ICT4S 2023
Mon 5 - Sat 10 June 2023 RENNES, France

Submission extension : October 31, 2023

Environmental Impacts of the Digital Economy

Submissions due: October 31, 2023

The Journal of Industrial Ecology (https://www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jie) invites you to submit articles for potential publication on the topic of Environmental Impacts of the Digital Economy by October 31, 2023.

Digital technologies hold enormous potential to mitigate or exacerbate climate change and other environmental issues. They have been claimed to be a major threat—responsible for a large and growing emissions footprint while accelerating consumption and fossil fuel extraction—as well as a critical enabler of emission reductions across sectors.

Increased understanding of the direct and indirect environmental impact of digital technologies and digitalization is thus imperative. Industrial ecology provides frameworks and tools that can advance that understanding and assess the opportunities for informed policy and management.

The Journal of Industrial Ecology, an international peer-reviewed bimonthly and the official journal of the International Society for Industrial Ecology welcomes submissions of papers from the 2023 ICT4S conference and from the wider ICT4S community. Full length papers published in the conference proceedings should be revised, updated, and/or elaborated prior to submission to the journal to avoid redundant publication. Papers must employ industrial ecology frameworks or tools including life cycle assessment (LCA), material flow analysis (MFA), environmentally-extended input-output analysis in addressing the environmental impacts of the digital economy. An indication of how the paper engages industrial ecology frameworks or tools should be included in the cover letter.



Suggested Topics

Papers addressing the either the direct or indirect environmental impacts of specific or aggregated digital technologies or the environmental impact of digitalization at the application, network, sectoral, or macro level are sought. Papers addressing methodological challenges and advances in the assessment of environmental impact of the digital economy are especially welcome.

Suggested topics include:

  • Environmental impact of online advertising

  • Quantification of rebound effects

  • Impacts of incorrect or misleading algorithms on environmental research and management

  • Generation and impact of e-waste from new digital technologies

  • Environmental risk of infrastructure or cascading failures from reliance on digital technology

  • Environmental impacts from AI computing

  • Environmental impacts of quantum computing, digital twinning, the metaverse and Web3

  • Environmental impacts from the use of materials by the ICT sector

  • Indirect environmental effects of applying digital solutions in other sectors

  • Biodiversity impacts of digital technologies (direct and indirect)



How to Submit

Manuscripts should be original, previously unpublished, in English, and between 3,500 and 6,000 words in length excluding references and tables. Submission implies that the manuscript has not been submitted for publication elsewhere and that it will not be submitted elsewhere while the review process is underway. Papers should be submitted electronically via ScholarOne at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jie, indicating that they are intended for the special issue on “Digital Economy.” Details about the preparation of the manuscript can be obtained from the Journal's home page http://jie.click/authorguidelines or from the editor. Use of the author checklist (http://jie.click/authorchecklist) will speed the review and publication of your paper! All submissions will be peer-reviewed in a single blind process using at least two reviewers.