Science of the Total Environment
Science of the Total Environment is a weekly international peer-reviewed scientific journal covering environmental science. It was established in 1972 and is published by Elsevier. The editors-in-chief are Damià Barceló, Jay Gan and Philip Hopke.
Controversies
The October 2020 article suggesting that amulets may prevent COVID-19 has been met with skepticism even among the listed coauthors. As of November 2020, the article was under "temporary removal". It was later withdrawn at the request of the authors. The editor in-chief, Damià Barceló, was implicated in a €70,000 per year scheme to publish articles under the affiliation of King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. Such schemes are employed to boost a university's rankings and are universally considered unethical by academics.Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2024 impact factor of 8.0., the journal's indexation in the Science Citation Index Expanded is "on hold" and pending re-evaluation, with Web of Science citing the concerns on "the quality of the content published in this journal" as a reason for the suspension. In November 2025, the journal was removed from the Web of Science core collection.