Guidelines for Authors Preparing Manuscripts

Original research/review articles, short communications or letters to the Editor should be submitted only by one of the authors of the manuscript concerned; submission by anyone else on their behalf is not permitted. The submitting author should take responsibility for the genuineness of the article. To facilitate rapid publication and to minimize administrative costs, Journal of Environmental Nanotechnology accepts online submissions through its official website, through OJS platform ( https://nanoient.org/journals/index.php/jent/index); alternatively, the authors can e-mail the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief (editorjent@gmail.com).

During submission the authors will be asked to provide a cover letter to explain why the manuscript should be published in the journal, to address issues related to JENT's editorial policies and to declare any potential competing interests. If the article is submitted for a special issue, a note shall be included in the cover letter.

Potential reviewers may be recommended by members of the Editorial Board based on the manuscript's research area and the reviewers' subject expertise. The final selection and appointment of reviewers shall be made independently by the Editor-in-Chief or a designated academic editor. Reviewers must have no conflicts of interest with the authors, institutions, or research described in the manuscript.

1. Authorship Criteria

Authorship should be based on all four of the following criteria, in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE):

1. Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the manuscript or critically revising the manuscript for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

All listed authors must meet all four criteria. Contributors who do not meet all criteria should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section, not listed as authors.

Guest authorship (listing individuals who did not contribute) and ghost authorship (omitting individuals who did contribute) are considered forms of research misconduct and may result in rejection or retraction of the manuscript.

Changes to authorship after submission — including addition, removal, or reordering of authors — require a written justification signed by all authors and the explicit approval of the Editor-in-Chief. Such requests must be submitted before acceptance; post-acceptance authorship changes will only be considered in exceptional circumstances.

AI tools (including large language models such as ChatGPT) cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Authors who use AI tools in preparing their manuscript must disclose this in the Acknowledgements section. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy and integrity of all content. (For further details, see the AI Policy under Publication Ethics.)

2. Conflict of Interest Disclosure

All authors must disclose any financial, personal, or professional relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation. This includes, but is not limited to:

• funding sources and financial support;
• employment or institutional affiliations relevant to the research;
• consultancies, honoraria, or speaker fees;
• stock ownership or financial interests in companies related to the research;
• patent applications or intellectual property interests; and
• personal relationships with individuals who could influence the work.

Disclosures must be included in the submitted manuscript as a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement, placed before the References section. All authors must agree upon the content of this statement prior to submission.

If no conflict of interest exists, authors must explicitly state:

"The authors declare no conflict of interest."

Manuscripts submitted without a Conflict of Interest statement will be returned to the authors before entering the review process.

Undisclosed conflicts of interest identified after publication may result in a correction, expression of concern, or retraction, in accordance with COPE guidelines. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to consult the authors' institutions if a serious undisclosed conflict is identified.

3. Corresponding Author

The Corresponding author shall be clearly indicated for correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, including post-publication and his/her appropriate phone number (with country code) shall be provided in addition to the complete postal address and email address.

4. File Formats

Microsoft Word (Version 2007 and above) files are acceptable for the main manuscript.

5. Main Manuscript

5.1 Title Page

The title of the article, the authors' full names and their institutional and email addresses should be mentioned on the Title page, with a clear indication of the corresponding author.

5.2 Title

The title should be precise and specific, conveying the research intent clearly and allowing the reader to decide whether the article would be in line with his field of interest. Inflated and bombastic titles will mar the readability. Abbreviations and jargons should be avoided in the title. The title is the key advertisement for every article; a poorly titled article is less-likely to invoke interest and seldom reaches the target audience. Indexing and abstracting services depend on the accuracy and specificity of the title and extract keywords from the title for cross-referencing.

5.3 Abstract

The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 250 words. It is a recommended practice to finalize the abstract (and the title), after writing the main manuscript.

5.4 Keywords

Three to five keywords representing the main content of the article should be provided. Care shall be exercised in selecting appropriate keywords since they help the readers in finding your article quickly and accurately through search engines.

5.5 Experimental Procedure / Materials and Methods

The details about materials, experimental set-up and procedure should be provided in such a way that any aspiring independent researcher could reproduce, modify or extend the work done in the future. Methodologies adopted earlier should be summarized with appropriate citations. Equations used and calculations done are to be shown, as applicable.

5.6 Results and Discussion

The combined 'Results and Discussion' section is recommended, though it is not mandatory and can be broken into sub-sections. The results should be presented in a clear and concise manner. The discussion should represent an introspection of the results obtained, expressing the significance of the research work done.

5.7 Conclusions

The major conclusions of the research should be presented in a nutshell, either as a separate section or as a sub-section of 'Results and Discussion'.

5.8 Acknowledgements

The individuals who have contributed substantially towards the research work in one way or the other shall be acknowledged and the source(s) of funding, if any, shall be included.

5.9 Tables and Figures

Table titles should be placed above the respective tables and Figure captions should be placed below the respective figures; care shall be exercised to ensure clarity and accuracy in framing Table titles and Figure captions.

Tables and Figures should be placed as close as possible to their respective first manuscript reference. Table titles and Figure captions should be centred and numbered with Arabic numerals (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Table 1, Table 2, etc.). Figure captions should not be attached to the respective figures. One line of space is to be maintained between each table and its title (and between each figure and its caption). Two lines of space are to be maintained between each table/figure and the subsequent text. Nomenclature and abbreviations should agree with forms used elsewhere in the paper. Tables and Figures should be placed in the manuscript exactly in the intended position; if tables and figures are submitted as separate files, their position in the manuscript should be properly indicated.

Tables which are too wide to fit on a page may be placed broadside (by rotating through 90° counter-clockwise). Submission of tables in image formats should be avoided.

Figures should have high resolution, with a minimum of 300 DPI, for JPEG and TIFF formats, suitable for high-quality reproduction and print. Colour figures are permitted. Figures should be ready for direct reproduction without further changes (editorial changes will not be made to figures). Each figure should be scaled to fit an 8.5-inch x 11-inch page (it should fit either in a 3.5-inch single column or in a 7-inch double column of a printed page). All figures should occupy no more than half a page, except for the detail-rich figures. Symbols must be large enough to retain their individual characteristics when reduced. Graphs should be drawn using heavy line weight. Line figures should be placed within the margins. Legibility of symbols, labels and data points should be ensured.

5.10 Proofs

Proof will be sent to the corresponding author for corrections and should be returned within one week of receipt. Corrections should be restricted to typesetting errors.

5.11 Data Availability

JENT encourages authors to make the underlying data supporting their findings openly available whenever possible.

Authors must include a brief Data Availability Statement in the manuscript, indicating whether data are:

1. Openly available — (with the repository name and DOI/link);
2. Available on request — available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request;
3. Unavailable — unavailable, with a reason stated.

Recommended repositories include Zenodo, Figshare, and discipline-specific repositories. Data sharing is not mandatory; however, it is strongly encouraged in the interest of reproducibility and transparency.

5.12 Citations and References

Citation to work done by four or more authors should be abbreviated with the use of et al. (Example: Manel et al. 1999); for one, two or three authors, the author names should be given in full. Works done by the same first author in the same year should be coded by alphabets after the year (Example: Thompson et al. 1991 a, b). Multiple citations should be listed in chronological order, separated by semi-colons (Example: Balmford and Gaston 1999; Royle et al. 2007).

'Reference' section, at the end of the manuscript, should be arranged alphabetically and journal titles should be abbreviated according to standard forms. Some examples are given below: