International Journal of
Environmental and Rural Development
Instructions for Authors
Copyright, Open Access and Fees
Aims and Scope
The International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (IJERD) is an interdisciplinary open access journal covering all aspects of environmental and rural development research. IJERD publishes peer-reviewed research articles, reviews and technical reports in areas such as education for sustainable rural development, rural development, environmental management, agricultural systems and infrastructure systems.
Published twice a year by the International Society of Environmental and Rural Development, IJERD aims to disseminate recent research findings, support education for sustainable development (ESD), and promote academic exchange and cooperation in environmental and rural development.
Article Types
The journal welcomes 3 article types, all of which are subject to peer review.
Research Article
Full and comprehensive reports describing original research of interest to the journal’s diverse readership. Research Articles are presented in the standard format of Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and References. The main text (excluding references, tables, and figure legends) should not exceed 5000 words or 6 journal pages.
Technical Report
Concise, topical reports describing case studies or technical developments. The main text should not exceed 5000 words and should follow the format for Research Articles.
Review Article
Articles presenting novel or unique overviews of current topics related to environmental and rural development. Reviews must be insightful and must address the question(s) of interest using appropriate and fully presented evidence; exhaustive general summaries will not be published. Reviews can explore several aspects of importance in a broader subject area but must not exceed 5000 words. Reviews are occasionally commissioned by the Editor-in-Chief, and the journal welcomes proposals from interested authors.
Journal & Ethics Policies
IJERD aligns its publishing policies and best practice guidelines to multiple scholarly organizations including the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), per the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. These publishing policies and best practice guidelines are subject to review and updates to maintain compliance with evolving global standards and indexing requirements.
IJERD’s policies and best practice guidelines relate to all IJERD published content, including original articles, review articles, technical reports, special issues and conference proceedings.
Before submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors must ensure that they have read and complied with the journal’s policies. The journal reserves the right to reject without review, or retract, any manuscript that the Editorial Board believes may not comply with these policies.
The responsibilities of the journal’s authors, editors, reviewers and publisher regarding research and publication ethics are described in full below.
Submission
The journal welcomes manuscript submissions from authors based anywhere in the world.
Submission of a manuscript to the journal implies that all authors have approved it, warrant that it is factual, have agreed to its submission, and have the right to publish it.
Submission to the journal also implies that the manuscript has not previously been published (in part or in whole, in any language), is not in press, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Authors must inform the editors if any related manuscripts are under consideration, in press, or published elsewhere. The availability of a manuscript on a publicly accessible preprint server does not constitute prior publication (see ‘Preprints’).
If authors choose to submit their manuscript elsewhere before a final decision has been made on its suitability for publication in the journal, they should first withdraw it from the journal.
Originality
IJERD has a zero-tolerance policy related to plagiarism, self-plagiarism and redundant publication that applies to all authors and all content.
Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript is original work. The journal uses Paperpal plagiarism software to screen manuscripts for unoriginal material. By submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors agree to this screening. Any manuscript with an unacceptable level of unoriginal material may be rejected or retracted at the editors’ discretion.
Preprints
To support the wide dissemination of research, the journal encourages authors to post their research manuscripts on community-recognized preprint servers, either before or alongside submission to the journal. Authors must disclose the preprint status at submission.
This policy applies only to the original version of a manuscript that describes primary research. Any version of a manuscript that has been revised in response to reviewers’ comments, accepted for publication, or published in the journal should not be posted on a preprint server. Instead, forward links to the published manuscript may be posted on the preprint server.
Authors should retain copyright in their work when posting to a preprint server.
Scooping
When assessing the novelty of a manuscript submitted to the journal, the editors will not be influenced by other manuscripts that are posted on community-recognized preprint servers after the date of submission to the journal (or after the date on which the submitted manuscript was posted on a preprint server, if the manuscript is submitted to the journal within 3 months).
