About Earth Critical Zone

Earth Critical Zone

Earth Critical Zone is an open access scholarly journal published by Elsevier in Netherlands. It is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the community-curated directory that screens open access journals against transparency and best-practice criteria before including them. The journal is identified by online ISSN 2950-4767. This profile brings together the verifiable facts recorded about the journal in its DOAJ listing and on its official website, explains the subject territory it covers, describes how its publishing model works, and gives prospective authors a practical account of what to check before submitting a manuscript. Where a fact could not be verified from those sources, this profile says so plainly rather than filling the gap with an estimate, because authors making a submission decision deserve information they can rely on.

The journal's recorded subject coverage is Geography. Anthropology. Recreation: Environmental sciences; Science: Biology (General). Its declared keywords are soil health, plant nutrient cycling, hydrology, environmental protection, ecology, socioeconomics. Taken together, those two pieces of information describe the centre of gravity of the journal: the disciplines it serves, the conversations it takes part in, and the readers it is published for. Authors considering the journal should test their manuscript against that description honestly. A paper that falls squarely inside the declared subjects and keywords begins its life at the journal with an advantage, because the editors can immediately see its fit and can send it to reviewers who work in the same area. A paper that sits at the edge of the scope can still succeed, but its author carries the extra burden of explaining, in the abstract and the covering message, why this journal's readers are the right audience for it.

Elsevier is responsible for the journal's publication in Netherlands. Institutional and university publishers of this kind typically publish journals as part of a wider scholarly mission: supporting the research community around the institution, giving early-career and established researchers a peer-reviewed outlet, and making the resulting work openly readable rather than locked behind subscription barriers. Its directory record states that the journal has published all of its content under an open licence since 2024. Readers who want to browse the journal's current and past issues, see its most recent articles, or check announcements such as special issue calls should go to the official journal website, which is the authoritative source for everything about the title; this profile is a guide to the journal, not a substitute for the journal itself.

Aims and Scope

The aims and scope of Earth Critical Zone are defined by its editors on the journal's official website, and the summary recorded in DOAJ reflects that definition. In subject terms the journal covers Geography. Anthropology. Recreation: Environmental sciences; Science: Biology (General), and its keyword list — soil health, plant nutrient cycling, hydrology, environmental protection, ecology, socioeconomics — breaks that coverage down into the specific themes the editors want to attract. A journal's scope statement does practical work for everyone involved with it. For authors, it is the first filter: it tells them whether their manuscript belongs here at all. For reviewers, it defines the standards of relevance against which they judge a submission. For readers and librarians, it explains why the journal exists alongside the many other titles in the same broad field, and what distinctive mix of topics, methods, regions or languages it offers.

A careful reading of the scope also reveals what a journal does not publish. Research that is purely local in interest without a wider lesson, manuscripts that report routine applications of standard methods without a new insight, and papers written for a different discipline's audience often struggle at journals whose scope is clearly defined, however competent the work itself may be. The most efficient submission decisions come from reading the journal before writing for it: prospective authors should read several recent articles in Earth Critical Zone, note the length, structure, referencing style and level of methodological detail those articles use, and shape their own manuscript to match the conversation those articles are having. That preparation is visible to editors, and it materially improves a manuscript's chances of being sent out for review rather than returned at the screening stage.

Scope also evolves. Journals add special issues, themed sections and new article types as their fields change, and the editors of Earth Critical Zone communicate those developments through the journal's website and its calls for papers. Authors working on emerging topics close to the journal's declared themes should not assume exclusion simply because their exact topic has not appeared before; a short enquiry to the editorial office, summarising the proposed article and asking whether it fits, is a normal and usually welcomed step in scholarly publishing, and it costs far less time than a full submission to the wrong journal.

Research Themes in Focus

Research on soil health sits within the journal's declared keyword set, and it is one of the clearest signals of the kind of manuscript the editors expect to receive. A strong submission in this area states its question about soil health early, explains why the question matters beyond a single case, and shows how the evidence presented answers it. Readers who follow the journal for soil health will expect the literature discussion to be current and genuinely engaged rather than decorative, the method to be described in enough detail for another researcher to judge its quality, and the conclusions to stay within what the evidence can support. Work that merely uses the vocabulary of soil health without adding an argument, a dataset, a comparison or a critical reading is unlikely to serve those readers well.

The theme of plant nutrient cycling is named explicitly in the journal's directory keywords, which makes it a reliable guide to scope. Authors writing on plant nutrient cycling should frame their contribution so that a reader outside their immediate sub-field can see its significance, define specialist terms on first use, and connect their findings to the wider conversation in plant nutrient cycling rather than presenting the work as an isolated exercise. Editors and reviewers typically look for a clear fit between the research question, the material analysed and the claims made at the end, and manuscripts on plant nutrient cycling that keep those three elements aligned are the ones most likely to progress through review without major restructuring.

Within the journal's coverage, hydrology represents a strand that attracts both specialist contributors and readers from neighbouring areas. A publishable article on hydrology usually does three things well: it positions itself against the most relevant earlier work instead of a generic background, it makes its evidence or sources transparent enough for readers to evaluate the argument themselves, and it spells out what changes because of the study, whether that is a revised interpretation, new empirical material, a practical recommendation or a conceptual clarification. Authors should also consider the journal's readership when presenting hydrology: examples, data and references that are intelligible to an international audience travel further than material that depends on unexplained local context.

Contributions dealing with environmental protection should be written for the community that actually reads this journal. That means an abstract that states the problem, the approach and the main finding in plain language, headings that let a busy reader navigate the argument, and references that credit the scholars who shaped the discussion of environmental protection before this article. Where the work involves people, institutions or culturally sensitive material, ethical handling and accurate representation matter as much as analytical originality, and reviewers are entitled to ask how the material was obtained and used. A carefully prepared manuscript on environmental protection therefore combines scholarly ambition with editorial care.

Research on ecology sits within the journal's declared keyword set, and it is one of the clearest signals of the kind of manuscript the editors expect to receive. A strong submission in this area states its question about ecology early, explains why the question matters beyond a single case, and shows how the evidence presented answers it. Readers who follow the journal for ecology will expect the literature discussion to be current and genuinely engaged rather than decorative, the method to be described in enough detail for another researcher to judge its quality, and the conclusions to stay within what the evidence can support. Work that merely uses the vocabulary of ecology without adding an argument, a dataset, a comparison or a critical reading is unlikely to serve those readers well.

The theme of socioeconomics is named explicitly in the journal's directory keywords, which makes it a reliable guide to scope. Authors writing on socioeconomics should frame their contribution so that a reader outside their immediate sub-field can see its significance, define specialist terms on first use, and connect their findings to the wider conversation in socioeconomics rather than presenting the work as an isolated exercise. Editors and reviewers typically look for a clear fit between the research question, the material analysed and the claims made at the end, and manuscripts on socioeconomics that keep those three elements aligned are the ones most likely to progress through review without major restructuring.

Publication Details

The bibliographic identity of Earth Critical Zone rests on its International Standard Serial Numbers. The record held in DOAJ gives online ISSN 2950-4767. An ISSN is the identifier used by libraries, indexes, citation databases and catalogues worldwide to distinguish one serial from another, and it matters practically to authors: it is the number used when a publication is reported to an institution, entered in a curriculum vitae, checked by a promotion committee or verified by a funder. Where a journal carries separate print and online ISSNs, authors should cite the version they actually consulted and should use the exact registered title of the journal in their reference lists, because small variations in a journal's name are a common source of citation errors that later have to be untangled by indexers.

The journal is published by Elsevier, based in Netherlands. It accepts manuscripts in English, according to its directory record. That language policy shapes the journal's authorship and readership: a journal accepting work in more than one language can serve a national or regional research community in its own language while also reaching international readers, and authors writing in a second language should budget time for careful language revision before submission, because editors routinely return manuscripts whose argument may be sound but whose presentation makes the review process unnecessarily difficult. The journal's listing in DOAJ was recorded with the details reproduced in this profile, and the directory entry links onward to the journal's own pages for its aims and scope, its editorial board and its instructions for authors.

