Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice

Publication type: peer-reviewed edited book series (not a journal). This profile describes the series honestly as a book series: it carries no journal impact factor and charges no article processing charge (APC).

Overview

Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice is a peer-reviewed edited book series published by Emerald Publishing Limited that explores the intersections of sustainability, environmental protection, social justice, and corporate responsibility. Launched in 2013 under the editorship of Liam Leonard, the series commissions themed edited volumes in which international scholars, practitioners, and policymakers examine how environmental challenges connect to questions of fairness, equity, governance, and economic life.

The series occupies a distinctive niche in academic publishing. Rather than operating as a periodical journal with rolling article submissions, it advances through discrete, themed volumes — each one an edited collection organized around a pressing topic such as climate change, environmental criminology, the United Nations Global Compact, restorative justice, or the relationship between business and sustainability. Each volume functions as a self-contained scholarly book, with its own editors, contributors, ISBNs, and DOI, while remaining linked to the wider series through a shared series ISSN (2051-5030) and a common editorial vision.

The timing of the series' launch is significant. Established in 2013, it arrived as global debates over sustainable development were intensifying in the run-up to the adoption of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. The early volumes reflect that moment: they interrogate corporate social responsibility, the ethics of international business, the philosophical foundations of environmental thought, and the social movements demanding environmental justice. Later volumes respond to subsequent developments, including the 2030 corporate agenda for sustainable development and the spatial dimensions of environmental crime.

What unifies the series is its insistence that sustainability cannot be understood as a purely technical or managerial problem. The volumes consistently frame environmental questions as justice questions — asking who benefits from economic growth, who bears the costs of pollution and resource depletion, and what institutional arrangements might distribute environmental goods and burdens more fairly. This perspective draws on environmental justice scholarship, green criminology, political ecology, and critical management studies, and it distinguishes the series from more narrowly technical treatments of sustainability.

The series is published by Emerald Publishing Limited (formerly Emerald Group Publishing Limited), the United Kingdom-based academic publisher headquartered in Bingley, West Yorkshire. Emerald's books programme is organized around series of this kind, and Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice sits alongside other Emerald series addressing corporate governance, social responsibility, and sustainable development. Volumes are published in print and electronic formats and are distributed to academic libraries, researchers, and practitioners worldwide through Emerald's Books Gateway platform, where each volume and chapter carries a Crossref-registered digital object identifier.

Readers who encounter the series will typically find it through library catalogues, book review sections, or citation trails rather than through journal alert services, because book series circulate differently from journals. Chapters are written by invited and selected contributors, peer-reviewed under the oversight of volume editors and the series editor, and published as part of a curated collection rather than as standalone journal articles. This model allows for deeper, more sustained treatment of complex topics than a single journal article permits, and it gives volume editors the freedom to assemble genuinely interdisciplinary conversations.

The series also reflects the growing academic recognition that environmental justice is not a peripheral concern but a central lens for understanding contemporary capitalism, globalization, and governance. Its volumes on the UN Global Compact, for instance, examine how voluntary corporate responsibility initiatives interact with competition law, labour standards, and environmental regulation in international markets — precisely the terrain where sustainability commitments meet hard economic incentives. The volume on environmental criminology brings spatial analysis to bear on regional environmental issues, showing how crime mapping and geographic methods can illuminate patterns of environmental harm.

Aims and Scope

The series aims to publish high-quality, peer-reviewed edited volumes that advance understanding of sustainability and environmental justice across disciplinary boundaries. Its scope is intentionally broad, welcoming contributions from sociology, criminology, philosophy, political science, management studies, economics, law, geography, and environmental studies, among other fields. The unifying thread is a commitment to examining how environmental and sustainability challenges intersect with questions of justice, equity, and power.

Topical coverage includes, but is not limited to, corporate social responsibility and business ethics; international business and sustainability; environmental philosophy and the ethics of limits; restorative justice and its relationship to sustainability; global environmental movements and activism; the United Nations Global Compact and related governance institutions; climate change policy and the 2030 sustainable development agenda; environmental criminology and spatial analysis of environmental harm; the political economy of sustainability and economic recovery; and the relationship between nations, states, and justice in a globalized world.

