Chemosphere

About Chemosphere

About Chemosphere

Chemosphere is an international peer-reviewed scientific journal devoted to environmental chemistry and the broader environmental sciences. Published by Elsevier since 1972, it is one of the longest-running periodicals in its field and has served for more than five decades as a central venue for research on how chemicals behave in the environment — where they come from, how they travel through air, water, soil and living organisms, what harm they cause, and how contamination can be prevented, monitored and remediated.

The journal publishes on a biweekly schedule and accepts original research articles, review articles and shorter communications. Its scope is deliberately broad and multidisciplinary: submissions come from environmental chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geoscientists, atmospheric scientists, public-health researchers and policy analysts. Chemosphere's backfile stretches back to 1972, making it a valuable historical record of the environmental chemistry literature — from the early work on organochlorine pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) through the dioxin debates of the 1980s and 1990s, the emergence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals and brominated flame retardants, to today's frontiers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), microplastics and nanoplastics, pharmaceuticals in the environment, and climate-linked pollutant transport.

The journal's standard identifiers are ISSN 0045-6535 (print) and 1879-1298 (electronic/online). Its CODEN is CMSHAF, its ISO 4 abbreviation is simply Chemosphere, and its Library of Congress Control Number is 72622992. The electronic archive is hosted on ScienceDirect, Elsevier's online platform, where every volume from the journal's inception is available to subscribers.

Chemosphere is a hybrid (transformative) journal: the default publishing route is subscription-based, with the option for authors to pay an article publishing charge so that their individual article is published gold open access. The journal operates single- or double-anonymized peer review according to Elsevier's editorial standards (see the Submission & Peer Review section below).

This in-depth profile of Chemosphere was researched for JournalsWorld from official Elsevier and indexing sources in October 2026.

Chemosphere: Key Facts at a Glance

History of Chemosphere

Chemosphere was launched in 1972, at a moment when environmental chemistry was crystallizing as a distinct scientific discipline. The early 1970s were a watershed for environmental awareness: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) had alerted the public to pesticide contamination, the first Earth Day had been held in 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had been created in 1970, and the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was convened in Stockholm in 1972. Chemosphere arrived precisely as researchers needed a dedicated international outlet for rapid communication of findings on pollutants in the environment — hence the journal's original positioning as a venue for the fast publication of original communications as well as review articles.

In its first decades, the journal became closely associated with work on persistent organic pollutants: organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, dioxins and furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and heavy metals. These were the defining contaminants of twentieth-century industrial chemistry, and Chemosphere papers from the 1970s through the 1990s form part of the evidentiary foundation for landmark regulatory actions, including restrictions under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (adopted 2001).

As the field evolved, so did the journal's content. The 2000s brought a wave of research on brominated flame retardants, perfluorinated compounds, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and pharmaceuticals and personal care products in wastewater. The 2010s and 2020s added microplastics and nanoplastics, engineered nanomaterials, antibiotic resistance genes in the environment, and the environmental chemistry of electronic waste. Throughout, the journal maintained its character as a high-volume, rapid-publication outlet: in peak years it published several thousand articles annually, reflecting the explosive growth of environmental science as a research enterprise.

A significant episode in the journal's recent history concerns research integrity and indexing. In July 2023, Clarivate placed Chemosphere "on hold" in the Web of Science Master Journal List over quality concerns. By May 2024, the journal had attached expressions of concern to more than sixty papers, typically citing unusual pre-publication authorship changes and potential undisclosed conflicts of interest involving reviewers and handling editors. In December 2024, the journal issued several retractions following an investigation by Elsevier's Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team, and on 16 December 2024 Clarivate removed Chemosphere from the Web of Science index for non-compliance with editorial quality requirements. Coverage of the delisting in Chemical & Engineering News noted that the journal had a 2023 impact factor of 8.1 at the time of removal. The episode also drew public attention when a 2024 Chemosphere paper on flame retardants in black plastic household products was found to contain a mathematical error that overstated exposure relative to U.S. safety limits; the authors published a correction.

Despite the Web of Science delisting, Chemosphere continues to publish with Elsevier and remains indexed in Scopus, MEDLINE/PubMed, and other major databases. Authors considering the journal should weigh its long citation record and broad readership against the current absence of a Journal Citation Reports impact factor.

