Journal of Cleaner Production
The Journal of Cleaner Production is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier since 1993, dedicated to transdisciplinary research on cleaner production methodologies, environmental impact mitigation, and sustainability practices across industrial, economic, and societal domains.[1][2][3] The journal emphasizes prevention-oriented strategies, full lifecycle assessments, and holistic systemic analyses to address pollution, resource depletion, and waste generation, serving as a platform for empirical studies, policy discussions, and practical implementations in fields such as manufacturing, energy, and urban planning.[2][4] It has grown into a high-volume outlet with an h-index of 354, reflecting extensive citation influence in environmental engineering and sustainability science, bolstered by a 2023 impact factor of 10.0 and CiteScore of 20.7 that position it among top-tier publications in its category.[3][4] Despite its prominence, the journal has faced scrutiny over instances of delayed responses to plagiarism allegations and retractions linked to data integrity issues in select papers, highlighting challenges in maintaining rigorous oversight amid rapid publication growth in a field prone to expansive claims on sustainability metrics.[5][6]History
Founding and Early Years (1993–2000)
The Journal of Cleaner Production was established in 1993 by Professor Donald Huisingh and published by Elsevier as a prevention-oriented outlet dedicated to promoting cleaner production methodologies.[7] This launch aligned with the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) formalization of cleaner production in the early 1990s as a continuous, integrated preventive environmental strategy applied to processes, products, and services to increase efficiency and reduce risks to humans and the environment.[8] Unlike traditional end-of-pipe pollution control, which treats emissions after generation, the journal's foundational emphasis prioritized source reduction through process redesign, reflecting UNEP's advocacy for eco-efficient industrial practices over remedial measures.[8] Initial issues concentrated on practical applications in manufacturing and industrial sectors, featuring case studies that demonstrated quantifiable efficiency gains, such as waste minimization and resource optimization leading to operational cost reductions.[7] These publications underscored empirical evidence of economic benefits from preventive strategies, including reduced material inputs and energy use, rather than abstract theoretical discussions.[3] The journal's early content thus served as a forum for documenting verifiable industrial transformations amid rising global environmental pressures, including regulations like the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and emerging international standards on pollution prevention. Publication frequency in the founding period varied, with limited issues annually to accommodate a nascent audience of researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners focused on applied environmental engineering.[9] By prioritizing data-driven analyses over expansive sustainability narratives, the journal gradually built credibility within specialized circles, establishing itself as a key resource for evidence-based cleaner production amid the 1990s shift toward proactive industrial ecology.[7]Expansion and Maturation (2001–2010)
During the 2001–2010 period, the Journal of Cleaner Production experienced substantial growth in output, reflecting heightened academic and industry interest in integrating environmental strategies with economic processes amid rising global trade and regulatory pressures on emissions. Article volume rose markedly, from 47 publications in 2001 to 245 by 2010, signaling expanded submission pipelines and editorial capacity to handle transdisciplinary work.[10][11] This era saw a shift toward more frequent issues, approaching monthly releases by 2010–2011, which facilitated broader coverage of topics like life-cycle assessments (LCA) and supply chain optimization for resource efficiency.[12] Empirical studies published in the journal during this time demonstrated practical applications, such as partitioning industrial resources to minimize waste while maintaining productivity, underscoring causal links between cleaner technologies and cost savings without excessive regulatory burdens.[13] Special issues marked key milestones in scope maturation, emphasizing intersections of environmental management with corporate practices. In 2003, a dedicated issue on financing cleaner production explored funding mechanisms for pollution prevention, highlighting economic viability over compliance-driven approaches.[14] Subsequent volumes in 2004 addressed applications of industrial ecology, incorporating LCA methodologies to evaluate full-system impacts in manufacturing.[15] By 2007, issues on material flow analysis advanced supply chain analyses, promoting metrics that quantified sustainability gains alongside measurable economic returns, such as reduced input costs per output unit.