O časopisu

Aims and Scope

Recycling and Sustainable Development (RSD) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Technical Faculty in Bor, University of Belgrade. The journal serves as a multidisciplinary platform for high-quality research addressing the technical, environmental, and systems aspects of waste management, recycling, and resource efficiency—supporting sustainable development through practical solutions, validated data, and sound engineering analysis.

RSD publishes original research articles and review articles. Submissions must contain only original work that has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. If a manuscript has been presented at a conference, it should be extended by at least 30% with new technical contributions before submission.

Article processing charges: free of charge (the publishers cover all expenses).

Key areas covered

The scope of the journal includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Waste generation and characterization (composition, variability, sampling, and analytical methods)
• Recycling and reuse of materials, products, and by-products across industrial sectors
• Treatment technologies, including mechanical, biological, chemical, thermal, and hybrid processes, as well as emerging and innovative methods
• Landfill disposal and landfill engineering (design, operation, monitoring, remediation, and rehabilitation of old sites)
• Environmental engineering (emissions control, leachate treatment, impact assessment, mitigation)
• Material flow analysis and resource efficiency metrics across systems and supply chains
• Waste and resource management, policy-supporting analyses, and related interdisciplinary topics

Language

Contributions to the journal may be submitted in English only. (From 2008 to 2016, the Journal reviewed articles for publication in Serbian and English; since 2017, only English-language submissions are considered.)

Publication frequency

The Journal is issued twice a year (from 2026). Before 2026, the Journal was issued once per year. 

Publisher

Recycling and Sustainable Development (RSD) is published by the University of Belgrade, Technical Faculty in Bor, with the Association of Metallurgical Engineers of Serbia (AMES) acting as a co-publisher. The publisher is responsible for the journal’s strategic direction, publishing standards, and long-term sustainability.

Vision

The publisher’s vision is to strengthen RSD as a reliable and recognized platform for scientific communication in recycling, environmental engineering, and sustainable development, supporting the dissemination of high-quality, openly accessible research that benefits both science and society.

Mission

The mission of the publisher is to advance scientific knowledge by ensuring ethical publishing practices, rigorous peer review, and open access to research results, while supporting authors, reviewers, and editors in maintaining high academic and professional standards.

Editorial Bodies and Governance

The publisher ensures that editorial bodies are formed through a transparent and structured procedure. Editorial board members are appointed for fixed terms, with renewals based on scientific contribution, editorial engagement, and the evolving needs of the journal. The Editor-in-Chief coordinates the selection process in consultation with the publisher to ensure balanced expertise and ethical integrity.

Procedures for resignation or removal of editorial members are clearly defined and applied fairly in cases of non-performance, ethical concerns, or voluntary withdrawal, with all decisions communicated formally and transparently.

Service Provider Protocols

Our journal operates under clear and transparent protocols that guide our relationships with all service providers involved in our publication process. These protocols are based on formal legal agreements to ensure high standards and accountability.

• Hosting and Digital Archiving: Managed by Dhilos Cloud, ensuring secure and reliable access.
• Platform Management: by Milan Kragujevic and Vaso Manojlovic.
• Copy-Editing, Printing, and Distribution: Provided by the University of Belgrade, Technical Faculty in Bor

Editorial Policies

Editorial Responsibilities

The Editorial Board is responsible for safeguarding the academic quality, integrity, and relevance of all content published in the Recycling and Sustainable Development journal. Editorial decisions are based exclusively on the scientific merit, originality, and relevance of submitted manuscripts, in full compliance with the journal’s aims and scope.

The Editor-in-Chief (Prof. Dr Milan Trumic) and members of the Editorial Board act independently and without discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, nationality, religious belief, institutional affiliation, or political orientation. Editorial decisions are made in accordance with established ethical standards and applicable legal requirements related to copyright, plagiarism, and defamation.

Editors and editorial staff ensure the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts throughout the review and decision-making process. Information and ideas contained in unpublished materials must not be used for personal advantage without the explicit consent of the authors.

Members of the Editorial Board must declare any potential conflicts of interest. Editors who have a conflict of interest with a submitted manuscript are excluded from the editorial decision process for that submission.

Authors’ Responsibilities

Ethics Statement

Authors are expected to conduct and present their research in accordance with accepted ethical standards. By submitting a manuscript, authors confirm that the work is original, scientifically sound, and ethically conducted, and that it complies with all applicable regulations and ethical guidelines.

Reporting Standards

Authors must present an accurate account of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance. Sufficient detail and references should be provided to allow others to replicate the work. Fraudulent, misleading, or deliberately inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Authorship

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant scientific contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All persons who meet the criteria for authorship should be listed as authors, and all listed authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and agree to its submission.

Acknowledgment of Sources

Authors must properly acknowledge the work of others and cite publications that have significantly influenced their research. Information obtained privately, such as through conversation or correspondence, must not be used without explicit permission from the source.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Submitted manuscripts may be screened for plagiarism using appropriate detection tools. Any manuscript found to contain plagiarized material will be rejected or retracted, as appropriate.

