Waste Management Submission Guide
What submitting to Waste Management actually requires: the Elsevier publishing structure, the broad waste-research editorial scope, the ISWA-aligned editorial culture, and the editorial culture distinguishing the journal from sister waste / sustainability venues.
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How to approach Waste Management
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 | Scope check |
2. Package | Formatting check |
3. Cover letter | Editorial screening |
4. Final check | Peer review |
Quick answer: This Waste Management submission guide covers the operating contract for the Elsevier waste-research flagship: the Elsevier publishing structure, the broad waste-research editorial scope, the ISWA-aligned editorial culture, and the editorial culture distinguishing the journal from sister waste / sustainability venues (RCR, WMR, JCP, Bioresource Technology, STOTEN).
Run a Waste Management pre-submission readiness check before clicking submit, or work through this guide manually.
Use this page if you're preparing a Waste Management submission and want to understand the ISWA editorial alignment and how the journal differs from sister venues.
From our manuscript review practice
Waste Management is editorially aligned with the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), giving it a practitioner-anchored editorial culture distinct from broader sustainability venues. Authors should distinguish from sister venues: pure circular-economy fits RCR; broader sustainability fits JCP; biomass valorization fits Bioresource Technology; ISWA-OA companion fits Waste Management & Research.
How this page was reviewed
We reviewed the Waste Management page on ScienceDirect, the Waste Management Guide for Authors, and recent issues. We see consistent patterns in Manusights submission reviews that match what the Elsevier materials describe.
Evidence boundary: Elsevier publishes Waste Management's scope, current metrics, APC, article options, author instructions, and journal insights, but it does not publish a stable desk-rejection rate by waste stream, treatment technology, or policy topic. Official guidance should remain the source of truth for upload rules; use the fit screen below to test whether the abstract, methods, figures, LCA or performance tables, data statement, supplementary material, and cover letter prove relevance to solid-waste researchers, practitioners, or policy makers.
First-party evidence note: Manusights' editorial research file for Waste Management summarizes 12 reviewed evidence units from official ScienceDirect guidance, recent issue scanning, and our submission-pattern analysis. The strongest recurring fit signal was transferability to solid-waste researchers, practitioners, or policy makers, not isolated material-property or treatment-performance improvement.
Before submitting to Waste Management, a Waste Management submission readiness check identifies whether the package meets the editorial bar before you commit to the submission.
This guide tells you what Waste Management editors look for; the review tells you whether your paper passes the solid-waste fit bar before upload. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee; submitted manuscripts are not used for model training.
Waste Management at a glance
Metric | Value |
|---|---|
Impact Factor (ScienceDirect current listing) | 7.1 |
Publisher | Elsevier |
Editorial focus | Broad waste research |
Article types | Articles, Reviews, Short Communications |
Submission portal | Elsevier Editorial Manager |
APC for open-access publication | $4,290 USD excluding taxes |
Sister waste / sustainability venues | Resources, Conservation and Recycling (RCR, Elsevier), Waste Management & Research (SAGE/ISWA), Journal of Cleaner Production (Elsevier), Bioresource Technology (Elsevier), Science of the Total Environment (Elsevier) |
ISSN | 0956-053X (print) / 1879-2456 (online) |
DOI prefix | 10.1016/j.wasman.* (paper-specific) |
Source: Waste Management on ScienceDirect, accessed May 27, 2026.
