Review Procedures

Using a peer-review process, the co-editors and associate editors rigorously review all manuscripts submitted to the journal. If the editors judge a submitted manuscript to fall within the scope of the journal, they send it to two referees for evaluation. In rare cases, decisions about suitability are made after only one review. The identities of all referees are confidential. Based on the referee reports, the editors decide to accept or reject the manuscript for publication. Editors might ask the author for revisions that the referee suggests. Authors must send their revised manuscript to the editorial office in a timely manner in order to maintain the original date of receipt.

Criteria for Publication

To be accepted for publication in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE), your manuscript must meet the following criteria:

  • Be written clearly and concisely in correct English.
  • If used, have mathematics that are formulated precisely in a manner understandable to scientists and engineers.
  • Contain relevant background information when necessary without dominating the work.
  • Have content that is scientifically sound and logically presented.
  • Contribute significantly to the existing body of literature and be accessible and of interest to the broad and interdisciplinary community of JRSE readers.

If the editors believe a manuscript is insufficient for publication, they will reject it without refereeing. (For further details, see Information for Contributors.)

Language standard: It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that manuscripts are written clearly. A manuscript can be rejected if the scientific meaning is unclear due to poor English. Manuscripts that do not meet Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy’s  language standard will be returned to the authors for rewrite before peer review, during the review process and/or if provisionally accepted pending language editing.

Because good science has no value unless it is clearly communicated, AIP Publishing recommends that authors use AIPP Author Services to improve the quality of your paper’s written English. AIPP Author Services was developed in line with our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion for all authors. Using this service ensures that your paper will be free of language deficiencies, so editors and reviewers will be able to fully understand your research during the review process. A native English-speaking subject matter expert of AIP Author Services will correct spelling, grammar and punctuation and verify the use and consistency of technical terms and content in your paper. Note that this is not a requirement or a guarantee of acceptance for review or publication.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors approve of the inclusion of their names in the byline. If the name of a co-author is added or removed, all original authors must approve the change. To add a co-author, that co-author must send his or her approval in writing. We will not publish a manuscript until we receive all required signatures.

Authors publishing in the journal retain the copyright and must complete an exclusive License to Publish Agreement. When authors submit their manuscript to the journal, they imply that their work has neither been previously copyrighted nor accepted for publication elsewhere. Since authors must complete the License to Publish Agreement before the journal publishes their manuscript, we encourage you to sign the agreement electronically when you submit your manuscript. This will prevent unnecessary delays. We also require authors to inform the editors if a manuscript has been previously submitted to another journal, regardless whether the manuscript is active with that journal.

Authors may appeal an editor's decision to reject a manuscript by requesting that the editor reconsider. If the disagreement cannot be resolved, including by consultation with the original or additional reviewers as appropriate, the arguments of both sides will be presented to an independent third party adjudicator for their judgment. If the editor maintains the decision to reject the manuscript, the publisher of AIP Publishing will review the author’s subsequent appeals, if any. The publisher does not decide whether a manuscript should be accepted but rather assesses whether editors followed the proper procedures for reviewing the manuscript. If editors did not follow the proper procedures, we will review the manuscript again and decide whether to publish.

Article Types

Format and Content

You may submit your manuscript in one of several formats: Articles, Tutorials, Methods, Letters, Comments, or Errata. In addition, JRSE occasionally publishes, by invitation only, special topic sections, perspective articles, and review articles. Your manuscript should have some broad interest to workers in more than one subfield of renewable and sustainable energy. If your manuscript involves a more specialized topic that would interest a limited number of readers in only one subfield, please submit it to a more specialized journal.

Authors should place their work in context by including references to relevant published literature. While there is no length limit for articles, please keep the manuscript as concise as possible to clearly describe the research. It is better to present your work as a single, longer article rather than break it into several shorter articles. However, in all cases, the editors will decide whether the manuscript’s length is appropriate for the information that it contains.

Regular Articles: Most manuscripts are submitted as Regular Articles. These articles are full length, topically relevant, timely, and important reports of advances in renewable energy research or policy. Articles should not contain previously published material and should have a significant quantity of new material. Avoid including related results in several manuscripts when your scientific argument would be made more persuasive by grouping many results in a single manuscript. Your manuscript should demonstrate the utility of new methods or techniques and include a significant example using the new method. Routine experiments or calculations that simply extend previous methods to a new system are not appropriate unless the results are used to significantly advance the solution of an important problem.

