Sustainable Structures
ISSN: 2789-3111 (Print)
ISSN: 2789-312X (Online)
Guide for Authors
Sustainable Structures (SUST) predominantly publishes
Reviews, Research Papers, Technical notes, Meeting Reports, and Case Reports.
All papers must be written in English, and follow a clear, concise style. The
editors may have to check the language and grammar of your submitted manuscript
and make editorial changes if deemed necessary. Manuscripts about materials,
structures, and other applications that do not conform to the principles of
sustainability are outside the scope of this journal. Authors are requested not
to resubmit a rejected manuscript (unless the Editors invite author to
resubmit) as it will not be considered and will be rejected without review.
SUST is an open access journal that does not
require any publication fees. No fees or charges are required for manuscript
processing and open access publishing. All related fees for an accepted
manuscript will be supported by Sustainable Development Press Limited
(SDPL).
All manuscripts must be submitted electronically
via the online submission system, and manuscripts submitted for publication
must be prepared according to the guidelines given below and must be prepared following
the template for submission. Authors may choose to submit their
manuscript as a single Word or PDF file (prioritized) to be used
in the review process. This guideline is intended to assist authors as
they prepare their manuscripts. To avoid any delay with the publication
process, Sustainable Structures (SUST) asks and encourages authors to read the
guidelines carefully before writing their manuscripts. Authors are advised to
contact assistant editor Lily Guo lilyguo1202@126.com, if
they face issue with the online submission system.
Submission Template /kindeditor/attached/file/20240214/20240214153561216121.docx
Cover Letter
A cover letter must be included with a submitted
manuscript. The cover letter must clearly state that the manuscript is an
original work on its own merit, has not been previously published in whole or
in part, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. It should also
include statements clearly indicating that all authors have read the final
manuscript, have approved the submission to the journal, and have accepted full
responsibilities pertaining to the manuscript’s delivery and contents. If there
are any ethical, copyright, disclosure issues that are relevant to the
manuscript, please clearly state those in the cover letter. Authors must
declare that there is no conflict of interests or disclose all potential
and/perceived conflicts of interest regarding the manuscript.
Basic requirements for manuscripts
1. The paper should be original, innovative, scientific, logical
and readable. The paper must not be published previously, or is not under
consideration for publication elsewhere, and if accepted, it will not be
published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language,
without the written consent of the publisher.
2. The length for the abstract should be at least 200 words. 4-6
keywords should be included and each keyword except the first one should be
lowercase unless an uppercase is necessary.
3. Authors must provide the original images of both the figures
(e.g., diagrams, charts, graphs, and photographs) cited in the main text and
the supporting information reported in the article. Images must be clear,
high-contrast, and clearly legible at the size in which they are to appear in
the journal. If a figure or table has been published previously—even by an
author of the manuscript being submitted for review—the copyright holder’s written
acknowledgment and permission for its reuse is often required. For any figures
(or tables) that contain data from a public database, the source should be explicitly
cited in the caption, legend, or title.
4. Only the International System of Units (SI) are acceptable in
text, tables and figures. Abbreviations should be defined in parentheses the
first time they appear in the abstract, main text, and in figure or table
caption and used consistently thereafter. All equations must be typed by
the MathType add-on. Please submit math equations as editable text and not
as images.
5. References must be cited by number in parentheses in the main
text, e.g., [1], [2], [3] etc. If the cited references are consecutive and more
than 2, the following format should be adopted [1–2], [2–5]. References should
be organized in order of citation in the main.
6. All submitted
manuscripts should contain the following parts prior to the list of references:
Acknowledgement: All contributors who do not meet the criteria
for authorship should be listed in this section.
Funding Statement: Authors must disclose all sources of funding for
the research in the Funding Statement of the article. The statement should be
specifying the role of each in the design of the study, the collection,
analysis, and interpretation of data, and the composition of the manuscript.
Specifically, the full name of each source of funding should be provided
accompanied by any associated grant numbers in square brackets, URLs to
sponsors’ websites. If the study has no funding support, please include
“The author(s) received no specific funding for this study.” in the funding
statement. Funding sources should not be written in the Acknowledgments or
anywhere else in the manuscript file.