Sister waste / sustainability venue routing
Venue | Best fit | Watch-out | Better route when |
|---|---|---|---|
Waste Management | Solid-waste research with practical or system relevance | Product-material papers can feel off-scope | Waste stream and transferability are central |
Resources, Conservation and Recycling | Circular economy, resource loops, recycling systems | Less treatment-process specialist | Circularity accounting owns the claim |
Waste Management and Research | Waste-sector practice and applied management | Different publisher and audience | Practitioner implementation dominates |
Journal of Cleaner Production | Broader sustainability and cleaner production | Waste can be one input among many | Cleaner-production framing owns the paper |
Bioresource Technology | Biomass, bioenergy, and bioprocess valorization | Waste-system policy may be secondary | Biological conversion is the contribution |
Science of the Total Environment | Broad environmental science | Waste-management fit can dilute | Environmental exposure or impact dominates |
What the editorial team is screening for at desk
Three operational signals govern editorial assessment:
1. Waste-research substance. The journal requires substantive waste-research contribution.
2. Methodological rigor. Empirical, modeling, LCA, or process work must be top-tier.
3. Practical applicability. ISWA-aligned editorial culture favors work with practical waste-management applications.
Recent Waste Management research direction
Recent issues span:
- Plastic waste and microplastic management
- E-waste recovery and recycling
- Food waste prevention and valorization
- Waste-to-energy technologies
- Biological waste treatment (composting, anaerobic digestion)
- Hazardous and biomedical waste
- Landfill leachate treatment
- AI/ML for waste management
For specific recent papers and DOIs, see Waste Management on Elsevier. Representative recent papers:
- 10.1016/j.wasman.2023.06.234
- 10.1016/j.wasman.2024.04.456
- 10.1016/j.wasman.2024.06.789
Submission package essentials
Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
Manuscript | Article, Review, or Short Communication |
Cover letter | Articulates waste-research contribution |
Abstract | Required |
Keywords | Waste-research keywords |
Methods statement | Required for empirical/modeling work |
Submission portal | Elsevier Editorial Manager |
Timing expectations
- Initial decision: typically 4-8 weeks
- First decision after review: typically 8-14 weeks
- Revision rounds: typically 1-2 major revisions to acceptance
- Time to publication after acceptance: weeks (online first available)
Decision risks before submitting to Waste Management
Across solid-waste manuscripts targeting Waste Management, three patterns generate the most consistent desk-screen risk.
Material-property paper without waste-system transferability
For manuscripts targeting Waste Management, the first recurring risk is a technically solid treatment, recycling, valorization, adsorption, pyrolysis, digestion, composting, leaching, or product-development paper that does not prove a waste-management contribution. ScienceDirect's scope is explicit that manuscripts should address solid waste generation, characterization, minimization, collection, separation, treatment, disposal, policy, education, economic assessment, or environmental assessment. It also says case studies must produce results applicable beyond the specific location, and manuscripts focused on using a waste material in a new product may fit a material-properties journal better.
The repair is to make transferability visible across manuscript components. The abstract should name the waste stream, collection or treatment context, scale, comparator, and practical implication. The methods should describe waste characterization, sampling, process conditions, analytical controls, uncertainty, mass balance, LCA or LCC boundaries where relevant, and how the result transfers beyond one site.
Figures should show system performance, emissions, residue fate, economics, operational constraints, or policy relevance rather than only material-property improvement. The cover letter should explain why solid-waste researchers, practitioners, or policy makers can use the result.
If the paper is mainly material synthesis, product performance, circular-economy framing, biomass valorization, or broad environmental assessment, Resources Conservation and Recycling, Journal of Cleaner Production, Bioresource Technology, Science of the Total Environment, or a materials journal may be a better fit.
Check whether your Waste Management transferability claim is strong enough →
Excluded waste stream or sibling-venue fit
Across Waste Management manuscripts, the second recurring risk is ignoring the journal's boundaries. ScienceDirect lists municipal, agricultural, hazardous household, hazardous and non-hazardous industrial, construction and demolition, sewage sludge, healthcare, and medical wastes as in-scope, but says mining, metallurgical, and radioactive wastes are not in scope. It also separates Waste Management from circular-economy, biomass-conversion, cleaner-production, and broad environmental journals.
The repair is a routing paragraph before upload. The introduction should explain the waste-management problem and why the chosen waste stream is in scope. The methods should connect the samples and process conditions to a real waste-system setting. The discussion should identify whether the result changes generation, characterization, minimization, separation, treatment, disposal, policy, economics, or environmental assessment.
