Neutral Technologies aims to provide scientists, engineers,
practitioners and policymakers with an exchange and cooperation platform
to disseminate their new scientific and technological findings, new
methods, policies related to carbon neutrality, and promote low-carbon
transformation and sustainable development of our society. CNT focus on
three main areas, low-carbon energy and decarbonization technologies,
green construction materials, building and infrastructure, and carbon
neutral strategy and policy analyses. It covers fundamental science to
practical management, and encompasses topics including low carbon energy
diversification, carbon emission control, zero carbon building, green
transportation, carbon policy, carbon management. Papers on carbon
economy, climate legislation and environment governance are also
welcome.
Carbon
Neutral Technologies is an open access journal published jointly by
Elsevier and Southeast University. To accelerate research in this field,
Southeast University generously covers the Article Publishing Charge
(APC) for a select number of authors. Contact the editorial office
(CNT@pub.seu.edu.cn) if you wish to be considered for an APC waiver.
Peer review
This
journal follows a double anonymized review process. Your submission
will initially be assessed by our editors to determine suitability for
publication in this journal. If your submission is deemed suitable, it
will typically be sent to a minimum of two reviewers for an independent
expert assessment of the scientific quality. The decision as to whether
your article is accepted or rejected will be taken by our editors.
Read more about peer review.
Our editors are not involved in making decisions about papers which:
they have written themselves.
have been written by family members or colleagues.
relate to products or services in which they have an interest.
Any
such submissions will be subject to the journal's usual procedures and
peer review will be handled independently of the editor involved and
their research group. Read more about editor duties.
Authors
may submit a formal appeal request to the editorial decision, provided
it meets all the requirements and follows the procedure outlined in
Elsevier’s Appeal Policy. Only one appeal per submission will be
considered and the appeal decision will be final.
Special issues and article collections
The
peer review process for special issues and article collections follows
the same process as outlined above for regular submissions, except, a
guest editor may send the submissions out to the reviewers and may
recommend a decision to the journal editor. The journal editor oversees
the peer review process of all special issues and article collections to
ensure the high standards of publishing ethics and responsiveness are
respected and is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance
or rejection of articles.
Open access
We refer you to our open access information page to learn about open access options for this journal.
Ethics and policies
Ethics in publishing
Authors must follow ethical guidelines stated in Elsevier's Publishing Ethics Policy.
Submission declaration
When authors submit an article to an Elsevier journal it is implied that:
the
work described has not been published previously except in the form of a
preprint, an abstract, a published lecture, academic thesis or
registered report. See our policy on multiple, redundant or concurrent
publication.
the article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
the
article's publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or
explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried
out.
if
accepted, the article will not be published elsewhere in the same form,
in English or in any other language, including electronically, without
the written consent of the copyright-holder.
To verify compliance with our journal publishing policies, we may check your manuscript with our screening tools.
Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following:
The conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
Final approval of the version to be submitted.
Authors
should appoint a corresponding author to communicate with the journal
during the editorial process. All authors should agree to be accountable
for all aspects of the work to ensure that the questions related to the
accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately
investigated and resolved.
Changes to authorship
The
editors of this journal generally will not consider changes to
authorship once a manuscript has been submitted. It is important that
authors carefully consider the authorship list and order of authors and
provide a definitive author list at submission.
The policy of this journal around authorship changes:
All
authors must be listed in the manuscript and their details entered into
the submission system. Changes can only be made prior to acceptance,
and only if approved by the journal editor. This includes additions,
deletion, or rearrangement of author names.
Requests
to change authorship must be made by the corresponding author using the
Authorship Change Request form. The corresponding author must provide
the reason for the request to the journal editor with written
confirmation from all authors, including any authors being added or
removed, that they agree with the changes. Requests which do not comply
with the instructions outlined in the form will not be considered.
This
journal does not allow authorship changes after acceptance. This
includes additions, deletions, or the rearrangement of author names,
including changes to the corresponding author.
The review process may be paused while a change in authorship request is being considered.
Change
requests made by the authors without the Authorship Change Request form
or editor approval may result in the rejection of the manuscript, or
retraction if the article has already been published.
Declaration of competing interests
All
authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with
other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or
bias their work. Examples of potential competing interests include:
Employment
Consultancies
Stock ownership
Honoraria
Paid expert testimony
Patent applications or registrations
Grants or any other funding
Affiliation with the journal as an Editor or Advisory Board Member
The declarations tool should always be completed.
