Publish Your Research

The Microbes and Social Equity (MSE) network exists to advance microbiome science that addresses inequity in health, environment, and society. In partnership with Applied Microbiology International, the following publishing opportunities are available to MSE members.

Sustainable Microbiology is an interdisciplinary, open access journal from Applied Microbiology International, focusing on the role of microbes in improving global economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

For scientists, policy makers and practitioners, the journal publishes papers on all topics related to the application of microbiology in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Stewardship of Microbiomes in Human and Environmental Systems

The Microbiome Stewardship Research Team is collaborating with AMI journal Sustainable Microbiology, on a themed collection of articles, “Stewardship of Microbiomes in Human and Environmental Systems.”

Collection Scope

Microbiomes are essential for ecosystem, plant, animal, and human health. As a key element of Earth’s interconnected health systems, microbiomes contribute essential ecological, metabolic, immune, and yet unidentified functions to their hosts and larger ecosystems. Microbiomes are also shared across individuals and across species. As humans, for example, we can only source microbes for our individual microbiomes that exist in the environments to which we are exposed. We therefore need to understand microbiomes as collective phenomena, rather than solely as attributes of individual hosts. Increasing evidence of changes to microbiomes and associations with adverse health effects is the least well-understood but arguably the most important facet of biodiversity loss and ecosystem health decline.

The concept of microbiome stewardship involves recognition of microbiomes as a dynamic and essential foundation for life on Earth and for the healthy functioning of host and environmental ecosystems. The practice of microbiome stewardship emphasizes the imperative to safeguard microbial ecologies through education, knowledge sharing, policy, and other actions to conserve and protect microbiomes in the face of human (and other) activities that would lead to deteriorating health of humans, animals, plants, ecosystems. Effective microbiome stewardship requires collective sociopolitical action from all disciplines and at all levels, from institutional practices to global standards. This themed collection will feature research and perspectives on microbiome stewardship across research, education, policy, and practice, and present work from various microbiome disciplines.

The themed collection is anchored by a framework paper in which we define microbiome stewardship and provide guiding principles for implementation.

Kieran C O’Doherty, Mikaela Beijbom, Emma Allen-Vercoe, Mallory J Choudoir, Diego S Silva, Carla Bonilla, Justine Debelius, Sarah Elton, Aviâja Lyberth Hauptmann, Andreas Heyland, Nicolae Morar, Derek Skillings, Zhongzhi Sun, Patricia G Wolf, Robert G Beiko, Suzanne Lynn Ishaq, Microbiome Stewardship: Definition and Guiding Principles for Implementation, Sustainable Microbiology, 2026;, qvag028, https://doi.org/10.1093/sumbio/qvag028

The collection will also include conceptual or perspective papers that elaborate on key aspects of microbiome stewardship, and empirical contributions that apply any, or all, of the guiding principles to evaluate the utility and practicality of microbiome stewardship.

Conceptual elaborations will expand on key aspects of microbiome stewardship, explore counter arguments to microbiome stewardship, provide proof-of-concept data analysis on questions of feasibility, and highlight challenges and opportunities for stewardship across domains.

Empirical contributions will take a data-driven approach to applying some, or all, of the microbiome stewardship guiding principles. These contributions can use newly collected or already existing data, so long as they apply microbiome stewardship principles to a real-world problem.

The MSE group is represented on the SMI Editorial Board by Prof. Kieran O’Doherty. Those interested in participating can contact him to propose a contribution via [email protected].

Published Articles in the Collection:

Panuya Athithan, Suzanne L Ishaq, Emma Allen-Vercoe, Kieran C O’Doherty, Microbes first into the life rafts: preserving microbiomes to secure health in degrading ecosystems, Sustainable Microbiology, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2026, qvag010, https://doi.org/10.1093/sumbio/qvag010

Benefits of publishing with an Applied Microbiology International journal

AMI and our publisher, Oxford University Press, are non-profit organisations, and we invest our surplus back into the research community.

Author benefits

Format-free submissions
No charge page or colour fees to our authors
Article-level-metrics so you can track the reach and influence of your work
Average times from submission to first decision in under a month
Continuous publication of articles
Immediate publication of Advance Articles
Complimentary AMI membership to all our authors

AMI member benefits

A 20% discount on open access publishing fees for AMI members
Free online access to our subscription content via the members’ area

Fee discounts and waivers

Oxford University Press has a number of agreements with institutions that cover open access publishing fees for their researchers. Check here to see if your institution has a publishing agreement with OUP.
OUP has a waiver policy for lower-income countries, check if your country qualifies here
A 20% discount on open access publishing fees for AMI members

Find out more about the AMI Journals here.

Researchers connected to MSE benefit from increased visibility through AMI channels, events, and partnerships, as well as access to publishing discounts and fee support where applicable.