Editorial Leadership

Chemosphere is led by a team of three co-Editors-in-Chief, a structure Elsevier adopted for the journal in recent years to manage its very large submission volume.

Current Editors-in-Chief (2024–present)

• Prof. Jacob de Boer — Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. An environmental chemist known for work on persistent organic pollutants, flame retardants and marine contaminants, Prof. de Boer has been associated with the journal's editorship since 2020 and is now Emeritus Professor at VU Amsterdam.
• Prof. Willie Peijnenburg — Leiden University, the Netherlands. A researcher in environmental toxicology and chemistry, with expertise in the fate and effects of chemicals including nanomaterials.
• Prof. Yeomin Yoon — Ewha Womans University, South Korea. An environmental engineer whose research covers water treatment, membrane processes and the removal of emerging contaminants.

Previous Editors-in-Chief

• 2020–2024: Jacob de Boer (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Shane Snyder (University of Arizona, USA) served as co-Editors-in-Chief.
• Earlier history: The journal's founding editor in 1972 is not officially documented in the sources consulted for this profile; the editorial office and full board listing are maintained on the journal's official Elsevier page.

The editorial board comprises a large international roster of associate editors and editorial board members spanning environmental chemistry, toxicology, atmospheric science, water treatment engineering and related fields. Day-to-day manuscript handling is supported by Elsevier's journal management team; author inquiries relating to submissions are directed to the journal's editorial office (the guide for authors lists the Journal Manager contact as chemeo@elsevier.com).

Aims & Scope

The following is a paraphrase of the journal's official aims and scope as published by Elsevier (readers should consult the journal homepage for the authoritative current text).

Chemosphere is an international journal intended for the rapid publication of original research communications and review articles on new developments across all areas directly connected with the environment. It welcomes studies investigating:

• the sources, distribution, transport, transformation and fate of chemicals in air, water, soil, sediments and biota;
• the effects of pollutants on ecosystems and human health, including (eco)toxicology and risk assessment;
• analytical and monitoring methods for detecting contaminants in environmental matrices;
• remediation and treatment technologies — novel strategies for removing or degrading pollutants in water, wastewater, soil, sediments and air;
• emerging contaminants such as PFAS, microplastics and nanoplastics, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, engineered nanomaterials and antibiotic resistance determinants;
• environmental modelling, life-cycle perspectives, and studies linking chemical pollution to climate change, circular economy and sustainability.

The journal positions itself as a multidisciplinary outlet: it seeks work that connects chemistry with engineering solutions and with the environmental and health sciences, and it encourages contributions relevant to policy and regulation. Purely descriptive monitoring reports without mechanistic or methodological novelty are generally outside its scope, as are manuscripts lacking clear environmental relevance. Authors are expected to frame their findings in terms of environmental significance — why the results matter for understanding or solving real-world contamination problems.

Journal Metrics

Chemosphere's citation metrics tell a story of a journal that was, until very recently, among the most cited in environmental science — followed by a sharp break in its Web of Science standing.

Impact Factor (Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate)

• 2023 Journal Impact Factor: 8.1 (published in the 2024 Journal Citation Reports release). This was the last impact factor the journal received.
• Historical trajectory: approximately 4.4 (2018), 5.1 (2019), 5.8 (2020), 7.1 (2021), rising to 8.8 and then 8.1 in the most recent editions — figures reported by metric aggregators from JCR data.
• Current status: no active Journal Impact Factor. Following Clarivate's removal of the journal from the Web of Science index on 16 December 2024, Chemosphere does not appear in current Journal Citation Reports editions. Any "impact factor" figure dated 2024 or later found on third-party sites is unofficial and should not be treated as a Clarivate metric.

Scopus-based metrics

• CiteScore: 11.7 (CiteScore 2023, per Scopus-derived listings). The CiteScore for the most recent tracker year was not officially confirmed in sources accessible for this profile.
• Scopus H-index: 353 — reflecting the journal's enormous cumulative citation footprint across more than five decades.
• Scopus coverage: 1972–present — the journal remains indexed in Scopus.
• SJR (SCImago Journal Rank): 1.727 (2023), placing it in Q1 across its Scopus subject categories, which include Environmental Chemistry, Pollution, Environmental Engineering, and Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis.
• SNIP (source-normalized impact per paper): approximately 1.6 in recent listings.