Authorship
Submission to the journal implies that all authors have seen and approved the author list. Any change to the author list after manuscript submission – such as the insertion or removal of an author, or a rearrangement of author order – must be approved by all authors and the IJERD Editorial Board. The Editorial Board will review and consider requests in writing on a case-by-case basis.
IJERD does not permit ghost, guest, or honorary authorship.
Authorship of articles conveys credit and involves the accountability of those listed in the author list. Authors must fulfil the criteria that follow herein (adapted from McNutt et al., 2018, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1715374115; licensed under CC BY 4.0).
Each author is expected to have:
- made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; and
- approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author’s contribution to the study); and
- agreed both to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated and resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.
Authors are required to include a statement that specifies the contribution of each author as per the Author Contribution Statement section.
Given that artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as large language models (LLMs) and various openly available services do not meet the requirements listed above, they cannot be listed as an author of a manuscript.
Data falsification, data fabrication and image integrity
Authors must not falsify or fabricate data. Authors may digitally manipulate or process images, but only if the adjustments are kept to a minimum, are applied to the entire image, meet community standards, and are clearly described in the manuscript. All images in a manuscript must accurately reflect the original data on which they are based. Authors must not move, remove, add, or enhance individual parts of an image. The editors reserve the right to request original, unprocessed images from the authors. Failure to provide requested images may result in a manuscript being rejected or retracted.
Reproducing copyrighted material
If a manuscript includes material that is not under the authors’ own copyright, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) to reproduce it.
If a manuscript includes previously published material, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright owners and the publisher of the original work to reproduce it. The authors must cite the original work in their manuscript.
Copies of all reproduction permissions must be included with the manuscript when it is first submitted to the journal.
Availability of data and materials
IJERD encourages data transparency, sharing, code availability, and open science practices where feasible.
Authors must disclose the source of publicly available data and materials, such as public repositories or commercial manufacturers, by including accession numbers or company details in their manuscript, as appropriate.
Authors may make their own data and materials available by linking from their manuscript to relevant community-recognized public databases or digital repositories. All data sets must be made available in full to the editors and reviewers during the peer review process, and consideration should be made for them to be available by the date of publication. Authors commit to preserving their data sets for at least three years from the date of publication in the journal.
Manuscript Submission
All manuscripts must be submitted via email to the Editor-in-Chief at iserd.secretariat@gmail.com. Upon initial submission, authors must provide a single PDF that contains the text, tables, figures, and any other material.
Authors should also complete and submit the Declaration of Publishing Rights Transfer form, which is available here. Instructions for revised manuscripts are provided with the first decision letter, if relevant.
Manuscript Preparation
Style
Authors are advised to download and use the IJERD Manuscript Template to guide the preparation of their manuscript: Manuscript Template.
Manuscripts should be prepared in Microsoft Word or other appropriate software using A4 paper size, single line spacing, with left/top margins of 3 cm and right/bottom margins of 2.5 cm. Use 11pt Times New Roman font. The full text, including figures and tables, should be formatted as a single column.
English standard
Manuscripts should be written in clear, grammatically correct English. If a manuscript is not clear due to poor English, it may be rejected without undergoing peer review.
Authors who are non-native English speakers are encouraged to include a Certificate of English Language Review with their manuscript submission. If not included at submission stage, the editorial office may request it if it appears necessary. The form can be downloaded here: IJERD English Language Editing Certificate.
Format
The main text of all manuscripts should include the following sections: Title, Author name(s) and affiliation(s), Abstract, Key words, Introduction, Methodology, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements (if any), References.
The first page of each manuscript should contain: Title, Author name(s) and affiliation(s), Key words, Running title, and the e-mail address of the corresponding author. This page is deleted from the manuscript before being sent for peer review; no author details should be included on other pages in the manuscript.
Title
The title should describe the content of the article briefly but clearly. A concise, descriptive title is important for search purposes by third-party services. Do not use the same main title with numbered minor titles, even for a series of papers by the same authors. Do not use abbreviations in the title, except those used generally in related fields.
Authors and Affiliations
For each author, provide their full given and family names, and any middle initials.
