Environmental Policy and Law

The Journal for Decision-Makers

CiteScore
2023
0.7

Volume

53, 6 issues

Latest issue

53:5-6 online 27 February 2024

Next issue

54:1 scheduled for April 2024

Back volumes

From volume 1, 1975

ISSN print

0378-777X

ISSN online

1878-5395
Open Access

Aims & Scope

Environmental Policy and Law (EPL) is a global journal that seeks to publish cutting-edge scholarly works that have global significance. It provides a platform to facilitate an ideational understanding of international environmental policy, law, and institutional issues.

EPL aims to cater to the quest of the scholars and the decision-makers to address the environmental "world problematique." It will, where possible, also try to accommodate high-quality research works on regional and national (policy, law, and institutional) issues of significance that have global value as well as replicable in other parts of the world. EPL’s ideational vision and the content will be guided by this primary remit to pursue a pathway for a better common environmental future.

The journal welcomes submissions of articles that pertain to the above mentioned scope. Articles are only accepted for publication after a double-blind reviewing process and if they are in accordance with the journal’s author guidelines. EPL also publishes invited content and these articles will be refereed by the Editors.

By bridging both academic and professional domains in the environmental field, EPL seeks to serve the needs of professionals, practitioners, researchers, students, and policymakers. The journal invites contributions with legal analyses to remain at the forefront of the concerted scholarly discourse and provide practical solutions for global environmental challenges in the 21st century and beyond.

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In January 2017, it was with deep sadness that we announced the passing of Dr. Wolfgang E. Burhenne, who was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Policy and Law. For a tribute, please visit this website.

Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief

Bharat H. Desai, PhD
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Centre for International Legal Studies
New Delhi
India
Email: desai@jnu.ac.in

Managing Editor

Moumita Mandal, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Jawaharlal Nehru Chair, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Assistant Editor

Amrendra Kumar
Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

Publisher

Marten Stavenga
IOS Press, Amsterdam
the Netherlands
Email: m.stavenga@iospress.nl

Founding Editor

Wolfgang E. Burhenne

Honorary Editor

Achim Steiner

Editorial Board

Yann Aguila, Affiliate Professor
Sciences Po, Paris
France

Marisol Anglés-Hernández, PhD
National Autonomous University of Mexico, Institute of Legal Research, Mexico City
Mexico

Ilker K. Basaran, PhD
Texas A&M University, Galveston, TX
USA

Antonio Herman Benjamin, PhD
National High Court, Brasilia
Brazil

Ben Boer, LLM
The University of Sydney Law School, Sydney
Australia

Klaus Bosselmann, PhD
University of Auckland, New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law, Auckland
New Zealand

Edith Brown Weiss, PhD
Georgetown University, Georgetown Law, Washington, DC
USA

Philippe Cullet, JSD
SOAS University of London, School of Law, London
United Kingdom

&
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
India

David Freestone, LLD
George Washington University, Law School, Washington, DC
USA

Anna Grear, BCL
Cardiff University, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff
United Kingdom

Camena Guneratne, PhD
Open University of Sri Lanka, Department of Legal Studies, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka

Jordi Jaria-Manzano, PhD
Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona Centre for Environmental Law Studies, Tarragona
Spain

Kirk W. Junker, PhD
University of Cologne, Faculty of Law, Cologne
Germany

Michelle Lim, PhD
Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University
Singapore

Said Mahmoudi, LLD
Stockholm University, Faculty of Law, Stockholm
Sweden

Nele Matz-Lück, PhD
Kiel University, Walther Schücking Institute for International Law, Kiel
Germany

Owen McIntyre, PhD
University College Cork, School of Law & Environmental Research Institute, Cork
Ireland

Elisa Morgera, PhD
University of Strathclyde Law School, 
Glasgow
United Kingdom

Melanie Jean Murcott, LLD
University of Pretoria, Department of Public Law, 
Pretoria
South Africa

Kazuhiro Nakatani, LLB
University of Tokyo, Faculty of Law, Tokyo
Japan

Walters Nsoh, PhD
University of Birmingham, Birmingham Law School, Birmingham
United Kingdom

Tiina Paloniitty, LLD
University of Helsinki, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science and Faculty of Law, Helsinki
Finland

Ann Powers, JD
Pace University, Pace Law School, New York, NY
USA

Walter Rademacher, PhD
Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Statistical Sciences, Rome
Italy

Eckard Rehbinder, LLD
Goethe University, Environmental Law Research Institute, Frankfurt
Germany

Benjamin J. Richardson, PhD
University of Tasmania, Faculty of Law, Hobart
Australia

Nicholas Robinson, JD
Pace University, Pace Law School, New York, NY
USA

Greg Rose, LLM
University of Wollongong, School of Law, Wollongong
Australia

Oliver C. Ruppel, LLD
Stellenbosch University, Faculty of Law, Stellenbosch
South Africa
&
University of Graz, Research Center for Climate Law [Clim:Law] at the Faculty of Law, Graz
Austria

David C. Smith, PhD
The University of the West Indies, Institute for Sustainable Development, 
Kingston
Jamaica

Surya P. Subedi, QC, DCL
University of Leeds, School of Law, Leeds
United Kingdom

Cleo Verkuijl, LLM
Stockholm Environment Instute, SEI Oxford, Oxford
United Kingdom

Christina Voigt, JD
University of Oslo, Department of Public and International Law, Oslo
Norway

Tomme Rosanne Young, JD
Hastings College of the Law, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
USA

Author Guidelines

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

By submitting my article to this journal, I agree to the Author Copyright Agreement, the IOS Press Ethics Policy, and the IOS Press Privacy Policy.

Authors are requested to submit their manuscript electronically to the journal’s peer-review management system: editorialmanager.com/epl.