Scale of publication

Chemosphere has historically been a very high-volume journal. Citation analyses of its corpus cover on the order of 47,000–48,000 peer-reviewed articles, with more than 2 million cumulative document citations. In peak years (early 2020s) the journal published roughly 3,500–4,800 articles per year. Such volume is unusual among environmental journals and contributes both to its high aggregate citation counts and to the editorial challenges it has faced.

Figures the publisher has not officially published: the journal's acceptance rate and median times from submission to first decision and to publication are not officially published in sources accessible for this profile.

Open Access & Article Publishing Charge (APC)

Chemosphere is a hybrid journal — officially designated a "transformative journal" by Elsevier. This means:

• Subscription route (default): articles are published behind the subscription paywall at no charge to the author. Authors retain certain reuse rights, and the accepted manuscript may be self-archived in an institutional repository in line with Elsevier's sharing policy (an embargo period applies; authors should check the current policy on the journal homepage).
• Gold open access route (optional): authors may choose to make their individual article freely available to all readers upon payment of an article publishing charge. Gold open access articles in Elsevier hybrid journals are typically published under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND, at the author's choice where offered).
• Green open access: authors may deposit the accepted manuscript version in repositories after the applicable embargo, as described above.

The exact APC amount is not officially published in the sources accessible for this profile. Elsevier lists the current article publishing charge on each journal's homepage under its open access options, and the figure can change; prospective authors should verify it there before submitting. Authors covered by institutional or national open-access agreements with Elsevier may be eligible for APC discounts or waivers — again, the journal homepage and Elsevier's institutional agreements pages carry the authoritative details.

Corresponding authors receive a personalized Share Link providing 50 days of free access to the final published version of subscription articles, which may be shared via any channel including email and social media (per the journal's guide for authors).

Submission & Peer Review

How to submit

Manuscripts are submitted online through Elsevier's Editorial Manager system via the "Submit your article" link on the journal's official homepage. Authors must prepare their manuscript according to the journal's Guide for Authors, which covers article structure, reference formatting, artwork specifications, highlights, graphical abstracts, and declarations (funding, competing interests, author contributions, data availability).

Article types

The journal considers full-length research articles, review articles (including critical and systematic reviews), and short communications reporting concise but complete findings. Special issues and virtual special issues on emerging topics are organized periodically under guest editors.

Peer review process

Submissions first undergo an editorial screening for scope, novelty, and basic quality; manuscripts outside the journal's aims and scope or below its methodological standards may be declined at this stage without external review. Papers passing screening are sent to independent expert reviewers. Elsevier's standard for Chemosphere is a rigorous multi-reviewer evaluation, with revisions requested where warranted and final decisions made by the handling editor in consultation with the Editors-in-Chief. As with all Elsevier journals, the process follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, and the journal's recent history underscores its active enforcement of policies on authorship integrity, conflicts of interest, and citation manipulation — the 2024 expressions of concern and retractions were issued precisely under these policies.

After acceptance

Accepted articles are published online on ScienceDirect, typically appearing first as Articles in Press before assignment to a biweekly issue and volume. Corresponding authors are contacted regarding proofs; Elsevier notes that it may proceed with publication if no proof response is received. Authors can track accepted articles through Elsevier's author services.

Not officially published: average peer-review turnaround times and the journal's acceptance rate are not officially published in accessible sources.

Indexing & Abstracting

Chemosphere is abstracted and indexed in the following major services (based on the journal's official listings and standard bibliographic sources):

• Scopus (Elsevier) — coverage 1972 to present
• MEDLINE / PubMed (Index Medicus) — U.S. National Library of Medicine
• Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) — American Chemical Society
• BIOSIS Previews and Biological Abstracts
• Current Contents / Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences
• GEOBASE (Elsevier Engineering Village)
• Ei Compendex (Elsevier Engineering Village)
• CAB Abstracts (CABI)
• EBSCO databases
• Food Science and Technology Abstracts
• The Zoological Record

Formerly: Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science Core Collection) — the journal was placed on hold in July 2023 and removed from the index on 16 December 2024 by Clarivate. Authors who require Web of Science indexing for institutional evaluation should take note of this change.

