BMC Environmental Science: open access publishing for a sustainable future

Abstract

Human activities have caused climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, affecting food security, health, and social equality. BMC Environmental Science addresses these issues by promoting open, cross-disciplinary research. The journal supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals, inviting submissions from all scientific fields including the natural, formal, and applied sciences, encouraging collaboration for global solutions.

Main text

We have changed the world we live in: climate change, environmental pollution, and biodiversity loss are unfortunate facts. The truth is that we have known about these facts for decades, but it is only now that we are beginning to face the uncomfortable and inevitable consequences of our actions. Human-induced changes to the earth’s biosphere cause sea levels to rise, ecosystems to be destroyed, animal and plant species to become extinct and instances of floods, droughts, storms, and heatwaves to increase.

The implications of these changes are far reaching and closely interrelated. From food and water security, rapid urbanization and public health, to societal inequalities and poverty: we are facing a global problem that involves all aspects of our society. People are losing their livelihoods, people are being displaced, people are getting sick.

Solving these challenges is not an easy task. We must transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, invest in clean technologies, and promote sustainable practices in industry and agriculture. We must protect and restore delicate ecosystems and preserve the biodiversity that sustains our communities. And we must address the social and economic inequalities that drive environmental injustice, ensuring that the benefits of environmental protection are available to everyone. Because environmental health is indeed synonymous to social and economic justice.

To achieve this vision, we need freely available information quickly. BMC Environmental Science was launched with exactly this idea in mind: in alignment with the BMC ethos, our journal provides open, accessible, and reusable data, accelerating discovery and ensuring robust, reproducible science. And since interrelated problems require cross-disciplinary solutions, our journal invites submissions from all scientific fields including the natural, formal and applied sciences.

Centered around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)s we particularly encourage contributions that center on clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), responsible consumption and production (SDG 12) climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14), and life on land (SDG 15). In addition, the journal welcomes research from a wide range of scientific fields addressing global sustainability, conservation and science policies including environmental protection, climate change, pollution, renewable energy and more.

We invite submissions of a variety of articles types, including research articles, database articles, and software articles. Our comment articles help focus our attention on newly evolving or field-changing concepts, while our review articles help contextualize research within a broader framework. Additionally, we encourage our authors to contribute to our BMC Series blog and Nature Communities, “Behind the paper” blog. This open transfer of information between scientists, policy makers, and the public is crucial for us all to pull on the same string and achieve the unthinkable together.

As Sir David Attenborough put it, “The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.”

So let’s fix this.