See the full instructions to authors on the EPL website.

Publication fee
Environmental Policy and Law (EPL) does not charge a publication fee.

EPL has transitioned to a Subscribe to Open (S2O) model for 2023 and 2024, which means that articles published between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2024 are open access and fully accessible, published under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 license. Another benefit is that there are no author fees or article processing charges (APCs) associated with this open access model. Read more about S2O.

Color figures
It is possible to have figures printed in color, provided the cost of their reproduction is paid for by the author. 

COPYRIGHT

Copyright of your article
Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that they have read and agreed to the terms of the IOS Press Author Copyright Agreement.

Article sharing
Authors of journal articles are permitted to self-archive and share their work through institutional repositories, personal websites, and preprint servers. Authors have the right to use excerpts of their article in other works written by the authors themselves, provided that the original work is properly cited. The consent for sharing an article, in whole or in part, depends on the version of the article that is shared, where it is shared, and the copyright license under which the article is published. Please refer to the IOS Press Article Sharing Policy for further information.

Quoting from other publications
Authors, when quoting from someone else's work or when considering reproducing figures or tables from a book or journal article, should make sure that they are not infringing a copyright. Although in general authors may quote from other published works, permission should be obtained from the holder of the copyright if there will be substantial extracts or reproduction of tables, plates, or other figures. If the copyright holder is not the author of the quoted or reproduced material, it is recommended that the permission of the author should also be sought. Material in unpublished letters and manuscripts is also protected and must not be published unless permission has been obtained. Submission of a paper will be interpreted as a statement that the author has obtained all the necessary permission. A suitable acknowledgement of any borrowed material must always be made.

Please visit the IOS Press Authors page for further information.

Abstracted/Indexed in

Academic Search
Business Source Complete
CAB Abstracts
Cabell's Guide or Directory
CSA Illumina
Database WasteInfo
EBSCO Databases
Ecolex
EMBIO
Environment Abstracts
Environment Complete
Fisheries Review
GEOBASE
HeinOnline
Linkages Update
MasterFILE
Microsoft Academic Search
PAIS International
Pollution Abstracts
Scopus
SD-Cite
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory
Water Resources Abstracts
Wildlife Review Abstracts

Subscribe to Open

The Journal Environmental Policy and Law (EPL) has transitioned to a Subscribe to Open (S2O) model for 2023, which means that articles published between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2024 are open access and fully accessible, published under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 license. Another benefit is that there are no author fees or article processing charges (APCs) associated with this open access model.

S2O is an alternative sustainable subscription model that converts scholarly subscription journals to open access one year at a time. Under this model, institutions continue to subscribe to journals of value to their community, and if sufficient revenue is generated, the entire year's content will be published open access. Read more about S2O.

Peer Review Policy

Environmental Policy and Law is a peer-reviewed journal. All articles submitted to the journal undergo a double blind peer review process. This means that the names and affiliations of the authors are not communicated to the reviewers, and the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors. Please visit our reviewer guidelines for further information about how to conduct a review.

After automatic plagiarism screening through iThenticate, all submitted manuscripts are subjected to initial appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief and, if found suitable for further consideration, to rigorous peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees. The journal also publishes invited content and these articles will be refereed by the Editors.

Reasons to reject a paper in the pre-screening process could for example be because the work does not fall within the aims and scope, the writing is of poor quality, the instructions to authors were not followed or the presented work is not novel. Important: all articles not created using the journal style templates for LaTeX or MS Word (see author instructions) are desk rejected.

Papers deemed suitable to be reviewed will be assigned a handling editor. The handling editor will then invite reviewers to comment on the work. Typically decisions are based on three reviews, in some circumstances a minimum of two reviews may be deemed sufficient to make a decision on a paper. The Editor-in-Chief strive to ensure a typical turnaround time of 3 months.

Reviewers are asked to judge a paper on at least:

  • Originality, novelty and significance of results
  • Technical quality of work
  • Comprehensibility and presentation of the paper
  • Overall impression

Based on the received reviews the handling editor will propose to the Editor-in-Chief a recommendation:

  1. Accept
  2. Minor revisions required
  3. Major revisions required
  4. Revise and resubmit
  5. Reject

They mean the following:

  1. Accept: The manuscript is suitable for publication and only requires minor polishing; thus, no further reviews are requested.
  2. Minor revisions required: The authors are required to make moderate changes to their manuscript. The manuscript becomes acceptable for publication if the changes proposed by the reviewers and editors are successfully addressed. The revised manuscript will be examined by the Editor-in-Chief and possibly sent back to all (or a selection of) reviewers for a second round of reviews. Authors are requested to provide a letter to the reviewers detailing the improvements made for the resubmission.
  3. Major revisions required: The manuscript cannot be accepted for publication in its current form. However, a major revision which addresses all issues raised by the reviewers may be acceptable for publication. The revised manuscript will undergo a full second round of review. Authors are requested to provide a letter to the reviewers detailing the improvements made for the resubmission.
  4. Revise and resubmit: In its current form, the manuscript is not suitable for publication. A resubmission would require substantial revisions and is only encouraged in special cases.
  5. Reject: The manuscript is rejected as it is deemed to be out of scope, not relevant, or not meeting the journal’s quality standards in terms of significance, novelty, and/or presentation.

Authors are notified by the Editor-in-Chief, whose decision is final.

Supporting Diversity and Inclusion

This journal supports IOS Press' actions relating to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and commits to the Diversity and Inclusion Statement.

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More information will be available in due course. Check the SDGs page for updates.  

Discover about the 2022 EPL special section, book & webinar!

 

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Click the banner to discover the first EPL content featuring in the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative initiative:

 

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