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~ A Special Call for Papers ~

“COVID-19 Aerosol Drivers, Impacts and Mitigation”

No publication fee for accepted manuscripts that are submitted by July 31, 2020.

Final submission deadline: December 31, 2020.

The Editorial Office of Aerosol and Air Quality Research (AAQR; http://aaqr.org/) is issuing a special call for papers with the theme "COVID-19 Aerosol Drivers, Impacts and Mitigation". All high quality letters, technical notes, short communications, and research papers relevant to this theme are welcome. The review process will be expedited and the publication fee will be waived for accepted papers that are submitted by July 31, 2020. The submission deadline is December 31, 2020. However, all accepted papers will be published immediately and further collected virtually in a single volume as a special issue.

Specific areas related to the theme for manuscript submission
As the COVID-19 global pandemic rapidly develops, countries are making momentous decisions with little lead time and sometimes very little knowledge of the situation. As scientists, we should be contributing as much of our expertise as possible to our local and national policymakers and the wider research community.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already seen an incredible amount of high-quality rapid communications borne out of a common need to try and resolve this horrific situation we are living out. Several of these early works began to address topics that are closely related to the themes of AAQR, but there are still important research questions that remain. For instance, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is known to survive as an aerosol after expiration, but the chemical (e.g. pH dependence) and physical (e.g. mask wearing and air purification) impacts on transmitting via this route are largely unexplored. Close ties have also been drawn between COVID-19 and air quality: (i) poor air quality has been linked to a higher percentage of severe COVID-19 cases, and (ii) COVID-19 has dramatically reduced air pollution in many areas, including source and downwind regions. We invite you to forge ahead with these and other COVID-19 related research topics.

The topics include but are not limited to:

• Epidemiology
• Airborne aerosol distribution and Coronavirus transmission
• Air quality impacts on COVID-19 severity
• COVID-19 impacts on emissions and air quality
• COVID-19 impacts on greenhouse gas emissions
• Testing of gas and aerosol technologies for disinfection.

AAQR focuses on aerosol and air quality and is indexed in SCI with the impact factor of 2.735 in 2018 JCR. AAQR is an open access journal supported by the publication fee charged to the corresponding author of accepted papers. The Guidelines for Authors for submitting a manuscript can be found on the website of AAQR (http://aaqr.org). Manuscripts will undergo a rigorous but accelerated review.  If there are any questions, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].