BY Nageen Matlub, Publisher, SCI Journals
In my conversations with SCI members across sectors and around the world, one theme is becoming impossible to ignore: sustainability is pushing industries to move beyond siloed thinking and towards more connected, system-wide approaches.
No longer treated as a peripheral goal or long-term aspiration, sustainability is reshaping how organisations make decisions, prioritise innovation and plan for a more resilient future. Sustainability is no longer an agenda – it is becoming the framework through which industry sees itself and the challenges ahead.
This shift has been especially clear across our global community and the latest Where Science Meets Business conference, which saw systems thinking, transdisciplinary collaboration and the value of co-creation taking centre stage. The message was clear: sustainability challenges connect across chemistry, engineering, materials, biotechnology, economics and policy. These are multidimensional problems – and no single discipline, sector or organisation can solve them alone.
This is exactly where SCI Sustainability, SCI’s journal dedicated to sustainable industrial innovation, comes into its own. It supports a worldwide community working to turn scientific insight into practical, scalable solutions that industries can implement with confidence.
From real conversations to real needs
In speaking with members, what stands out most to me is the practicality – and complexity – of the questions being asked:
- How do we modernise established processes without disrupting global operations?
- Which materials genuinely reduce environmental impact while meeting performance needs?
- What biobased routes can scale economically across different regions?
- How do we redesign supply chains to enable true circularity?
- What measurement and standards frameworks bring clarity rather than complexity?
These are not isolated technical questions; they are transdisciplinary challenges shaped by technology, markets, regulation, behaviour – and system-wide constraints.
And increasingly, our members emphasise the importance of understanding system-level implications and unintended consequences. A promising solution in one area may create risks or burdens elsewhere.
SCI Sustainability is committed to encouraging authors to think beyond the immediate innovation, and to evaluate those solutions within the wider systems in which they will operate.
SCI has a global mission
SCI’s mission is bringing people and ideas together across disciplines and industries, and helping scientific understanding move into meaningful, real-world application.
This commitment to systems-level thinking is reflected in the leadership of the journal itself. Professor Nazia Habib, whose work explores how sustainability transitions unfold across policy, economics and society, brings a critical systems perspective to our editorial direction.
Alongside her, Professor Luuk van der Wielen, a leading figure in biobased industrial innovation and circular technologies, contributes deep experience in turning scientific advances into scalable industry solutions.
Supported by a transdisciplinary editorial board, they help ensure SCI Sustainability champions research that recognises complexity, anticipates system-wide impacts and supports co-creation between science and industry.
This integrated structure is further strengthened by the SCI Strategic Sustainability Advisory Group (SSAG), with the journal’s Industry Advisory Board (IAB) as a focused subset. Together, they ensure the journal remains connected to global industrial priorities while maintaining the high scientific standards that underpin SCI’s reputation.
A journal shaped by global industrial priorities
SCI Sustainability welcomes research that acknowledges sustainability as a system-wide and multidimensional challenge. We particularly encourage submissions in:
- sustainable and advanced materials
- industrial decarbonisation and transition pathways
- biobased and circular processes
- resource efficiency and lifecycle analysis
- measurement, standards and regulatory science
- transdisciplinary studies integrating scientific, engineering, economic and policy perspectives
- research addressing system-level implications and unintended consequences
These areas reflect the realities shared with us by our members around the world.
Building the future of sustainability
The future of industry will be shaped not just by innovation, but by the quality, depth and context of the evidence that supports it. Sustainability becomes meaningful when science helps industry understand pathways, anticipate risks and make confident decisions rooted in whole-system thinking.
SCI will continue to support this journey. Through our journals, advisory groups, events and global network, we remain committed to enabling the science that drives sustainable transformation.
SCI welcome submissions to SCI Sustainability from researchers, innovators and industrial practitioners. If your work advances sustainable technologies, processes or methodologies – particularly through transdisciplinary approaches, co-creation, or by examining system-level impacts – we would be delighted to consider it for publication.
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