Publication frequency, issue schedules and article types are managed through the journal's official platform and are best checked there, because schedules can change as a journal grows. What can be said from the verified record is that Earth Critical Zone operates as a continuing open access serial: articles are published under an open licence, identified for the long term, and made readable without a paywall. Readers citing the journal should always cite the specific article, its authors, the year and the article's permanent link rather than the journal homepage, so that later readers can find exactly the source that was used.

Open Access and Licensing

Content in Earth Critical Zone is published under a CC BY, CC BY-NC-ND licence, according to its DOAJ record. An open licence of this kind means that readers may read, download, copy and share the published articles without paying a subscription, provided they respect the conditions attached to the specific licence named by the journal. Where the licence includes a non-commercial condition, commercial reuse requires separate permission; where it includes a share-alike condition, adaptations must be shared under the same terms. The exact licence text linked from the journal's website is the authoritative version, and readers who want to reuse figures, tables or long extracts in teaching, in a thesis or in a commercial product should check that licence text and credit the original authors and the journal in full.

The DOAJ record does not state that authors hold copyright without restrictions, so authors who care about repository deposit, reuse of their own figures, or sharing the published version should read the journal's copyright and licensing policy carefully before signing any publishing agreement. Where a journal applies an open licence, readers still receive broad reuse rights even when formal copyright is held or shared differently, and the licence statement on the article is the document that governs reuse.

Open access publishing of the kind practised by Earth Critical Zone removes the price barrier that historically limited journal readership to staff and students at subscribing institutions. For research communities in Netherlands and in comparable settings worldwide, that openness has concrete effects: practitioners, teachers, policy staff, independent scholars and students at smaller institutions can read the full text of an article the moment it is published, without interlibrary loans or personal subscriptions. Authors benefit from the same openness in the form of a larger potential readership, and there is consistent evidence across many fields that openly available articles are read more widely and can be picked up faster by the communities most likely to use them. Open access does not remove quality control — peer review and editorial screening operate exactly as they do at subscription journals — it changes who pays for publishing and who is allowed to read the result.

The journal uses DOI as a persistent article identifier, according to its directory record. A persistent identifier gives each article a stable link that continues to resolve even if the journal changes its website platform, which protects citations, reading lists and repository records from link rot and makes the article easier to track in scholarly indexes. The record also names preservation arrangements (CLOCKSS, Portico), which are intended to keep the journal's archive accessible over the long term even if the publisher's own platform changes.

Editorial Board and Peer Review

Its DOAJ record describes the review process as anonymous peer review. In an anonymous review model, the identities of the reviewers are protected and, in a double-anonymous process, the authors' identities are also removed from the manuscript sent to reviewers, so that the work is judged on its content rather than on the reputation of its authors or their institution. Authors preparing a submission should therefore remove self-identifying material from the manuscript file where the journal's system requires it, including names in document properties, acknowledgements that identify the authors, and first-person self-citations phrased in a way that reveals who wrote the paper.

The editorial structure of Earth Critical Zone is published on the journal's own website, where the editorial board page names the editors responsible for the journal. This profile does not reproduce individual editors' names, because board membership changes over time and an out-of-date list in a secondary profile would mislead authors about who will handle their manuscript; the board page linked from the journal's site is the current and authoritative list. What authors can reasonably expect from the editorial office of a journal listed in DOAJ is a recognisable workflow: an initial screening for scope, originality and basic quality; assignment to an editor; independent review by specialists; a decision that may be acceptance, revision or rejection; and, for revised manuscripts, a further check that the reviewers' concerns have been addressed. Authors help that process by responding to review comments point by point, by explaining courteously where they disagree, and by returning revisions within the time the editor sets or asking for an extension before the deadline rather than after it.

Editorial independence matters as well. A journal published by Elsevier is expected to make its acceptance decisions on scholarly grounds, and the transparency requirements behind a DOAJ listing — a named publisher, a stated review process, a published licence and clear fee information where fees exist — are designed to make that expectation checkable by outsiders. Authors who experience pressure to cite the journal unnecessarily, who are asked for payments that were not described in advance, or who receive acceptance decisions suspiciously quickly without any review reports are entitled to ask questions, and the openness of the journal's stated policies gives them a firm basis for doing so.

