sustainability research with quantified environmental, social, or economic-impact metrics and reproducible methodology. The named failure pattern: manuscripts without explicit sustainability framework framing extend revision rounds. Check whether your abstract reads to Sustainability's scope
Methods package incomplete for the journal's reviewer pool
Sustainability reviewers expect specific methodological detail. Case-study papers without quantified sustainability metrics extend reviewer assignment. Check if your methods package is reviewer-complete
Reference-list and clean-citation failure mode
Editorial team at Sustainability (MDPI) screens reference lists for retracted-paper inclusion. Check whether your reference list is clean against Crossref + Retraction Watch
Check reference list and clean citation failure mode before submitting to Sustainability →
Editorial evidence signal for Sustainability (MDPI)
Our review of public author guidance, recent published article packages, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns points to this practical risk: Sustainability reviewers expect explicit sustainability framework alignment (un sdgs or similar); manuscripts without explicit sustainability framing extend revision rounds. Treat this as a fit-and-artifact screen rather than a private outcome claim; official journal pages remain authoritative for submission mechanics and policy requirements.
Check guide build evidence signal for sustainability mdpi before submitting to Sustainability →
Additional pre-submission review patterns for Sustainability
For manuscripts targeting Sustainability, five patterns generate the most consistent desk rejections worth knowing before submission.
Sustainability label in the title but absent from the analysis
The Sustainability instructions for authors position the journal as a venue for research that integrates environmental, economic, social, and governance dimensions to address real sustainability problems with evidence connecting to policy, management, or systems-level decision making, requiring that the sustainability framing be earned by the analysis rather than applied as a label to work that is otherwise a narrow technical or disciplinary study.
Manusights pre-submission pattern analysis shows many desk rejections involve manuscripts where the word sustainability appears in the title and abstract but the analysis proceeds entirely within one technical discipline without engaging the interdisciplinary dimensions the journal requires: the study measures an environmental variable without connecting it to governance or economic tradeoffs, the results have no explicit implications for policy or management decisions, and the sustainability framing is a rhetorical choice rather than a reflection of how the research was designed and executed.
Sustainability editors evaluate whether the interdisciplinary framing is supported by the scope and design of the actual work, and manuscripts where sustainability appears in the framing but not in the analysis are consistently identified as mismatched to the journal's editorial standard.
Policy implication claimed without evidence in the data
The same pattern analysis often finds many submissions arrive with discussion sections that make specific policy recommendations the evidence cannot support: the study documents an environmental condition or social phenomenon, then concludes by recommending governance changes, regulatory interventions, or management strategies that the study design did not evaluate and that the data do not address.
Sustainability rewards papers that connect evidence to realistic implementation choices, but the connection must be grounded in what the study actually demonstrated rather than in the authors' general views about what should change. Manuscripts where the distance between the evidence and the policy recommendation is large enough to require editorial inference consistently face requests to substantially revise the discussion before peer review proceeds.
Paper addresses a narrow technical question in a broad venue
A related pattern is that many submissions present technically rigorous work that would be well-received in a specialist environmental, engineering, or social science journal but cannot make a credible case for why the broad Sustainability audience across policy, management, engineering, and environmental science should care about the specific technical result.
The journal publishes across an unusually broad scope, but that breadth creates a higher bar for explaining why a result that is primarily interesting to one technical community should occupy space in a journal read across multiple disciplines, and manuscripts that are strong within a specialty but have not been reframed for interdisciplinary relevance are consistently identified as better fits for a narrower venue.
Descriptive findings without actionable implications for practice
A related pattern is that many submissions document a sustainability-relevant condition, trend, or pattern in detail but do not provide an answer to the implicit reader question of what should be done differently: the paper shows that a problem exists, describes its scale and distribution, and stops without connecting the finding to the management, governance, or implementation choices that would allow a practitioner to act on the evidence.
Sustainability editors screen for whether submissions provide decision-relevant information rather than simply adding data to a growing literature on sustainability challenges, and manuscripts that are descriptively complete but lack actionable implications consistently require substantial revision before the editorial case can be made for publication.
Cover letter describes the topic rather than the actual finding
A related pattern is that many submissions include cover letters that explain the importance of sustainability as a field, the urgency of the environmental or social challenge studied, and the relevance of the broad topic without articulating what specific result the manuscript adds that was not previously available and what decision or practice that result should change.
Sustainability editors read cover letters to assess whether the paper makes a concrete contribution to how sustainability problems are understood or addressed, not to assess whether sustainability is an important field, and letters that argue for the importance of the topic rather than the importance of the specific finding consistently correlate with manuscripts where the central contribution has not been clearly defined.
SciRev community data author-reported review times provide additional community benchmarks when planning your submission timeline.
Before submitting to Sustainability, a Sustainability submission readiness check identifies whether your systems framing, policy implications, and interdisciplinary relevance meet the editorial bar before you commit to the submission.
Editors consistently screen submissions against these patterns before sending to peer review, so addressing them before upload reduces desk-rejection risk. Submission portal, MDPI APC, and institutional-transformative-agreement coverage. Sustainability submissions route through MDPI SuSy at MDPI SuSy submission system as the sole intake; MDPI does not accept email or alternate-portal submissions.
The APC is currently 2,700 CHF (approximately $3,000 USD) for accepted papers, with no submission fee, no surcharges based on article length, figures, or supplementary data, and no charges for rejected articles.
Many European institutions have transformative agreements with MDPI that cover the APC at zero out-of-pocket for corresponding authors at participating institutions; MDPI also offers institutional discounts, society discounts, and case-by-case waivers for authors at institutions in low- and middle-income countries.
A practical detail authors miss: Sustainability publishes hundreds of Special Issues per year on focused topics, and submission to a Special Issue (rather than the open call) can shorten the review cycle materially because the Guest Editor handles the manuscript directly. The editorial culture rewards interdisciplinary work that names a decision-relevant sustainability framework; it filters out single-discipline work that uses "sustainability" as a keyword.
Or see example reports before you finalize.
If your manuscript is already in the portal, use the Sustainability Under Review status guide to interpret the current status before sending a follow-up email.
Frequently asked questions
Sustainability uses an MDPI online submission portal. Choose the article type and topical section, finalize your title, abstract, and keywords making the systems problem and practical consequence explicit, upload your manuscript with figures, tables, and supplement, enter author metadata and declarations, check the system proof, then submit. Respond quickly to any editorial follow-up.
Sustainability wants papers with a clear systems-level question, a practical implication, and evidence connecting to policy, management, business practice, or systems-level decision making. The paper should integrate environmental, economic, social, or governance dimensions where the question requires that breadth. Simply mentioning sustainability is not enough.
Common mistakes include documenting a problem without offering solution or decision relevance, framing a narrow specialty paper with a sustainability label, writing an abstract that stays descriptive without explaining who should act differently, and entering the system with a manuscript that is technically complete but conceptually too narrow for an interdisciplinary audience.
Yes, Sustainability is an open-access journal published by MDPI. Accepted articles require an article processing charge (APC). The journal is broad and interdisciplinary, covering topics across environmental, economic, and social sustainability dimensions.
Sources
- Sustainability journal homepage
- Sustainability aims and scope
- Sustainability instructions for authors
- Sustainability article processing charges
- Sustainability submit portal
- Sustainability Special Issues
- MDPI APC information and FAQ
- MDPI ethics and publication policies
- Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (JCR 2024), Clarivate Analytics.
Final step
Submitting to Sustainability?
Run the Free Readiness Scan to see score, top issues, and journal-fit signals before you submit.
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