[16] These thematic collections attracted contributions linking cleaner production to corporate social responsibility (CSR), with a 2010 issue on sustainable water use framing CSR as a tool for resource stewardship tied to operational resilience rather than mere reputational enhancement.[17] The journal's rising prominence was evidenced by its role in disseminating evidence-based innovations, including those achieving emission reductions through process redesigns that avoided net economic losses. For instance, analyses in the mid-2000s quantified how eco-efficiency strategies in production partitioning lowered environmental footprints while partitioning resources efficiently across sectors.[13] This period's publications increasingly prioritized causal realism in sustainability metrics, favoring verifiable outcomes like emission cuts per economic unit over aspirational goals, thereby influencing policy and industry adoption of supply chain tools for globalization-era challenges.[18]Recent Evolution (2011–Present)
In the 2010s, the Journal of Cleaner Production underwent significant operational expansion under Elsevier's management, transitioning to a higher-frequency publication model that reached 36 issues per year by the mid-decade, facilitated by digital platforms like ScienceDirect and the introduction of hybrid open access options allowing authors to pay article processing charges for immediate accessibility.[2][4] This shift accommodated surging submissions amid growing academic interest in sustainability, culminating in over 11,000 articles published annually by 2022, a volume driven by Elsevier's global outreach and the journal's alignment with international frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.[3][19] Recent years have seen the journal increasingly incorporate emerging technological paradigms into its discourse on production efficiency, with a notable uptick in publications on circular economy models and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) alongside Industry 4.0 technologies for resource optimization, as evidenced by systematic reviews and empirical studies published between 2023 and 2025.[20][21] These contributions emphasize data-driven efficiencies, such as AI-enabled predictive maintenance to minimize waste, correlating with the journal's CiteScore climbing to approximately 20.7 in recent assessments, reflecting heightened citation impact from interdisciplinary integrations.[22][3] The journal has also responded to exogenous shocks, including post-COVID-19 supply chain disruptions, by prioritizing publications that conduct causal analyses of resilience factors—such as diversified sourcing and digital traceability—rather than unsubstantiated projections of systemic collapse, with dedicated studies examining recovery mechanisms in manufacturing and logistics sectors from 2021 onward.[23][24] This approach underscores a commitment to empirical validation over narrative-driven interpretations, even as submission volumes strained editorial capacity and prompted debates on maintaining rigor amid rapid output growth.[25]Publisher and Operations
Elsevier's Role and Business Model
Elsevier, a commercial academic publisher and subsidiary of RELX plc, has owned and operated the Journal of Cleaner Production since its inception in 1993.[1] As the publisher, Elsevier manages all aspects of production, distribution, and dissemination through its ScienceDirect platform, generating revenue primarily from institutional subscriptions and author-paid fees.[2] This for-profit framework incentivizes scalable operations, enabling the journal to sustain high publication volumes—often exceeding 5,000 articles annually in recent years—while maintaining financial viability amid rising research output demands.[3] The journal operates under Elsevier's hybrid open access model, where most content remains behind a subscription paywall, but authors may opt for open access by paying an article processing charge (APC) of $4,220.[26] [3] This dual revenue stream—combining access fees from libraries and APCs from funded researchers—supports ongoing journal sustainability, though it has drawn scrutiny for contributing to Elsevier's high profit margins, reported at around 37% in 2023 for its STM publishing division.[27] The model facilitates broad accessibility via licensing agreements while funding editorial and technical infrastructure. Strategically, the Journal of Cleaner Production anchors Elsevier's environmental science portfolio, including a family of 11 companion journals targeting specialized sustainability areas, all unified by a focus on practical cleaner production methodologies.[1] Elsevier enhances the journal's visibility through integration with Scopus, its proprietary indexing database, which tracks citations and boosts discoverability among global researchers.[3] This positioning prioritizes content with empirical, lifecycle-based analyses of production efficiency, favoring economically grounded sustainability over abstract theorizing, to cultivate wide appeal and sustained citation growth essential to the publisher's metrics-driven business.[2]