Indexing and Abstracting

The verifiable indexing fact for Earth Critical Zone is its inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals, which is itself a meaningful quality signal: DOAJ does not list every journal that applies, and its criteria cover the transparency of the publisher, the review process, licensing and fee information. Beyond DOAJ, journals of this profile are commonly discoverable through general scholarly search engines that crawl open access content, through library catalogues that record the journal by its ISSN, and through the publisher's own platform. This profile deliberately does not claim inclusion in selective citation databases such as Scopus or Web of Science unless that inclusion can be verified from the database or the journal's official statements, because inflated indexing claims are one of the most common ways authors are misled when choosing a journal. Authors who need publication in a specifically indexed journal for promotion, graduation or funding reasons should verify the journal's current status directly in the database their institution recognises, on the date they submit, and keep a record of that check.

The directory record gives an average of 8 weeks between submission and publication. Authors should treat that figure as an average reported to the directory rather than a promise: individual manuscripts can move faster or slower depending on reviewer availability, the number of revision rounds, and the journal's publication schedule.

Discoverability also depends on the author's own practice. A descriptive title, an abstract that contains the terms other researchers actually search for, accurate keywords and complete references all increase the chance that an article in Earth Critical Zone will be found, read and cited. Because the journal is openly accessible, every reader who finds an article can read the full text immediately, save it to a reference manager using its persistent identifier, and share the link with colleagues and students without access restrictions. Over time, that frictionless circulation is what turns a published article into part of the working literature of its field.

Article Processing Charges

According to its DOAJ record, Earth Critical Zone does charge an article processing charge (APC). The amount recorded in the directory is 1800 USD. Authors should confirm the current amount on the journal's own website before submitting, because charges can change between directory updates, and should also check whether the charge is payable only after acceptance, which is the normal practice for legitimate open access journals. A processing charge is a publishing cost, not a guarantee of acceptance: manuscripts are still expected to pass editorial screening and peer review, and a journal that promises acceptance in exchange for payment should be treated with caution. The directory record also states that the journal has no other fees beyond any charge already described, which helps authors budget with confidence. The record notes that a waiver policy exists for eligible authors, and the journal's website should be consulted for the exact eligibility conditions and for how to request a waiver at submission rather than after acceptance.

Authors should also distinguish clearly between charges that are described in advance on a journal's website and unexpected payment requests that arrive during the process. The verified fee information for Earth Critical Zone is the information stated in this profile and on the journal's site; any request that differs from it should be queried with the editorial office through the contact details on the official website before any payment is made. Keeping copies of the fee policy in force at the date of submission is a sensible precaution for authors whose institutions reimburse publication costs, because reimbursement claims normally have to be documented against the policy the author actually relied on.

Submission Guidance

Before submitting to Earth Critical Zone, read the journal's instructions for authors on its official website and follow them exactly: file formats, manuscript structure, abstract length, keyword requirements, reference style, figure and table rules, and any declarations the journal requires about ethics approval, informed consent, conflicts of interest, funding and data availability. These requirements are not bureaucratic decoration; editors use compliance with them as an early signal of how carefully a manuscript has been prepared, and avoidable formatting or declaration problems can delay an otherwise good paper. The journal accepts manuscripts in English, and authors writing in a language that is not their strongest should have the text read by a fluent colleague or a professional editor before submission.

A strong submission package usually contains more than the manuscript itself. A short covering letter that states what the article contributes, confirms that the work is original and not under consideration elsewhere, and notes any special circumstances helps the editor place the paper quickly. Suggested reviewers, where the journal invites them, should be genuine specialists without conflicts of interest — not collaborators, not colleagues at the same institution, and not people the authors have a personal reason to expect favour from. Data, code, instruments or supplementary material that support the article should be prepared so that reviewers can actually inspect them, and any material that cannot be shared for ethical or legal reasons should be explained rather than left ambiguous. None of this guarantees acceptance, but all of it removes friction from the editorial process and presents the work in the best defensible light.

