Scope — Avloryn Publications

Why civil engineering and environmental science are in one journal. ⚠ A journal spanning two fields has to say why, or it reads as fishing for submissions — which is a recognised predatory signal. The reason here is that the two are not separable in practice. Every significant civil project carries an environmental impact assessment. Climate adaptation is, in the end, an infrastructure problem. Flood risk sits between hydrology and hydraulic engineering and belongs wholly to neither. Embodied carbon and life-cycle assessment already sit inside civil engineering's own body of work. This journal is deliberately positioned at that intersection, and the taxonomy below reflects it: twelve clusters of civil engineering, and one of the environmental science that civil engineering keeps running into.

How this list was built. Not from memory, and not by copying one competitor. The spine is ASCE's own structure — its nine technical institutes plus its divisions and committees — because that is the profession's own map of what civil engineering contains, and a topic missing from our list that has an entire ASCE institute behind it would be a visible hole. ⚠ Cluster M is the exception and is marked as such: environmental science has no ASCE institute because it is not civil engineering.

What ASCE is (verified, 06-verification-log.md A18): the American Society of Civil Engineers, founded 1852 in New York — the oldest national engineering society in the United States. 160,000+ members across 177 countries, organised into 9 specialty institutes. It calls itself "the world's largest publisher of civil engineering content" and "an authoritative source for codes and standards" — and that is the point: ASCE/SEI 7 is adopted by reference into the International Building Code and NFPA 5000. Using its structure is therefore a defensible choice rather than a personal one. Cross-checked against the

scope of Springer's Discover Civil Engineering (structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, hydraulic, construction management — all covered below, and then some).

Applied as taxonomy (§3), not as OJS Sections.

A. Structural Engineering (ASCE SEI)

Structural analysis & design · 2. Concrete structures · 3. Steel & composite structures ·
Masonry & timber structures · 5. Earthquake engineering & structural dynamics · 6. Bridge

engineering · 7. Structural health monitoring, repair & retrofitting · 8. Wind engineering & structural loads · 9. Fire safety engineering · 10. Blast, impact & progressive collapse

B. Geotechnical Engineering (ASCE Geo-Institute)

Soil mechanics & foundation engineering · 12. Ground improvement & geosynthetics · 13. Rock

mechanics & rock engineering · 14. Tunnelling & underground space · 15. Slope stability & landslides · 16. Geoenvironmental engineering · 17. Earthquake geotechnics & soil–structure interaction

C. Environmental & Water Resources (ASCE EWRI)

Hydrology & watershed management · 19. Hydraulics & fluid mechanics · 20. Water supply,

treatment & distribution · 21. Wastewater treatment & reuse · 22. Irrigation & drainage ·

Groundwater & aquifer management · 24. Solid & hazardous waste management · 25. Air quality &

environmental monitoring · 26. Flood risk & stormwater management

D. Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers (ASCE COPRI)

Coastal engineering & shoreline protection · 28. Ports, harbours & waterways · 29. Offshore &

ocean engineering · 30. River engineering & sediment transport

E. Transportation & Development (ASCE T&DI)

Transportation planning & traffic engineering · 32. Pavement engineering & highway materials ·
Railway engineering · 34. Airport & airfield engineering · 35. Intelligent transportation

systems · 36. Road safety · 37. Urban development & land use

F. Construction Engineering & Management (ASCE CI)

Construction engineering & project management · 39. Cost, contracts & procurement ·
Construction safety & health · 41. Lean construction & productivity · 42. Modular, prefabricated

& automated construction

G. Construction Materials

Concrete technology & supplementary cementitious materials · 44. Sustainable, recycled &

low-carbon materials · 45. Asphalt & bituminous materials · 46. Advanced & smart materials ·

Durability & service life

H. Engineering Mechanics (ASCE EMI)

Computational mechanics & numerical methods · 49. Structural reliability & probabilistic

methods · 50. Experimental mechanics & testing · 51. Dynamics, vibration & control

I. Utility Engineering & Surveying (ASCE UESI)

Subsurface utility engineering · 53. Pipeline engineering · 54. Surveying & geodesy ·
Geomatics, GIS & remote sensing · 56. UAV survey & photogrammetry

J. Architectural Engineering (ASCE AEI)

Building systems — HVAC, lighting, acoustics · 58. Building envelope & building physics ·
Energy-efficient & net-zero buildings

K. Digital Civil Engineering

BIM & digital twins · 61. AI / machine learning & data-driven methods · 62. Automation &

robotics in construction · 63. Sensing, IoT & instrumented infrastructure

L. Cross-cutting (ASCE divisions and committees)

Infrastructure resilience & disaster risk reduction · 65. Sustainability, LCA & embodied

carbon · 66. Climate adaptation of infrastructure · 67. Asset management & infrastructure risk ·

Cold regions engineering · 69. Energy infrastructure · 70. Forensic engineering & failure

analysis · 71. Engineering education & professional practice · 72. Municipal & public health engineering

M. Environmental Science & Climate (not an ASCE institute — see the note below)

Climate change science & modelling · 74. Climate variability & extremes · 75. Meteorology &

weather systems · 76. Atmospheric science & air pollution · 77. Hydrometeorology & drought ·

Environmental monitoring & remote sensing · 79. Ecology & ecosystem services · 80. Biodiversity &

conservation · 81. Environmental impact assessment · 82. Soil, land degradation & desertification ·

Environmental chemistry & contaminants · 84. Waste, circular economy & pollution control ·
Renewable energy & the environment · 86. Carbon accounting, net zero & climate policy ·
Urban climate, heat islands & environmental health · 88. Environmental governance & law

Why this cluster is marked differently. Every other cluster maps to an ASCE institute or division, because ASCE is the profession's own map of civil engineering. This one does not, and saying so is the point. Cluster C already covers environmental engineering — treatment, control, remediation — under ASCE EWRI. Cluster M is environmental science: climate, weather, ecology, atmosphere. It is a neighbouring discipline, not a branch of civil engineering, and pretending otherwise would be the first thing a specialist noticed. ⚠ This widening has a cost that must be paid before it is published. Our own rule (§4, §9) is that we do not list a cluster the board cannot cover. Sixteen topics of environmental science cannot be refereed by civil engineers, so publishing cluster M requires at least one or two environmental scientists or climate researchers on the founding board. Until they are appointed, cluster M stays in the system and off the public scope page. What it buys: a materially larger pool of potential authors, which is the binding constraint on reaching DOAJ (13-doaj-timeline.md §2 — at least 7 of the first 10 papers must come from unconnected authors). Widening the scope is one of the few levers that genuinely moves that number.

88 topics, 13 clusters. Every ASCE institute and division is represented, so no branch of the discipline is structurally absent.

Publish only the clusters the board actually covers. All of them live in the system from day one — they cost nothing and make later expansion a tagging job, not a migration. The public scope list starts at what the founding board can credibly stand behind and grows with it. A journal listing every topic against eight board members is the single most common way a legitimate new journal accidentally looks predatory (§4, §9).