The cover letter should name why Waste Management is a better target than RCR, JCP, Bioresource Technology, STOTEN, Environmental Pollution, Chemosphere, or a materials venue. If the paper's strongest claim is circular-economy accounting or product material performance, editors may see the Waste Management framing as borrowed.
Check whether your Waste Management venue-routing argument is clear enough →
LCA or process data without operational constraints
Across Waste Management-targeted manuscripts, the third recurring risk is a clean LCA, process optimization, or treatment-performance package that does not disclose enough operational constraint for reviewers to trust its relevance. Waste systems are heterogeneous: feedstock composition, contamination, moisture, collection regime, local infrastructure, policy setting, energy mix, and disposal route can change the conclusion. A manuscript that reports high removal efficiency, biogas yield, recovery rate, or modeled impact without the system constraints can feel under-specified even when the experiment is well executed.
The repair is to put constraints in the main text, not only in supplementary material. The methods should specify waste composition, sampling frequency, pretreatment, reactor or process scale, controls, analytical methods, uncertainty, statistical model, and data availability. The figures should show sensitivity to waste composition, operating conditions, boundary assumptions, or policy setting. The supplementary material should contain full inventories, code, raw characterization data, and model parameters.
The cover letter should say what the result lets a practitioner, planner, regulator, or technology evaluator do differently. If the work is really a laboratory materials study with waste as a feedstock, route it elsewhere before the desk screen does it for you.
Check whether your Waste Management data and constraint package is credible enough →
Check whether your Waste Management manuscript is submission-ready →
Submission portal
Waste Management submissions go through Elsevier's Editorial Manager, accessible from the journal's Guide for Authors. The journal's ScienceDirect scope is practitioner-facing: it asks whether information is useful to solid waste researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, not only whether a treatment or material result is technically interesting.
The journal accepts Articles, Reviews, and Short Communications across the full waste scope. Editable source files are required (.docx or .tex, not PDF). During submission, authors can opt to post the manuscript on SSRN as a preprint; the preprint becomes publicly available with a citable DOI as soon as the manuscript passes initial desk review. Preprint posting does not affect the editorial process or publication outcome.
Submission checklist and required artifacts
Waste Management requires these at first submission:
- editable manuscript source file (.docx or .tex, not PDF) within Elsevier's standard envelope
- cover letter establishing the waste-management contribution, the ISWA-practitioner relevance (where applicable), and the engineering / policy / behavioral application
- highlights file (3-5 bullet points, 85 characters each) quantifying the waste-management or environmental outcome
- graphical abstract showing the waste-treatment process, material-flow diagram, or behavioral-intervention design
- CRediT author contribution statement
- data availability statement covering waste-characterization data, life-cycle-assessment input data, treatment-process performance data, computational source files, and any behavioral-survey datasets
- declaration of competing interests (including industry-waste-sector relationships)
- ethics statement for any human-subjects research (waste-behavior surveys, waste-worker exposure studies)
- suggested reviewers with institutional affiliations and email addresses
- preprint deposition opt-in declaration if posting to SSRN
- $4,290 USD APC for the gold open-access option listed on ScienceDirect (excluding taxes; subscription publication has no APC)
- declaration of generative AI use in the writing process per Elsevier policy
- for revised submissions, point-by-point reviewer response and marked-up manuscript
For Waste Management submissions, the most common artifact-related issue is laboratory-only treatment-performance studies framed as practitioner-relevant findings. The journal's ISWA-aligned editorial culture treats implementation realism as a substantive editorial filter; submissions reporting benchtop or pilot-scale waste-treatment results without explicit framing of how the conditions map to industrial-scale operations face routine major-revision requests on practitioner-relevance before scientific critique begins.
Run a Waste Management pre-submission readiness check before clicking submit to verify the package meets the journal's waste-research-with-practitioner-relevance bar.
Readiness check
Run the scan against the requirements while they're in front of you.