Below each author, provide the full name and address of each author’s institution(s) (including institute and/or university, city, state, and country). When authors belong to different institutions, their respective addresses should be listed separately. When an author has a new address, it should be listed in a footnote and indicated by a superscript symbol (such as ^). The corresponding author should be identified with an asterisk (*) and their email address provided. For example: https://doi.org/10.32115/ijerd.16.2_61
Key words
Provide 4 to 6 keywords, separated by commas.
Equations
Equations are justified and numbered consecutively, with equation numbers in parentheses flush right, as in Eq. (1). Use the equation editor to create equations.
Ensure that any symbols in an equation are defined below the equation.
Abbreviations
Units
Use the International System of Units (SI) or SI-derived units. More information on SI units is available from the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM).
Abstract
All manuscripts should include an abstract that clearly expresses the basic content of the manuscript and describes the objective of the research, the experimental approach, the main results, and the conclusions. Abstracts must be a single paragraph not exceeding 300 words for all article types. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or references.
Introduction
The Introduction should provide sufficient background information to allow the reader to understand the purpose of the investigation and its relationship with other research in related fields. It should not include an extensive review of the literature.
Methodology
The description of the methods should be brief, but it must include sufficient detail to allow the experiments to be repeated. The manufacturer or supplier of chemicals, animals, microbial strains, or equipment should be listed in parentheses when they are first mentioned, along with their location (city, country). If hazardous materials or dangerous procedures are used in the experiments and the precautions related to their handling are not widely recognized, it is recommended that the authors provide the necessary details.
Results and Discussion
The Results and Discussion sections can be presented separately or joined as one. The Results should present the outcomes of the research and the Discussion should detail the authors’ interpretation of the Results. Tables and figures, including photographs, can be used to present the experimental results (see below). Excessive explanations of the data presented in tables and figures should be avoided. Novel models or hypotheses may be proposed in this section only if they are suggested by the results obtained in the study.
Conclusion
Authors may elaborate on the importance of the work or suggest applications and extensions. Descriptions of the experimental results should not be repeated in this section. Do not cite references in the Conclusion, as all points should have been made in the body of the paper.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements should be placed in a separate section before the References.
Authors may briefly acknowledge those who have assisted in the work or preparation of the manuscript, but who do not qualify for authorship (as defined in the Authorship section).
Funding
Authors should list all funding sources for their work in the Funding section. Such disclosure ensures transparency and accountability and minimizes the possibility of undue influence. Where possible and for each grant, the receiving institution, the funding agency and the grant number should be included.
Conflict of Interest Statement
Authors are required to declare any competing financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described. Please see the ‘Author competing interests and conflicts of interest’ section for detailed information. If there are no declared interests, authors should include the following statement in this section of their manuscript: “The authors declare no competing interests.”
Data Statement
Authors should include a Data Availability Statement in manuscripts that report results from research data. Following Hrynaszkiewicz et al. (2020, http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-017), statements should include information on where the manuscript’s data can be found and (where applicable) directly link to the data. If research data are not publicly available, this should be stated in this section along with any conditions for accessing the data.
Author Contribution Statement
Authors are required to include an Author Contribution Statement that follows CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). Each author’s contribution should be described using one or more of the 14 CRediT categories. For example (where ‘Author’ is replaced by the actual author names):
Conceptualization: Author 1.
Funding acquisition: Author 1.
Investigation: Author 1, Author 2.
Supervision: Author 1.
Visualization: Author 3.
Writing – original draft: Author 1, Author 2, Author 3.
Writing – review & editing: Author 1, Author 2.
AI Disclosure Statement
Authors must include an AI Disclosure Statement in which they clearly disclose any use of AI tools and applications to create text, figures, tables, images, or other content submitted to IJERD.
The AI Disclosure Statement must indicate the purpose of using the AI tools or applications and the boundaries of their use. Authors are fully responsible for ensuring compliance with all applicable rights of publicity, copyright laws, and intellectual property laws, as well as verifying the source, accuracy, originality, and ethical integrity of AI-generated material.
