Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies

JSCMT journal is officially supported by Yildiz Technical University, and it is a peer-reviewed free open-access journal,

JSCMT publishes four issues per year (March, June, September, and December)

Publisher: Yildiz Technical University
Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Dr. Orhan Canpolat
The Average Time from Submission to Publication: 2 months
Type of Publications: Research Article, Review Article, Short Communication Paper, Technical Note, Letter to Editor, Invited Paper, Book review.
Language of Publication: English
Frequency: Quarterly (4 issues per year)
Publication Type: Online e-version

Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies (JSCMT) is an international journal, peer-reviewed, and open-access journal. Two referees specialized on the subject and selected by the Board of Editors to review the manuscripts submitted. 

JSCMT carries original, full-length articles and shorter articles relating to the pursuit and implementation of sustainability pillars through engineering planning, design, and application. It provides an academic platform for professionals and researchers to contribute innovative work in the field. Special issues devoted to international conferences and reviews of books and major reports will be published too.

1. Articles under the categories listed below are accepted to be published:
   
   Research Articles reflect the original experimental and/or theoretical research works. A coherent treatment emphasizing new insight is expected rather than a simple accumulation of data.
   
   Review Articles include authoritative reviews of recent advances in the basic and applied sciences with emphasis on the fundamental aspects of the subject. Manuscripts are generally of greater length than those found in other categories but contributions dealing in part with original research are not excluded. Contributors who may be invited by the editors, or who may submit outline proposals directly are offered a small royalty upon the publication of the article.
   
   Electronic ISSN: 2458-973X
   
   Key areas covered by the journal are:
   
   Carbon Credits.
   Carbon Dioxide Sequestration.
   Cement & Concrete.
   Climate change.
   Conservation of historical concrete structures.
   Designing structures with sustainable materials.
   The durability of Construction Materials.
   Ecology and sustainable development.
   Embodied energy from production.
   End-of-life materials that can be demounted/deconstructed and reused or recycled.
   Energy management during construction.
   Energy management during the use of the buildings and infrastructures.
   Energy requirements for transport and use.
   Environmental Technologies.
   Geopolymer Technology.
   Green construction and sustainable development.
   Green New Deal Construction Method.
   Greenhouse gas reduction.
   Innovative and non-traditional materials.
   Life Cycle Analysis.
   Maintaining quality and durability while achieving sustainability.
   Maintenance and Life Cycle Management of Concrete Structures.
   Maintenance and repair technologies for sustainability of buildings and infrastructures.
   Making construction materials durable.
   Mass balance - sources and final destinations of materials.
   New materials production and construction technologies using innovative materials.
   Recycling of municipal solid waste (MSW).
   Renewable and sustainable energy.
   Sustainability, quality, and public perception.
   Sustainable Construction Materials and Structures.
   Sustainable land development.
   Urban planning and development.
   Use of recyclable by-products in construction materials.
   Waste and water management.

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the online Manuscript Tracking System. Regardless of the source of the word-processing tool, only electronic PDF (.pdf) or Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf) files can be submitted through the MTS. There is no page limit. Only online submissions are accepted to facilitate rapid publication and minimize administrative costs. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the paper during submission and peer review. If for some technical reason submission through the MTS is not possible, the author can contact jscmt@yildiz.edu.tr for support.

How do I submit an article?
Click the "Article Submission" button from the DergiPark homepage. Select a journal using the filters on the left and click journal title.

You can send your submission with "Submit Article" button.

Before submitting your article, please contact the journal editor and ask your questions.

Click to submit an article.

Author's Panel

Click here to see author's process pages.


This journal offers authors

NO PUBLICATION FEES (article processing charges or APCs) to publish with this journal.

• no publishing fee charges
• no proofreading fee charges
• full text of papers available free on-line (open access)
• no page fee charges
• fast publication times: your paper will appear online as soon as it is ready, in advance of the print version
• free color online, and in print at the discretion of the Publisher
• electronic offprint of your published paper will be sent to ten colleagues of your choice, giving your article an increased chance of being cited quickly
• full electronic submission in any format
• a rigorous, fast and constructive peer review process
• free plagiarism checking
• Our submission system is very flexible so that the authors may submit their initial manuscript in any format that they want and no need to follow the format of Journal.

DOI numbers will be given to all published papers and they can be seen from the link below:

https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/jscmt/archive

Publishing fee or charges: This journal assesses no submission fees, no publication fees (article processing charges), or page charges.

Advertisement policy:Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies does not accept advertisements; the journal is sponsored by the Yıldız Technical University. Journal Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies has no direct marketing policy; the journal is sponsored by the Yıldız Technical University.

Terms of Submission
Papers must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are not currently under consideration by another journal or any other publisher. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the articles emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission of a paper that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability. All enquiries concerning the publication of accepted papers should be addressed to jscmt@yildiz.edu.tr.