The series is particularly interested in work that bridges theory and practice. Volumes are expected to speak not only to academic debates but also to the concerns of policymakers, business leaders, civil society organizations, and engaged citizens. This orientation is visible in the published volumes: collections on the UN Global Compact assess a real-world governance initiative; the volume on lessons from the Great Recession examines sustainability at the crossroads of economic recovery; and the climate change volume addresses the corporate agenda for sustainable development in concrete, policy-relevant terms.

Methodologically, the series is pluralist. It publishes conceptual and philosophical work (as in the environmental philosophy volume), empirical social science (as in the environmental criminology volume with its spatial analyses), and policy-oriented analysis (as in the volumes on the UN Global Compact). This openness reflects the series editor's recognition that environmental justice is a multifaceted problem that cannot be addressed from a single methodological vantage point.

The geographic scope of the series is international. While the publisher is based in the United Kingdom, the volumes address global themes and draw contributors from multiple countries and regions. The series does not restrict itself to any single national context; instead, it treats sustainability and environmental justice as inherently transnational concerns that play out differently across institutional and cultural settings.

Publication Details

Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice is published by Emerald Publishing Limited (earlier volumes credit Emerald Group Publishing Limited, the publisher's former name). The publisher's registered office for its books programme is Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, United Kingdom, as stated on the copyright pages of the series' volumes.

The series carries the print ISSN 2051-5030, which appears on the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data of each volume and on the volume-level metadata pages of Emerald's Books Gateway. The series is also assigned the series-level DOI prefix 10.1108/asej, and individual volumes carry DOIs of the form 10.1108/S2051-5030(YYYY)VV, where YYYY is the publication year and VV the volume number. Individual chapters carry their own chapter-level DOIs, and Emerald registers all of these with Crossref, making the series' content discoverable through standard scholarly infrastructure.

Each volume is published with its own print and electronic ISBNs. For example, Volume 11 (International Business, Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility, 2013) carries print ISBN 978-1-78190-625-5 and electronic ISBN 978-1-78190-626-2; Volume 12 (Principles and Strategies to Balance Ethical, Social and Environmental Concerns with Corporate Requirements, 2013) carries print ISBN 978-1-78190-627-9 and electronic ISBN 978-1-78190-628-6; and Volume 14 (The Sustainability of Restorative Justice, 2014) carries print ISBN 978-1-78350-753-5 and electronic ISBN 978-1-78350-754-2.

Frequency: As an edited book series rather than a periodical, the series does not follow a fixed issue schedule. Volumes appear as they are commissioned, edited, and produced. The documented publication history shows multiple volumes per year in the series' early phase: four volumes appeared in 2013 (Volumes 11–13 and related titles) and several more followed in 2014 through 2017. The series acronym used by Emerald is ASEJ.

Access model: The series is published primarily on a subscription and purchase model. Volumes are available to purchase in print, and electronic access is provided to institutional subscribers through Emerald's platform. Individual volumes have been listed with pay-per-view pricing on Emerald's site (for example, Volume 14 was listed with a pay-per-view option). The series is not an open access series as a whole; however, individual chapters may be made openly available where authors or funders have arranged it, and Emerald offers open access options for book content. There is no article processing charge, because the series does not publish journal articles.

Formats: Volumes are issued in print (hardback) and electronic editions, with ePub formats also produced for recent Emerald books. Chapters are available as PDFs through Emerald's platform, with abstracts, citation tools, and reference-manager export (RIS, EndNote, BibTeX, and others) provided for each chapter.

Editorial Information

The series editor is Liam Leonard, as listed on Emerald's official series page. Leonard is a sociologist whose research addresses environmental justice, sustainability, and social movements, and his editorial stewardship has shaped the series' distinctive focus on the justice dimensions of environmental questions.

Individual volumes are edited by guest volume editors who assemble contributions around the volume's theme. Documented volume editors include Maria Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez, who co-edited Volumes 11 and 12 with Liam Leonard. The volume-editor model is standard for edited book series: the series editor sets the overall direction and standards, while volume editors take responsibility for the intellectual coherence, contributor selection, and peer review of their particular collection.