Ethics approval
Authors are required to declare that they have obtained and complied with relevant ethics approvals for any studies involving human or animal subjects (see ‘Animal/human experimentation’ section for more information). If such approval is not relevant or applicable to a submitted manuscript describing research that involves human or animal subjects, authors should include the statement “Not applicable” under this section heading.
Participant consent for publication
Authors are required to declare that they have obtained informed consent from participants for any relevant studies involving human subjects (see ‘Animal/human experimentation’ section for more information). If such consent is not relevant or applicable to a manuscript describing research that involves human subjects, authors should include the statement “Not applicable” under this section heading.
References
References should be cited in the text using the author-date system. All references should be listed in alphabetical order in the References section following the style shown below and as described in the References format document.
Dissertation
Doore, S. J. 2005. Prioritization of micro-watersheds of upper Bhama basin on the basis of soil erosion risk using remote sensing and GIS. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Pune, India.
Book
Morgan, R.P.C. 1995. Soil erosion and conservation, Second ed. Longman Group, UK Limited, UK.
Conference paper
Muhammad, A., Kita, I., Soichi, N. and Yano, A. 2006. A decision support system for real-time water level management. Int. Conf. on Hydrol. Sci., China, 1-8.
Journal article
Mihara, M. 2005. The effect of natural weed buffer on soil and nitrogen losses in Japan. Catena, 65, 265-271.
Renard, K.G. and Freimund, J.R. 1994. Using monthly precipitation data to estimate the R factor in the revised USLE. J. Hydrol., 157, 287-306.
Tables
Tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals (Table 1, Table 2, etc.). Each table should have a title placed above the table. Explanatory material should be placed below the table in italics; use superscript letters where necessary. Ensure that all numerical values in tables are associated with a unit of measurement (for example, at the top of the relevant column). Do not split tables across pages. Avoid detailed explanations of the experimental conditions used to obtain the data shown in tables; they should be included in other sections as relevant. See the example below for table style and column alignment.
Table 1 Title of the table
| Land use system | C Values | Area (ha) | Percent (%) |
| Forest | 0.06 | 14993.44 | 44.41 |
| Settlement | 0.02 | 254.76 | 1.34 |
| Agriculture | 0.24 | 5446.97 | 15.17 |
| Water body | 0.00 | 1921.34 | 16.52 |
| Plantation | 0.14 | 3243.45 | 15.64 |
| Upland paddy | 0.11 | 1232.56 | 8.79 |
Source and explanation
Figures
Figures may include line drawings, illustrations, photographs, diagrams and charts. Figures must be self-explanatory and should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. When citing a figure in the text, use the abbreviation “Fig 1.” except at the beginning of a sentence. Place figures separately within the text.
Figures should be of sufficiently high resolution for direct reproduction for printing. Magnifications of photographs should be indicated in the legends and/or by scales included in the photographs. Figures should not have border lines.
Each caption should start with a short title and should be placed below the corresponding figure. Captions should include sufficient experimental details to make the figures intelligible; however, duplicating the descriptions provided in other sections should be avoided.
Accepted Manuscripts
Manuscripts that are accepted for publication are copyedited and typeset by the journal’s production team before publication. The journal is published twice a year. All communication regarding accepted manuscripts is with the corresponding author.
Proofs
Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author, who should check and return them within 72 hours. Only essential corrections to typesetting errors or omissions are accepted; excessive changes are not permitted at the proofing stage.
Additional Important elements can be accessed by clicking below.
Contact
To contact the Editorial Office or the Editor-in-Chief, please write to:
Research Center, Institute of Environmental Rehabilitation and Conservation (ERECON)
2987-1 Onoji Machida-Shi, Tokyo 195-0064, Japan
Tel/Fax: +81-42736-8972
E-mail: iserd.secretariat@gmail.com
Webpage: www.iserd.net
Updated: 10/28/2026