Peer Review

All manuscripts are subject to peer review and are expected to meet standards of academic excellence. Submissions will be considered by an editor and “if not rejected right away” by peer-reviewers. Contributors who may be invited by the editors, or who may submit outline proposals directly are offered a small royalty upon the publication of the article.

Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies has a blind review process which is believed that more relevant than ever as the system for evaluating the quality, validity and relevance of scholarly research. The manuscripts submitted to journal are sent to two expert reviewers, whom of many have academic degree, for the possible publishing. The reviewers in the similar research area scrutinize the manuscripts for validly, significance, originality and scientific to help the editors assess whether the manuscripts should be published in the Journal. The manuscripts submitted to journal are passed on initial check by the editors. Inadequate or unprepared manuscripts according to journal requirements are rejected. Also, the manuscripts are checked for plagiarism using iThenticate which is subscribed by Yildiz Technical University. The manuscripts passing on the initial check are sent to two expert researchers to review. Generally a month time is offered the experts to review. The reviewing process is blind, so the authors never see the reviewers' name. We aim to reach a final decision for the manuscripts submitted to the journal within 1-2 months. Accepted manuscripts are presented online in the main website of the Journal. After proof of the accepted manuscripts, the papers are published in printed version of the Journal.

E-ISSN Number: 2458-973X (2016)
​
Postal Address: Yildiz Technical University Faculty of Civil EngineeringDepartment of Civil Engineering Davutpasa Campus, Istanbul / Turkey

Article Structure:

Download: Manuscript Template

Title and Authorship Information

The following information should be included

• Paper title
• Full author names
• Full institutional mailing addresses
• Email addresses
• Authors ORCID IDs

Abstract

The manuscript should contain an abstract. The abstract should be self-contained and citation-free and should not exceed 200 words.

Introduction

This section should be succinct, with no subheadings.

Materials and Methods
This part should contain sufficient detail so that all procedures can be repeated. It can be divided into subsections if several methods are described.


Results and Discussion
This section may each be divided by subheadings or may be combined.

Conclusions
This should clearly explain the main conclusions of the work highlighting its importance and relevance.

Acknowledgments
All acknowledgments (if any) should be included at the very end of the paper before the references and may include supporting grants, presentations, and so forth.

References
APA reference system should be used for the references in the manuscript, For example;

[1] Ortega, J., Esteban, M., Rodríguez, R., Pastor, J., Ibanco, F., Sánchez, I., & Climent, M. (2017). Long-Term Behaviour of Fly Ash and Slag Cement Grouts for             Micropiles Exposed to a Sulphate Aggressive Medium. Materials, 10(6), 598. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma10060598

[2] Fonseca, F. S., Godfrey, R. C., & Siggard, K. (2015). Compressive strength of masonry grout containing high amounts of class F fly ash and ground               granulated blast furnace slag. Construction and Building Materials, 94, 719–727. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2015.07.115

[3] Thakur, Y. K., Kumar, M. G., & Chopra, T. G. (2014). Effect of Marble Dust and Furnace Slag as Sand Replacement Materials on Strength Properties of Pavement Quality Concrete (PQC) (Doctoral dissertation).

[4] Bras, A., Henriques, F. M., & Cidade, M. (2010). Effect of environmental temperature and fly ash addition in hydraulic lime grout behaviour. Construction and Building Materials, 24(8), 1511–1517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2010.02.001

Authors are responsible for ensuring that the information in each reference is complete and accurate. All references must be numbered consecutively and citations of references in text should be identified using numbers in square brackets (e.g., “as discussed by Smith [9]”; “as discussed elsewhere [9, 10]”). All references should be cited within the text; otherwise, these references will be automatically removed.

Preparation of Figures
Upon submission of an article, authors are supposed to include all figures and tables in the PDF file of the manuscript. Figures and tables should not be submitted in separate files. If the article is accepted, authors will be asked to provide the source files of the figures. Each figure should be supplied in a separate electronic file. All figures should be cited in the paper in a consecutive order. Figures should be supplied in either vector art formats (Illustrator, EPS, WMF, FreeHand, CorelDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) or bitmap formats (Photoshop, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). Bitmap images should be of 300 dpi resolution at least unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers.

Preparation of Tables
Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Vertical rules should not be used.

Proofs
Corrected proofs must be returned to the publisher within 2-3 days of receipt. The publisher will do everything possible to ensure prompt publication. It will therefore be appreciated if the manuscripts and figures conform from the outset to the style of the journal.