CRediT authorship contribution statement: The
contributions statement of all authors are urged to be described in the
manuscript.
Conflicts of Interest: Authors must declare all conflicts of interest.
If there are no conflicts of interest, it should also be declared as in the
following example, please write “The authors declare that they have no
conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.
7. If you are an author whose native language is
not English—or you have any concerns regarding the language quality of your
manuscript—we recommend having your manuscript professionally edited by a
qualified English-speaking researcher in your field prior to submission.
Structure
of manuscripts
Subdivision
- numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and
numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...),
1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this
numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'.
Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its
own separate line.
Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an
adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the
results.
Material
and methods
Provide sufficient details to allow the work to
be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published
should be summarized and indicated by a reference. If quoting directly from a
previously published method, use quotation marks and cite the source. Any
modifications to existing methods should also be described.
Theory/calculation
A Theory section should extend, not repeat, the
background to the article already dealt with in the Introduction and lay the
foundation for further work. In contrast, a Calculation section represents a
practical development from a theoretical basis.
Results
Results should be clear and concise.
Discussion
This should explore the significance of the
results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section
is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published
literature.
Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be
presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a
subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.
References
Please ensure that every reference cited in the
text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references
cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal
communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned
in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should
follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a
substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal
communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has
been accepted for publication. A DOI is guaranteed never to change, so you must
use it as a permanent link to any electronic article. Please note the
format of all citations should be in the same style as all other references in
the paper.
Submission checklist
You can use this list to carry out a final
check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review. Please
check the relevant section in this Guide for Authors for more details.
Ensure that the following items are
present:
One author has been designated as the
corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
All necessary files have been uploaded:
Manuscript:
• Include keywords
• All tables (including titles, description,
footnotes)
• Ensure all figure and table citations in
the text match the files provided
• Indicate clearly if color should be used
for any figures in print
Graphical Abstracts / Highlights files (where
applicable)
Supplemental files (where applicable)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell checked' and
'grammar checked'
• All references mentioned in the Reference
List are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of
copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)
• A competing interests statement is
provided, even if the authors have no competing interests to declare
• Journal policies detailed in this guide
have been reviewed
• Referee suggestions and contact details
provided, based on journal requirements
Revised Submissions
Use of word processing software
Regardless of the file format of the
original submission, at revision you must provide us with an editable file of
the entire article and be fitted according to the SUST
Journal template (Downloaded from the linkage mentioned above). To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to
use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' functions of your word processor.
Open Access
Sustainable Structures (SUST) makes all content freely available to all
researchers worldwide. All published papers have DOI numbers registered through
Crossref (https://www.crossref.org/). Content is published online to provide timely communication to the
community and keep publication times to a minimum. The PDF edition of all
published papers for SUST could be downloaded freely from the journal website: http://www.sustain-dpl.com/journal/sust.
Copyright, Licensing and Repository policy
Sustainable Structures (SUST) publishes all
articles under an open-access license, which means that the articles remain accessible to all without charge and
without technical or legal barriers and that they can be reused with
proper acknowledgment and citation. Financial support for the open access
publication is provided by Sustainable Development Press Limited (SDPL)
once manuscripts have been accepted. The authors’ institutions or research
funding agencies won’t pay any fees for the open access publication. More
specifically, SUST publishes articles under the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) License. Sustainable Structures is committed to open access
publishing as a means to foster the exchange of research among scientists,
especially across disciplines.
The copyright and other proprietary rights
related to papers published by Sustainable Structures are retained by the
authors. If the authors reproduce any text, figures, tables, or illustrations
from the papers published by Sustainable Structures in their own future
research, they must cite the originally published version. Sustainable
Structures (SUST) allow authors to deposit versions of their work in an
institutional or other repository of their choice. They are further asked
to inform Sustainable Structures’ editorial office of any exceptional
circumstances in this regard at the time of submission, for which exceptions
may be granted at the discretion of the publisher. Articles published in
Sustainable Structures are likely to contain material republished with
permission under a more restrictive license. When this situation arises, it
should be indicated; it is the responsibility of the authors to seek permission
for reuse from the copyright holder.
All papers are licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original papers are properly cited.
• All figures (include relevant captions)
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.