Authors should also think about fit before they think about prestige. Earth Critical Zone serves readers in Geography. Anthropology. Recreation, and a manuscript written for those readers — with the field's debates acknowledged, its terminology used accurately and its practical concerns in view — will always be a better submission than a more generic paper redirected from another journal without adaptation. If the editor nevertheless decides the paper does not fit, that decision is information, not failure: it usually arrives faster than a review round would, and it frees the manuscript for a more suitable journal without the authors having invested months in the wrong venue.

Who Should Read and Publish in This Journal

The natural authors for Earth Critical Zone are researchers, teachers, practitioners and advanced students working in the areas the journal declares: soil health, plant nutrient cycling, hydrology, environmental protection, ecology, socioeconomics. The natural readers are the same communities, together with the librarians who catalogue the journal, the students who find its articles through open web searching, and the professionals who apply published findings in their own settings. Because the journal is openly accessible and published from Netherlands by Elsevier, it also plays a bridging role: work grounded in local and regional experience becomes visible to an international audience, and international scholarship becomes readable in a venue that welcomes contributions from its own research community. Authors who value that two-way visibility, and who want their work to be read rather than merely listed, will find the journal's model attractive.

Early-career researchers in particular should note the practical advantages of a transparent, directory-listed open access journal: the rules are published in advance, the costs (where any exist) are stated before submission, the review model is declared, and the resulting article is free for anyone to read, cite and teach with. Those advantages do not replace the author's own due diligence — checking the journal's recent issues, reading its published articles critically, and confirming that its current activity matches its stated schedule remain essential steps — but they give a first-time author a clear framework within which to make the decision.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Earth Critical Zone an open access journal? Yes. The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals and publishes its content under an open licence, which means the full text of its articles can be read free of charge on the publisher's website. The exact reuse terms are set by the licence named by the journal, and readers should check the licence statement when they want to reuse material beyond ordinary reading, quoting and linking.

What are the ISSNs of Earth Critical Zone? The DOAJ record gives online ISSN 2950-4767. Authors and librarians should use those numbers, together with the journal's exact registered title, when recording the journal in catalogues, publication lists and reports.

Does Earth Critical Zone charge authors a fee? The journal's directory record states that it charges an article processing charge of 1800 USD, which authors should confirm on the journal's website before submitting, because amounts can change.

What subjects does Earth Critical Zone cover? Its recorded subjects are Geography. Anthropology. Recreation: Environmental sciences; Science: Biology (General), and its declared keywords are soil health, plant nutrient cycling, hydrology, environmental protection, ecology, socioeconomics. Manuscripts that fall clearly within those subjects and keywords are the journal's core territory; authors of borderline manuscripts should explain the fit in their covering letter or ask the editorial office before submitting.

How is peer review handled at Earth Critical Zone? The review process recorded in DOAJ is Anonymous peer review. In practice, authors can expect editorial screening followed by independent specialist review, and should prepare their manuscript and response documents accordingly. Review timelines vary with reviewer availability and the number of revision rounds, so authors should plan submission dates with a realistic margin before any institutional deadline that depends on acceptance or publication.

Does Earth Critical Zone have an impact factor? No verified Journal Impact Factor for this journal could be confirmed from the official sources consulted for this profile, and none is claimed here. Authors whose institutions require an impact factor should check the recognised citation reports directly; authors whose institutions value open access, field fit and readership can evaluate the journal on its transparency, its listing in DOAJ, its declared review process and the quality of its recent articles instead.

How do I submit a manuscript to Earth Critical Zone? Start from the journal's official website, read the instructions for authors in full, prepare the manuscript and any supplementary files exactly as specified, and submit through the channel the journal itself provides. Keep the submission acknowledgement, note the manuscript reference number in all correspondence, and direct any questions about a submitted paper to the editorial office through the contact details on the journal's site rather than through third parties.

Profile prepared for Journals World from the journal's DOAJ record and official journal web pages. Facts that could not be verified from those sources have been omitted rather than estimated. Marker: DEPTH-BATCH275.