Copyright
Articles published in JSCMT Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies have the international license of (CC-BY-NC) "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0". Accordingly, the authors who publish their articles in the journal are deemed to have accepted the following conditions:

• The author(s) retain the copyright of the article and give the journal the first publication right. The article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows it to be shared by others, provided that the author(s) are specified and published first in this journal.
• The author(s) can make a separate agreement for the distribution of the published version in the journal of the article (such as sending to an institutional database or publication in a book) without giving full authorization.
• The author(s) can share the published version of the article on the corporate database or on their own websites. This can lead to efficient exchanges, earlier dissemination of the article and more citations.

Download: JSCMT-Copyright Form

Download: JSCMT Author Contribution Form

Creative Commons License ( CC-BY-NC License)
Indicates that the article has a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 international license. If your article has this license, you can do the following;
• You can share, copy and reproduce the article published in the journal in any size and format provided that you provide the source.
• The licensor does not restrict freedoms as long as you maintain the license terms.

By providing that the following conditions are met;

Attribution: You must give the appropriate information, the license link, and if the change was made, the change information. You may properly carry out these operations without the knowledge that the licensor approves your use.
Non-commercial: You may not use this article for commercial purposes.
Not derived: If you mix, transfer, or work on the material, you may not distribute updated material.
No additional restrictions: You may not limit the rights permitted by the license on others by law or by using technology.

The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations.

While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

Download Manuscript Template

Ethics Policy	Plagiarism Policy	Open Access Policy
Archiving Policy	Fee Waiver Policy	Peer Review Policy
Authorship Policy	Funding Sources Policy	Publication Charges Policy
Complaint and Appeal Policy	Licenses and Copyright Policy	Retraction Policy
Corrections Policy	Open Access Statement	Withdrawal Policy

Ethics Policy

The Editorial Board of the Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies and the Publisher adheres to the principles of the Council of Science Editors (CSE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), and the European Association of Science Editors (EASE).

If the submitted manuscript does not include ethics committee approval, it will be reviewed according to COPE's guideline (Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations). If the study should have ethical approval, authors will be asked to provide ethical approval in order to proceed the review process. If they cannot provide ethical approval, their manuscript will be rejected and also their institutions and when needed, the related bodies in their country will be informed that such studies must have ethics committee approval. If they provide approval, review of the manuscript will continue.

If the study does not need ethics committee approval after the editorial board’s review, the authors will be asked to provide an ethics committee approval or a document given by a related independent committee that indicates the study does not need ethics committee approval according to the research integrity rules in their country. If the authors provide either an approval or a document showing that ethics approval is not needed, the review process can be continued. If the authors cannot provide either documents, the manuscript may be rejected.

Archiving Policy

The content published by the Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies is electronically preserved by using Internet Archive. (https://jscmt.yildiz.edu.tr/archive) and using LOCKSS.

Authorship Policy

Each individual listed as an author should fulfill the authorship criteria. The authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

Final approval of the version to be published; AND

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for their own work, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors and each author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for other parts of the work.

All of those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who provided a contribution but do not meet all four criteria should be recognized separately on the title page and in the Acknowledgements section at the conclusion of the manuscript.

The Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies requires that corresponding authors submit a signed and scanned version of the authorship contribution form (available for download through) during the initial submission process in order to appropriately indicate and observe authorship rights and to prevent ghost or honorary authorship. Please note that the list of authors on the final manuscript will be presented in the order provided on this form. If the editorial board suspects a case of “gift authorship,” the submission will be rejected without further review. As part of the submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author should also send a short statement declaring that they accept all responsibility for authorship during the submission and review stages of the manuscript.

Complaint and Appeal Policy

Appeal and complaint cases are handled within the scope of COPE guidelines by the Editorial Board of the journal. Appeals should be based on the scientific content of the manuscript. The final decision on the appeal and complaint is made by Editor in Chief. An Ombudsperson or the Ethical Editor is assigned to resolve cases that cannot be resolved internally. Authors should get in contact with the Editor in Chief regarding their appeals and complaints via e-mail at kare@karepb.com

Corrections Policy

If the editors or publisher learn from a third party that a published work contains a material error or inaccuracy, the authors must promptly correct or retract the article or provide the journal editors with evidence of the accuracy of the article.

Fee Waiver Policy

There is no fee waiver.

Funding Sources Policy

All authors are required to declare what support they received to carry out their research. Declaring funding sources acknowledges funders’ contributions, fulfills funding requirements, and promotes greater transparency in the research process.

Each author must individually declare all sources of funding received for the research submitted to the journal. This information includes the name of granting agencies, grant numbers, and a description of each funder’s role. If the funder has played no role in the research, this must be stated as well.

Authors are not required to provide the complete list of every single grant that supports them if the grant is not related to the research published.