Peer review in the series operates at the volume and chapter level. Contributions are reviewed by the volume editors and, where appropriate, by external reviewers, under the oversight of the series editor and the publisher. Emerald's books programme applies standard academic publishing quality controls, including plagiarism screening and editorial review, before volumes proceed to production. The copyright pages of the volumes note that the publisher makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of content while disclaiming warranties as to suitability and application — standard language in academic book publishing.

The publisher's books team, based in Bingley, United Kingdom, manages commissioning, production, and distribution. Emerald's Books Gateway provides the public-facing platform for the series, with series-level and volume-level pages that present tables of contents, abstracts, author information, citation tools, and purchase options.

Indexing, Abstracting, and Discovery

Because Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice is a book series rather than a journal, it is not indexed in journal-focused databases in the way a periodical would be. Its discoverability rests on several other channels. The series appears in third-party listings of Scopus-indexed book series, which record its print ISSN 2051-5030; researchers consulting Scopus will find the series' volumes and chapters indexed at the book level where Scopus coverage applies.

All volumes and chapters carry Crossref-registered DOIs, which means they are discoverable through Crossref metadata, Google Scholar, library discovery systems, and reference-management tools. Emerald deposits full metadata — including titles, authors, abstracts, ISBNs, ISSNs, and DOIs — with Crossref, ensuring that the series' content participates in the standard scholarly linking infrastructure.

The series is catalogued by national and academic libraries, including through British Library Cataloguing in Publication data printed in each volume. Library holdings can be located through WorldCat and national union catalogues. Chapters are also indexed by Google Scholar, which treats book chapters as citable scholarly outputs.

Researchers should note that coverage in abstracting and indexing services can vary by volume and over time. The most reliable way to survey the series' full output is through Emerald's Books Gateway series page, which lists all published volumes with their tables of contents and chapter-level metadata.

Metrics and Citation Impact

As a book series, Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice does not have a Journal Impact Factor, a CiteScore, or any other journal-level citation metric, and none is claimed here. Journal metrics are computed for periodicals; they do not apply to edited book series, and the publisher does not publish one for this series.

Citation impact for the series is best assessed at the volume and chapter level. Individual chapters accrue citations in the scholarly literature, and Google Scholar profiles of contributing authors typically capture these citations. Volumes on widely debated topics — such as the UN Global Compact or climate change and the 2030 agenda — are the most likely to attract sustained citation, but no official series-level citation count is published by Emerald.

Readers evaluating the series' standing should consider qualitative indicators: the reputation of the publisher (Emerald is an established academic publisher), the expertise of the series and volume editors, the rigor of the peer-review process, the international composition of contributors, and the uptake of volumes in library collections and course reading lists. These are the appropriate measures of quality for an edited book series, and they are the measures on which the series should be judged.

Submitting a Volume Proposal

The series does not accept unsolicited journal-style article submissions, because it does not publish journal articles. Scholars interested in contributing to the series have two main routes: proposing a new edited volume, or responding to calls for chapters issued by volume editors for volumes in preparation.

Emerald's books programme welcomes speculative proposals for new volumes within existing book series, and prospective volume editors are invited to submit proposals to the relevant commissioning editor. A strong volume proposal typically includes a working title, a rationale explaining the volume's contribution and its fit with the series' focus on sustainability and environmental justice, a provisional table of contents with identified or invited contributors, brief biographies of the proposed volume editors, and an indicative timeline. Proposals are evaluated by the series editor and the publisher for scholarly quality, coherence, market viability, and fit with the series.

Calls for chapters for individual volumes are usually circulated through academic networks, mailing lists, and conference announcements rather than through a single standing submissions portal. Researchers interested in contributing a chapter should monitor Emerald's Books Gateway, the series page, and relevant scholarly associations for announcements, and may also contact the series editor or the publisher's commissioning team with expressions of interest.

There are no author-facing publication fees for contributing to the series. Costs of production are borne by the publisher and recovered through sales and subscriptions, consistent with the traditional academic book publishing model.

Selected Published Volumes

The following volumes are documented on Emerald's official Books Gateway. They illustrate the range and evolution of the series.