Conflict of Interest

Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest that could be perceived to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. If no conflict of interest exists, authors should explicitly state that there are none.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works

When authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, they are obligated to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief and cooperate in correcting or retracting the paper, if necessary.

ORCID

Authors are encouraged to provide their ORCID identifier during submission. ORCID ensures accurate attribution of authorship and improves the visibility and discoverability of published research.

Funding Information

All sources of financial support for the research should be clearly disclosed in the manuscript. Authors must identify the funding agency, grant number, and the role of the funder in the study, where applicable.

Reviewers’ Responsibilities

Reviewers play a critical role in maintaining the scientific quality of the Recycling and Sustainable Development journal. They are expected to provide objective, constructive, and timely evaluations of submitted manuscripts based on scientific merit, originality, relevance, and methodological soundness.

Reviewers must treat all manuscripts as confidential documents and must not use unpublished information disclosed in submissions for personal advantage. Any potential conflicts of interest must be declared to the Editor-in-Chief before accepting a review assignment.

Peer Review Process

The journal applies a single-blind peer review process. Each manuscript that passes the initial editorial screening is reviewed by at least two independent reviewers with appropriate expertise. Reviewers remain anonymous to authors, while authors’ identities are known to reviewers. Editorial decisions are based on reviewers’ reports and the overall scientific quality of the manuscript.

Post-publication Discussions

The journal supports transparent post-publication scientific discussion. Readers and researchers are encouraged to engage in scholarly commentary through recognized platforms such as PubPeer. Substantiated concerns raised after publication are taken seriously and may lead to editorial actions where appropriate.

Procedures for Dealing with Complaints and Appeals

The journal has established clear procedures for handling complaints and appeals related to editorial decisions, peer review, and publishing ethics. Complaints and appeals are assessed objectively and confidentially by the Editor-in-Chief and, where necessary, in consultation with the Editorial Board and the publisher.

The procedures follow internationally recognized best practices and guidance provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) flowcharts, ensuring fairness, transparency, and consistency in all decisions.

Retraction Policy

Retractions are issued to correct the scholarly record in cases of major errors, ethical breaches, plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, or other forms of serious misconduct. Retractions may be initiated by the authors, the Editorial Board, or the publisher.

A retraction notice is published as a separate item and is clearly linked to the original article. The original publication remains accessible but is clearly marked as retracted, in accordance with international publishing standards and ethical guidelines.

Research Data Policy

The journal encourages authors to share research data that support the results published in their manuscripts and enhance transparency, reproducibility, and reuse, following the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.” Accepted materials include supporting software, high-resolution images, background datasets, audio or video files, large appendices, data tables, and other supplementary content that cannot be included in the main article.

Authors may submit data together with the manuscript through the journal management system. These materials will be available to reviewers and published online after acceptance. Data may be hosted in trusted general-purpose repositories such as Zenodo or Dryad, where each dataset is assigned a DOI and can be cited as a standalone research output. Supplementary materials are published as provided by the authors and are not copy-edited or typeset.

Alternatively, authors may deposit data in a FAIR-compliant repository (institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose). Assistance in identifying suitable repositories is available via Repository Finder. Deposited data should include sufficient metadata and documentation (e.g. readme files, software, instruments, and workflows) to allow validation and reuse of the results.

Where data cannot be made openly available due to confidentiality, legal, ethical, security, or personal data protection constraints, authors must clearly explain the restrictions and provide information on how access can be requested, where applicable. Studies involving human participants must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki and relevant ethics approvals, and personal data must be anonymized unless explicit written consent for disclosure has been obtained.

A Data Accessibility Statement should be included in the manuscript, indicating where and how the data can be accessed (including the DOI), or explaining the reasons for any restrictions on data availability.

Open Access Policy

Recycling and Sustainable Development is a fully Open Access journal and is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). All published content is freely available without subscription or access barriers. The journal does not charge any fees at the submission, peer review, or production stages.

Self-Archiving Policy

Authors are permitted to deposit the preprint, accepted manuscript (postprint), and the publisher’s version (PDF) of their articles in institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose repositories, as well as on personal websites and academic social networks (e.g. ResearchGate, Academia.edu, LinkedIn). Deposits may be made at any time after acceptance and following publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) must be provided, together with links to the article’s DOI and the applicable license.

Complete journal issues are digitally archived in the repository of the National Library of Serbia: National Library of Serbia Repository .

Copyright and Licensing

Authors retain copyright of their published work and grant the publisher a non-exclusive right to publish and distribute the article as the original publisher. Articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided proper attribution is given.

Authors may enter additional non-exclusive agreements for the distribution of their work (e.g. inclusion in institutional repositories or books), with acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.

Metadata Policy

Journal metadata are openly available and reusable under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication, supporting broad dissemination, indexing, and reuse by third-party services.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in published articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors, Editorial Board, or publisher. Authors bear full legal and ethical responsibility for the content of their work. The publisher assumes no liability for claims arising from the use of published material.