Licenses and Copyright Policy

The author(s) retain the copyright of the article and give the journal the first publication right. Author(s) publishing with the journal their work licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) and grant the Publisher non-exclusive commercial right to publish the work. CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Open Access Policy

The Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies supports the Budapest Open Access Initiative statement of principles that promotes free access to research literature. The declaration defines open access to academic literature as free availability on the internet, permitting users to read, record, copy, print, search, or link to the full text, examine them for indexing, use them as data for software or other lawful purposes without financial, legal, or technical barriers. Information sharing represents a public good, and is essential to the advancement of science. Therefore, articles published in this journal are available for use by researchers and other readers without permission from the author or the publisher provided that the author and the original source are cited. The articles in the Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies are accessible through search engines, websites, blogs, and other digital platforms. Additional details on the Budapest Open Access Initiative and their guidelines are available at https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org.

Open Access Policy is based on rules of Budapest Open Access Initiative the Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies applies the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license to articles we publish. If you submit your paper for publication, you agree to have the CC BY-NC 4.0 license applied to your work. Under this Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can copy, distribute or reuse the content of your article for non-commercial purposes for free as long as the author and original source are properly cited. The corresponding author must sign the Creative Commons License Agreement after their articles are accepted.

Open Access Statement

The journal is an open access journal and all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Except for commercial purposes, users are allowed to read, download, copy, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. The open access articles in the journal are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

Peer Review Policy

Only those manuscripts approved by its every individual author and that were not published before in or sent to another journal, are accepted for evaluation.

Submitted manuscripts that pass preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. After plagiarism check, the eligible ones are evaluated by Editor-in-Chief for their originality, methodology, the importance of the subject covered and compliance with the journal scope. Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, religious belief or political philosophy of the authors and ensures a fair double-blind peer review of the selected manuscripts.

The selected manuscripts are sent to at least two national/international referees for evaluation and publication decision is given by Editor-in-Chief upon modification by the authors in accordance with the referees’ claims.

Editor-in-Chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers and is responsible for final decision for publication of the manuscripts in the Journal.

Reviewers’ judgments must be objective. Reviewers’ comments on the following aspects are expected while conducting the review.

Does the manuscript contain new and significant information?
Does the abstract clearly and accurately describe the content of the manuscript?
Is the problem significant and concisely stated?
Are the methods described comprehensively?
Are the interpretations and consclusions justified by the results?
Are adequate references made to other Works in the field?
Is the language acceptable?
Reviewers must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.

A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other persons. The anonymity of the referees is important.

Plagiarism Policy

All submissions are screened using similarity detection software at least two times: on submission and after completing revisions. In the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, or data falsification/fabrication, the editorial board will follow and act in accordance with COPE guidelines. Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, that is identified at any stage will result in rejection of the manuscript.

Publication Charges Policy

The Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies assesses no submission fees, publication fees, or page charges.

Retraction Policy

The publisher will take all appropriate measures to modify the article in question, in close cooperation with the editors, in cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, disclosure, or retraction of the affected work in the most severe case. Together with the editors, the publisher will take reasonable steps to detect and prevent the publication of articles in which research misconduct occurs and will under no circumstances promote or knowingly allow such abuse to occur.

Withdrawal Policy

The Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies is committed to providing high quality articles and uphold the publication ethics to advance the intellectual agenda of science. We expect our authors to comply with, best practice in publication ethics as well as in quality of their articles.

Withdrawal of a manuscript will be permitted only for the most compelling and unavoidable reasons. For withdrawal of a manuscript authors need to submit an "Article withdrawal Form", signed by all authors mentioning the reason for withdrawal to the Editorial Office. The form is available from the web page of the journal. Authors must not assume that their manuscript has been withdrawn until they have received appropriate notification to this effect from the editorial office.

In a case where a manuscript has taken more than five months’ time for review process, that allows the author to withdraw manuscript.

Manuscript withdrawal penalty: After receiving the Article withdrawal Form, the Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies Editorial Board will investigate the reason of withdrawal.

If the reason finds to be acceptable, the author is allowed to withdraw the manuscript without paying any withdrawal penalty. If not the Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies will not accept any manuscripts from the same author for one year.

Important notes: Manuscripts may be withdrawn at any stage of review and publication process by submitting a request to the editorial office. Manuscript withdrawal will be permitted after submission only for the most compelling and unavoidable reasons.

If the author wants to withdraw a manuscript, the author needs to submit a completed "Article withdrawal Form", signed by all authors of the manuscript stating the reasons for manuscript withdrawal.

The manuscript will not be withdrawn from publication process until a completed, signed form is received by the editorial office. Authors must not assume that their manuscript has been withdrawn until they have received appropriate notification to this effect from the Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies editorial office.

NO PUBLICATION FEES (article processing charges or APCs) to publish with this journal.
no publishing fee charges
no proofreading fee charges
full text of papers available free on-line (open access)
no page fee charges

Journal Description: Our journal is supported by Yildiz Technical University officially, and is a peer-reviewed free open-access journal, published quarterly (March-June-September-December).