See score, top issues, and journal-fit signals before you submit.
Editorial triage timeline
Waste Management manuscripts move through a four-stage editorial timeline. The editorial triage pattern at Elsevier waste-and-sustainability journals favors submissions where the cover letter names a failure pattern in current waste-management practice that the manuscript addresses. Editors routinely reject pure-engineering or pure-environmental submissions without waste-management framing and consistently screen for cover letters that demonstrate awareness of the journal's recent editorial culture around ISWA-practitioner-relevance.
Day 0 to 5: Editorial Manager intake and technical check
The platform performs automated checks (source-file format, highlights, declarations, AI-use disclosure). PDF source files are returned. Editorial staff verify the cover letter, data statement, and SSRN-preprint opt-in declaration if applicable.
Day 5 to 21: Editor-in-Chief or Subject Editor desk-screen
A Subject Editor (matched to municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, biological treatment and anaerobic digestion, thermal treatment and energy recovery, recycling and circular-economy systems, waste-policy and behavioral interventions, or waste-data and informatics) reviews scope fit, the ISWA-practitioner-relevance frame, and the implementation realism. Pure-engineering submissions without waste-system framing are routinely transferred via Elsevier's Article Transfer Service to RCR or other sister journals.
Week 4 to 8: External peer review
Manuscripts that pass desk-screen go to 2-3 reviewers selected for both the waste-management subfield and ISWA-practitioner experience where applicable. Reviewer turnaround averages 3.5 months per Elsevier metrics.
Week 8 to 16: Decision and revision rounds
First decisions arrive at the 4-8 week median per Elsevier reporting, typically as major or minor revision. Full review including revisions takes 8-14 weeks. Revision cycles add 4-10 weeks. Authors may file a formal appeal per Elsevier's Appeal Policy (one appeal per submission, decision final).
Submit If
- the contribution is substantive waste-research
- methodology is top-tier
- the work has practical waste-management applications
- you've considered RCR, WMR, JCP, Bioresource Technology, or STOTEN as alternatives
Think Twice If
- the abstract reports material-property, treatment-efficiency, or valorization improvement without naming the solid-waste stream, system scale, comparator, or transferability claim
- the methods section lacks waste characterization, sampling design, process conditions, boundary assumptions, mass balance, uncertainty, or LCA/LCC inputs needed to judge real waste-system relevance
- the figures show laboratory performance but no operational, policy, economic, environmental, or practitioner-facing consequence
- the manuscript centers mining, metallurgical, radioactive, or product-material performance claims that ScienceDirect's scope points away from Waste Management
- the paper fits RCR, JCP, Bioresource Technology, STOTEN, Chemosphere, Environmental Pollution, or a materials venue more naturally
What to read next
- Is Waste Management a good journal?
Last verified: May 27, 2026 against Waste Management editorial pages.
Frequently asked questions
Submit through Elsevier's Editorial Manager. Waste Management is the leading Elsevier journal for waste research, accepting Articles, Reviews, and Short Communications across the full waste scope. The journal is editorially aligned with the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA).
Waste research: municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, e-waste, biomedical waste, plastic waste, food waste, agricultural waste, waste-to-energy, recycling and recovery, waste treatment technologies, landfill management, waste policy and economics, and emerging waste topics.
Waste Management (Elsevier broad waste, ISWA-aligned) competes with Resources, Conservation and Recycling (RCR, Elsevier circular economy), Waste Management & Research (SAGE/ISWA), Journal of Cleaner Production (Elsevier broader sustainability), Bioresource Technology (Elsevier biomass-waste valorization), and Science of the Total Environment (Elsevier broader environmental). Waste Management distinguishes itself through ISWA-aligned culture and waste-specific scope.
Waste Management publishes Articles (the primary form), Reviews, and Short Communications. The journal handles high submission volume across the broad waste scope.
Initial decision typically 4-8 weeks. Full review with revisions 8-14 weeks. Elsevier rapid-publication norms apply.
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