Notable Papers and Research Themes

Rather than singling out individual papers — citation leadership in a 50-year, ~48,000-article corpus shifts constantly — it is more accurate to describe the research themes for which Chemosphere is best known. The journal has been a primary outlet for:

• Persistent organic pollutants (POPs): decades of work on PCBs, dioxins and furans, organochlorine pesticides and PAHs, including environmental monitoring, source apportionment, and long-range transport studies that informed international regulation.
• Brominated flame retardants: Chemosphere published extensively on polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and their replacements in indoor dust, consumer products and biota.
• Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS): occurrence, fate, analytical methods and treatment of these "forever chemicals" in water, soil and food webs.
• Pharmaceuticals and personal care products: the journal was an early and sustained venue for research on antibiotics, endocrine disruptors and other micropollutants in wastewater and receiving waters.
• Microplastics and nanoplastics: sources, analytical detection, environmental distribution and ecotoxicological effects.
• Advanced oxidation and treatment technologies: photocatalysis, ozonation, Fenton processes, adsorption and membrane technologies for pollutant removal.
• Electronic waste and informal recycling: contamination associated with e-waste dismantling sites, particularly in developing regions.

A widely reported recent episode involved a 2024 Chemosphere paper examining flame retardants in black-colored plastic household products, which suggested potential contamination from recycled electronic waste. The study attracted major media coverage advising consumers to discard black plastic kitchen utensils — until a mathematical error in the exposure calculation was identified, showing the estimated dose was an order of magnitude lower than reported relative to U.S. reference limits. The authors issued a correction. The incident became a case study in science communication and was cited in coverage of the journal's subsequent Web of Science delisting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who publishes Chemosphere?

Chemosphere is published by Elsevier (Pergamon–Elsevier Science Ltd, United Kingdom). It has been an Elsevier title since its founding in 1972.

What is the ISSN of Chemosphere?

The print ISSN is 0045-6535 and the electronic/online ISSN is 1879-1298.

Does Chemosphere have an impact factor?

Chemosphere's last official Journal Impact Factor was 8.1 (2023, Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate). Clarivate removed the journal from the Web of Science index on 16 December 2024, so it currently has no active impact factor. Figures dated 2024 or later on third-party sites are unofficial.

Is Chemosphere indexed in Scopus?

Yes. Chemosphere is indexed in Scopus with coverage from 1972 to the present. Its Scopus CiteScore was 11.7 (2023) and its Scopus H-index is 353.

Who are the Editors-in-Chief of Chemosphere?

Since 2024, the co-Editors-in-Chief have been Jacob de Boer (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Willie Peijnenburg (Leiden University) and Yeomin Yoon (Ewha Womans University). From 2020 to 2024 the editors were Jacob de Boer and Shane Snyder.

Is Chemosphere open access?

Chemosphere is a hybrid journal: subscription-based by default, with an optional gold open access route for authors who pay the article publishing charge. Authors may also self-archive accepted manuscripts under Elsevier's green open access policy.

How often is Chemosphere published?

The journal is published biweekly (approximately 24 issues per year).

How do I submit a paper to Chemosphere?

Submissions are made online through Elsevier's Editorial Manager system via the "Submit your article" link on the journal's official homepage, following the Guide for Authors. The journal considers research articles, review articles and short communications in environmental chemistry and related fields.

Why was Chemosphere removed from Web of Science?

Clarivate placed the journal on hold in July 2023 over editorial quality concerns; following expressions of concern on 60+ papers and several retractions related to authorship irregularities and undisclosed conflicts of interest, Clarivate removed the journal from the Web of Science index on 16 December 2024.

What subjects does Chemosphere cover?

Environmental chemistry broadly: pollutant sources, transport and fate; (eco)toxicology; environmental monitoring and analysis; water, soil and air remediation technologies; and emerging contaminants including PFAS, microplastics, pharmaceuticals and nanomaterials.