Welcome to Organic Chemistry Frontiers

After four months of expectation, we are pleased to bring you the very first issue of Organic Chemistry Frontiers. We would like to take this great opportunity to thank all the people who have been involved in establishing the partnerships and collaborations which allowed the birth of this journal, the authors, the referees, international board members, Associate Editors and editorial staff.

The Frontiers Journals: a society partnership between the CCS and the Royal Society of Chemistry

Organic Chemistry Frontiers is a part of the Frontiers journal series. The Frontiers journals are a collection of chemistry journals under a unique not-for-profit society partnership between the Chinese Chemical Society (CCS) and the Royal Society of Chemistry. The Frontiers journal titles will cover the main research areas in the chemical sciences. An integral part of the development of each journal is the collaboration with an internationally regarded Chinese institute in the relevant field. Each Frontiers journal is jointly owned by the CCS, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the relevant partner institute, with each owner bringing their expertise to the project. Ultimately, the aim of the Frontiers portfolio is to become a leading international journal series for the chemical sciences community.

The unique collaboration between the CCS and the Royal Society of Chemistry takes full advantage of the 170 years’ publishing experience of high-impact academic journals that the Royal Society of Chemistry brings, and the rapid growth and expanding influence of the Chinese chemistry community provided by the CCS.

For Organic Chemistry Frontiers, we are pleased to have the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), one of the foremost Chinese research institutes in this area, to join the partnership, developing Organic Chemistry Frontiers as a high-impact international journal.

Organic Chemistry Frontiers welcomes research from synthetic organic chemistry, and aims to become a world leading journal in the field of organic chemistry by reporting either new or significantly improved protocols or methodologies.

New article types to meet the needs of researchers

Organic Chemistry Frontiers publishes an exciting mixture of article types, including Research Articles, Tutorial Accounts, Critical Reviews and Highlights. All the new research work published in this journal is in one “Research Article” format, which differs from the traditional mix of communications and full articles by introducing more flexibility in terms of article length and structure. Authors are free to shape the nature of their publications according to the needs of the science with free use of colour in all articles.

Additionally, one novel article type, called “Tutorial Account”, has been introduced into Organic Chemistry Frontiers following an original idea from the Editor-in-Chief and feedback from organic chemistry communities. Tutorial Accounts describe recently established methodologies or protocols, which lead to new compounds, chemistry or theories with wide and strong interest in the field of organic chemistry. The authors should provide a concise and practical account of their previously established methodologies, chemistry or theories and instruct the readers on how to reproduce those reactions on larger scales, if synthetically related. At least one of the reactions described in a Tutorial Account should be on the scale of 10 mmol, and reactions on a scale of 10 grams are strongly encouraged. We hope this new article type will provide organic chemists with a unique platform to review their significant research and to maximize the impact of their work across the readership of the community.

Organic Chemistry Frontiers also publishes review articles: a Critical Review provides a balanced up-to-date overview of an interesting topic in organic chemistry, while a Highlight is relatively short and focuses on important new developments. Detailed guidelines for authors may be found at http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/guidelines/AuthorGuidelines/JournalPolicy/Journals/QO.asp.

International Editorial and Advisory Boards

The scientific criteria of Organic Chemistry Frontiers are set and maintained by the Editorial Board, an international team of world leading organic chemists from diverse research areas. The four Associate Editors, Erik Sorensen from Princeton University, Mei-Xiang Wang from Tsinghua University, Masahiro Terada from Tohoku University and Cristina Nevado from the University of Zürich, are extremely well qualified to manage the peer-review process in a rigorous yet fairly and efficient manner. Led by Editor-in-Chief Shengming Ma from SIOC, the journal is supported by regular Editorial Board members, including Guy Bertrand (UC, San Diego), Stuart Conway (University of Oxford), Louis Fensterbank (UPMC), Chulbom Lee (Seoul National University) and Zhang-Jie Shi (Peking University).

In addition to the Editorial Board members, the International Advisory Board team, covering broad subjects in organic chemistry, further brings great intelligence and significant expertise into the journal's development, helping shape a successful future for Organic Chemistry Frontiers. To find out more about people involved in the Editorial and Advisory Boards of Organic Chemistry Frontiers, please visit: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/qo/staff.asp.

Author benefits for your best interests

In order to raise the visibility and impact of reported work, Organic Chemistry Frontiers is now offering the authors a set of appealing benefits. By publishing with our journal, you will benefit from no page charge, free use of colour and rapid publication with the trusted values of society publishing. Your article will also gain two years’ free access in 2014 and 2015. All the manuscripts published in the first two volumes will be freely available online to all readers to ensure the highest exposure of your work. Furthermore, authors will have the chance to publish their research via Open Access upon payment of an article processing charge or simply deposit the author version of their manuscript for free after a one year embargo into the Chemical Sciences Repository, a non-commercial subject-specific Open Access repository for chemistry papers, maximizing the visibility and impact of their work. (More information about the Chemical Sciences Repository is available at http://www.rsc.org/Chemical-Sciences-Repository/articles/.) Through these initiatives, we promise that your publication(s) will reach the widest audience possible. To take the best advantage of these exceptional benefits, we encourage you to submit to Organic Chemistry Frontiers today!

Stay with us and publish your best work in Organic Chemistry Frontiers

In this first issue of Organic Chemistry Frontiers, we present you the very first collection of high quality work, with contributions from many leading or rising researchers, covering the most important research trends in organic chemistry. We hope you have found these articles stimulating and enjoyable. Please note that the correct journal abbreviation of Organic Chemistry Frontiers is simply Org. Chem. Front. when citing manuscripts from this journal. To stay up-to-date with Organic Chemistry Frontiers, we encourage you to sign up to our free journal news alert to receive information about the most read articles, themed issues, and journal news, as well as calls for papers and invitations at http://rsc.li/alerts.

We hope that Organic Chemistry Frontiers will meet your expectations for a high-impact international journal, in which you would consider publishing your important research results. We are looking forward to seeing your articles in Organic Chemistry Frontiers in the near future. Thank you for your interest in the journal and we wish you a successful 2014.

Please visit us at http://www.rsc.li/frontiers-organic and join us for a successful new journal. For the online submission website link, please see: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgcf.


image file: c4qo90001d-u1.tif
Professor Shengming Ma, Editor-in-Chief


image file: c4qo90001d-u2.tif
Dr Daping Zhang, Managing Editor


This journal is © the Partner Organisations 2014