Call For Papers: Protecting Earth’s Resources: Geochemical Behavior and Innovative Approaches to Critical Mineral Recycling and Utilization

The growing demand for critical minerals to support green technology, clean energy deployment, resource management, and broader societal progress underscores the need for sustainable solutions. Rather than focusing solely on extraction, the future of critical mineral research lies in approaches that prioritize a mechanistic understanding of how critical elements and minerals behave chemically, environmental protection, recycling, and responsible resource utilization.

ACS Earth and Space Chemistry is planning a Special Issue on the Geochemistry of Critical Minerals, highlighting research that advances our understanding of the chemical speciation, redox behavior, and reactivity of critical minerals across natural and engineered systems, in addition to their origins, enrichment, and concentration mechanisms of these minerals while promoting strategies for recovery that minimize environmental impact and ensure long-term sustainability. This collection will emphasize understanding the geochemical behavior, speciation, and reactivity of critical elements and minerals across natural and engineered systems, alongside innovative and sustainable approaches relating to the recycling, reprocessing, and sustainable management of critical minerals from primary resources to waste streams, ensuring that technological progress aligns with planetary stewardship.

We welcome submissions on a wide range of topics related to understanding critical elements and minerals, geochemical behavior and reactivity, geological materials and systems, and environmentally responsible analysis techniques.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Formation and enrichment processes for critical elements
• Identification and characterization of critical mineral reservoirs in diverse geological and recycled materials, including sedimentary systems, hydrothermal deposits, waste rock, tailings, coal, and evaporites
• Chemical speciation, redox transformations, and molecular-scale reactivity of critical minerals in natural and engineered systems
• Geologic helium and hydrogen resources with environmental considerations
• Environmentally responsible analysis and characterization techniques (including spectroscopy, isotopic tools, and microscale imaging) in support of the reactivity, recycling and recovery of critical minerals, such as from petroleum-produced waters, tailing ponds, subsurface brines, and other systems.
• Recycling and reprocessing strategies for critical minerals from industrial byproducts and waste streams

Submit your manuscript by December 1, 2026.

Organizing Editors

Prof. Tracy M. Quan, Associate Editor, ACS Earth and Space Chemistry
Oklahoma State University, United States

Dr. Vincent Noël, Editorial Advisory Board Member, ACS Earth and Space Chemistry
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, United States

Submission Information

We welcome submissions for this Special Issue through December 1, 2026. For more information on submission requirements, please visit the journal’s Author Guidelines page.

Accepted manuscripts for consideration in this Special Issue will include research articles, perspectives, and viewpoints. Papers accepted for publication for this Special Issue will be available ASAP (as soon as publishable) online. After all submissions have been published, they will then be compiled online on a dedicated landing page to form the Special Issue. Manuscripts submitted for consideration will undergo the full rigorous peer review process expected from ACS journals.

Open Access: There are diverse open access options for publications in American Chemical Society journals. Please visit our Open Science Resource Center for more information.

How to Submit

• Log in to the ACS Publishing Center.
• Select the "Journals" tab.
• Choose ACS Earth and Space Chemistry.
• Click "Submit."
• Select your manuscript type, and, under "Special Issue Selection," choose “Protecting Earth’s Resources: Geochemical Behavior and Innovative Approaches to Critical Mineral Recycling and Utilization."

If you have any general questions regarding submission to this Special Issue, please contact Prof. Tracy Quan (quan-office@earthspacechem.acs.org).