Tutorials: JRSE is committed to serving the needs of the worldwide renewable energy community, especially people just starting out in the field. To that end, the journal features a Tutorials section aimed at the advanced-graduate level to help shape the next generation of renewable energy researchers and consumers. Tutorials also support researchers interested in engaging in specific topics or techniques or improving their skills in a particular area. For more information about how to submit a Tutorial, click the Tutorial Instruction link in the left navigation pane.

Methods: Methods articles must present new or improved experimental or computation techniques, fully describe the relevant methods and techniques, meet the journal’s language standards, contain high-quality figures, and reference foundational and recent papers in journals of a similar or overlapping scope. Methods papers should present new results that validate the method, demonstrate its applicability to a problem of interest, illustrate its technological improvement over available approaches, and include all the technical details needed for its independent replication. Methods papers can involve the development of an entirely new technique or a significant advance to an existing technique.

Letters: Devoted to preliminary reports of highly significant work, the Letters section offers quick publication for authors. Letters may be complete themselves or include an additional Regular Article that presents substantial additional significant information. Letters must not exceed 3500 words.

Comments and Responses:  The purpose of Comments is to correct significant errors in articles published in the journal, to rebut conclusions reached, or to provide additional insight or corroboration. Comments must address scientific issues only and be concise, substantive, and contain no harsh criticism. We discourage Comments on questions of priority or calling attention to an oversight in a reference list. Generally, the editor-in-chief will invite the authors of the targeted Comment to respond in print. The editor may decide to accept Comments and Responses, if any, for publication only after the two parties have submitted final versions of their pieces. The editor-in-chief reserves the right to send Comments and Responses to an adjudicator or to reject one or both for publication.

Errata: Errata are corrections of errors in previously published papers. These can be errors accidentally introduced into the article during the publication process or errors in the research that were discovered after publication. Errata should be confined to specific errors. Further discussion or additional work that either confirms or denies previous work should be presented as a separate Article or Comment.

Perspectives: Perspectives are overviews of significant emerging areas or areas of increasing importance to readers. We encourage authors of Perspectives to comment on the future of the field. A Perspectives introduction is for scientists or policymakers who have not themselves worked on the problem. They also include a summary of the state-of-the-art to experts in the field. Perspectives are published infrequently and are commissioned by the editors only.

Special Topic Sections: Published occasionally, Special Topics are collections of articles connected by a single topical thread reporting on new research results or policy analyses that significantly advance our understanding of the field. We review Special Topics using the same criteria for Regular Articles. The journal editors or a guest editor may assemble Special Topics; however, JRSE editors have the final decision whether to accept or reject manuscripts for this section.

Supplementary Material: The editors and AIP encourage authors to submit supplemental material that may be of interest only to a few readers who are working on a problem. Supplementary Material is published alongside an author’s manuscript. You may include long data tables, large amounts of figures, and long and detailed portions of text that are not necessary for an overall understanding of the main manuscript. Supplementary Material is linked to the electronic version of the journal and is immediately available to readers. There is no restriction on the format of supplemental files; however, the editors strongly encourage authors to use ASCII text to present data. Word processing packages change in time, and ASCII text files are more likely to be readable in the future. Formats such as PDF and PostScript that cannot be edited are less useful to readers who want to manipulate the data.

Retraction and Correction Policies

AIP Publishing’s policy is based on best practices in academic publishing. We take seriously our responsibility to maintain the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record of our content. We place great importance on the authority of articles after we publish them. Changes to articles after they have been published online may be made only under the circumstances outlined in AIP Publishing's Retraction and Correction Policies.

Transfers

If the editor rejects a manuscript, authors may transfer the rejected manuscript to another AIP Publishing journal for consideration. We offer this service as a convenience to authors so that they do not have to resubmit a manuscript to another AIP Publishing journal. Authors may request a transfer by sending an email to JRSE’s editor (exclusively for an AIP Publishing journal on the list). If you transfer a manuscript, it does not guarantee that the receiving journal will publish it.