Authors with a journal affiliation to declare should enter the following text under “Other Activities” within the declarations tool and should inform the journal and publisher prior to completing the submission process:
Given
their role as [insert journal role title], [insert your name] had no
involvement in the peer-review of this article and has no access to
information regarding its peer-review. Full responsibility for the editorial process for this article was delegated to another journal editor.
Editorial
disclosure statements will be included as a footnote and/or in the
declaration of competing interest section of the article.
Authors with no competing interests to declare should select the option "I have nothing to declare".
The
resulting Word document containing your declaration should be uploaded
at the "attach/upload files" step in the submission process. It is
important that the Word document is saved in the .doc/.docx file format.
Author signatures are not required.
Funding sources
Authors
must disclose any funding sources who provided financial support for
the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article. The role
of sponsors, if any, should be declared in relation to the study design,
collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report
and decision to submit the article for publication. If funding sources
had no such involvement this should be stated in your submission.
List funding sources in this standard way to facilitate compliance to funder's requirements:
Funding:
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant
numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle,
WA [grant number zzzz]; and the United States Institutes of Peace [grant
number aaaa].
It
is not necessary to include detailed descriptions on the program or
type of grants, scholarships and awards. When funding is from a block
grant or other resources available to a university, college, or other
research institution, submit the name of the institute or organization
that provided the funding.
If no funding has been provided for the research, it is recommended to include the following sentence:
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Declaration of generative AI use
Authors must declare the use of generative AI in the manuscript preparation process upon submission of the paper.
Elsevier
recognizes the potential of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies
(“AI Tools”), when used responsibly, to help researchers work
efficiently, gain critical insights fast and achieve better outcomes.
Increasingly, these tools, including AI agents and deep research tools,
are helping researchers to synthesize complex literature, provide an
overview of a field or research question, identify research gaps,
generate ideas, and provide tailored support for tasks such as content
organization and improving language and readability.
Authors
preparing a manuscript for this journal can use AI Tools to support
them. However, these tools must never be used as a substitute for human
critical thinking, expertise and evaluation. AI technology should always
be applied with human oversight and control.
Ultimately, authors are responsible and accountable for the contents of their work. This includes accountability for:
Carefully
reviewing and verifying the accuracy, comprehensiveness, and
impartiality of all AI-generated output (including checking the sources,
as AI-generated references can be incorrect or fabricated).
Editing
and adapting all material thoroughly to ensure the manuscript
represents the author’s authentic and original contribution and reflects
their own analysis, interpretation, insights and ideas.
Ensuring
the use of any tools or sources, AI-based or otherwise, is made clear
and transparent to readers. If AI Tools have been used, we require a
disclosure statement upon submission; please see example below.
Ensuring
the manuscript is developed in a way that safeguards data privacy,
intellectual property and other rights, by checking the terms and
conditions of any AI tool that is used.
Finally,
authors must not list or cite AI Tools as an author or co-author on the
manuscript since authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can
only be attributed to, and performed by, humans.
The
use of AI Tools in the manuscript preparation process must be declared
by adding a statement at the end of the manuscript when the paper is
first submitted. The statement will appear in the published work and
should be placed in a new section before the references list.
An example:
Title of new section: Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the manuscript preparation process.
Statement:
During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME OF TOOL /
SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the
author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full
responsibility for the content of the published article.
The
declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools, such as tools
used to check grammar, spelling and references. If you have nothing to
disclose, you do not need to add a statement.
Please
read Elsevier’s author policy on the use of generative AI and
AI-assisted technologies, which can be found in the generative AI
policies for journals.
Please
note: to protect authors’ rights and the confidentiality of their
research, this journal does not currently allow the use of generative AI
or AI-assisted technologies such as ChatGPT or similar services by
reviewers or editors in the peer review and manuscript evaluation
process, as is stated in Elsevier's generative AI policies for journals.
Elsevier is actively evaluating compliant AI Tools and may revise this
policy in the future.
Preprints
Preprint sharing
Authors
may share preprints in line with Elsevier's article sharing policy.
Sharing preprints, such as on a preprint server, will not count as prior
publication.
We advise you to read our policy on multiple, redundant or concurrent publication.