• Volume 11 — International Business, Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (2013). Edited by Maria Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez and Liam Leonard. Examines how international business engages with sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Print ISBN 978-1-78190-625-5; electronic ISBN 978-1-78190-626-2; DOI 10.1108/S2051-5030(2013)11.
• Volume 12 — Principles and Strategies to Balance Ethical, Social and Environmental Concerns with Corporate Requirements (2013). Edited by Liam Leonard and Maria Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez. Addresses the tension between corporate requirements and ethical, social, and environmental concerns. Print ISBN 978-1-78190-627-9; electronic ISBN 978-1-78190-628-6; DOI 10.1108/S2051-5030(2013)12.
• Volume 13 — Environmental Philosophy: The Art of Life in a World of Limits (2013). A philosophical contribution to the series, exploring how environmental philosophy can guide life within ecological limits.
• Volume 14 — The Sustainability of Restorative Justice (2014). Explores the intersection of restorative justice practices and sustainability thinking. Print ISBN 978-1-78350-753-5; electronic ISBN 978-1-78350-754-2; DOI 10.1108/S2051-5030(2014)14.
• Volume 15 — Occupy the Earth: Global Environmental Movements (2014). Examines environmental activism and social movements in the wake of the Occupy protests, connecting grassroots mobilization to environmental justice.
• Volume 16 — The UN Global Compact: Fair Competition and Environmental and Labour Justice in International Markets (2015). Assesses the United Nations Global Compact initiative through the lenses of competition, environmental justice, and labour justice in international markets.
• Volume 17 — Beyond the UN Global Compact: Institutions and Regulations (2015). Extends the analysis of the Global Compact to the broader institutional and regulatory landscape.
• Volume 18 — Lessons from the Great Recession: At the Crossroads of Sustainability and Recovery (2016). Reflects on what the global financial crisis and its aftermath teach about the relationship between economic recovery and sustainability.
• Volume 19 — Climate Change and the 2030 Corporate Agenda for Sustainable Development (2017). Addresses the corporate response to climate change in the context of the 2030 sustainable development agenda.
• Volume 20 — Environmental Criminology: Spatial Analysis and Regional Issues (2017). Applies spatial analysis and geographic methods to environmental crime and regional environmental issues, representing the series' engagement with green criminology.
• Volume 21 — The Sustainable Nation: Politics, Economy and Justice (2017). Examines the idea of the sustainable nation, linking politics, economy, and justice in national sustainability projects.

This volume list is drawn from Emerald's official series page; additional volumes may exist beyond those enumerated in publicly visible listings, and readers should consult the publisher's site for the most current catalogue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice a journal?

No. It is a peer-reviewed edited book series published by Emerald Publishing Limited. It publishes themed edited volumes, not journal issues, and it has no journal impact factor.

What is the ISSN of the series?

The series print ISSN is 2051-5030, as recorded in the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data of its volumes and on Emerald's volume metadata pages.

Who edits the series?

The series editor is Liam Leonard. Individual volumes are edited by guest volume editors; Maria Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez co-edited Volumes 11 and 12.

When did the series begin?

Emerald lists the series' online start date as 2013, and the earliest documented volumes appeared in that year.

Does the series charge an article processing charge (APC)?

No. The series does not publish journal articles and charges no APC. Production costs are covered through the publisher's sales and subscription model.

How can I access the series' volumes?

Volumes are available in print and electronic formats through Emerald's Books Gateway, academic booksellers, and subscribing libraries. Individual chapters are available via pay-per-view where offered, and abstracts are freely visible on the publisher's site.

How do I propose a volume for the series?

Emerald welcomes speculative proposals for new volumes within its existing book series. Prospective volume editors should prepare a proposal with a rationale, provisional contents, and contributor information, and submit it to the relevant Emerald commissioning editor for consideration by the series editor and publisher.

Is the series indexed in Scopus?

The series appears in third-party listings of Scopus-indexed book series under ISSN 2051-5030. Book-level indexing means volumes and chapters may be covered in Scopus where the database's coverage applies; researchers should verify coverage of specific volumes directly in Scopus.

Sources and Further Reading

• Emerald Publishing — official series page for Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice (series DOI 10.1108/asej; editor Liam Leonard; online start date 2013; print ISSN 2051-5030).
• Emerald Books Gateway — volume pages for Volumes 11, 12, and 14, with ISBNs, DOIs, and publication details.
• Emerald Publishing, Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, United Kingdom — publisher imprint and copyright page information.