Looking to the future

Happy New Year from Energy & Environmental Science and welcome to the first issue of 2010! Following on from our highly successful launch in July 2008, Energy & Environmental Science has had a very successful year in 2009 and we are looking forward to building on these achievements into 2010 and beyond.

In this Editorial we would like to share some of our recent highlights with you, as well as looking forward to the exciting future of Energy & Environmental Science.

Addressing global challenges

We are all aware of the critical importance of ensuring a sustainable supply of energy, and of addressing the associated challenges for the global environment. In response to this, we believe Energy & Environmental Science is a genuinely distinctive journal which is successfully linking together a broad range of communities. Our journal is the ideal platform to present the cutting-edge research which will overcome the global challenges we are facing.

To help accommodate our wide readership, which spans many communities, each article in Energy & Environmental Science is accompanied by a brief paragraph which puts the work into the broader context. This summary box (located on the first page of each article) is designed to highlight the importance of the research within energy and environmental science, allowing the entire readership to appreciate its significance.

Indeed, the broad range of research which Energy & Environmental Science publishes can be seen in this issue with, for example, articles covering research from solar cells to hydrogen storage, from original research on nuclear power to a comprehensive review on carbon dioxide.

Great international visibility

Energy & Environmental Science has shown right from the start that it is a truly international journal and so far we have had excellent visibility across the world. We have continued to promote articles published in Energy & Environmental Science at many high-profile international conferences throughout 2009. Of course, we also plan to continue to attend many more conferences in 2010. This year will also see our first “themed issues”, which we will be displaying and freely-distributing at relevant conferences to maximise their visibility. Please do visit www.rsc.org/ees for all the latest news on our upcoming themed issues.

We are committed to supporting the scientific community, for example, by sponsoring relevant conferences and by awarding Energy & Environmental Science “Poster Prizes” to outstanding up and coming new researchers in the field. Please do come and see us if we are at a conference you are attending—we always enjoy meeting our readers, authors and referees, and welcome your feedback on the journal.

Plate1 Energy & Environmental Science Poster Prize winner, Michael Blumenfeld, at the Spring ACS meeting with a solar backpack prize.

In 2009, we were also delighted to welcome more leading international scientists to the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial and Advisory Boards. Professor Ib Chorkendorff, director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Center for Individual Nanoparticle Functionality (CINF), joined our Editorial Board and Professors Juan Bisquert (Universitat Jaume I de Castelló) and Peng Wang (Chinese Academy of Sciences) joined the Advisory Board.

Plate2 Professor Peng Wang

Plate3 Professor Juan Bisquert

Plate4 Professor Ib Chorkendorff

Energy & Environmental Science has continued to attract much attention from across the scientific community, with many articles being highlighted in prominent international forums. Recently, two papers were featured in Science as an “Editors' Choice”—Heldebrant et al., DOI: 10.1039/b916550a and Osaka et al., DOI: 10.1039/b915389f. This further demonstrates that we are continuing to publish high quality content, and that Energy & Environmental Science is highly visible in the most prominent areas of the scientific community.

We encourage you to keep up to date with the latest news from Energy & Environmental Science by signing up to our e-alert and “Footprint” newsletter at www.rsc.org/alerts. In addition, you can also follow us on our official page on Facebook† and on Twitter‡.

Inclusion in ISI

At the beginning of 2009, Energy & Environmental Science was pleased to announce the completion of its indexing in ISI Web of Knowledge, the online platform that provides web linking and citation searching facilities. All papers published in every issue of Energy & Environmental Science, dating back to the inaugural issue, are fully listed on ISI Web of Knowledge and the Science Citation Index (SCI). This full indexing has provided even further exposure and higher visibility to all work published in Energy & Environmental Science. The top 5 cited articles from Energy & Environmental Science are highlighted in Table 1. We also fully anticipate Energy & Environmental Science to have some more great news when our first (partial) Impact Factor is announced in June 2010.

Table 1 Top 5 cited articles in Energy & Environmental Science

Titles	Authors	DOI
The current status of hydrogen storage in metal–organic frameworks	Hong-Cai Zhou et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b808322n
Thermochemical biofuel production in hydrothermal media: A review of sub- and supercritical water technologies	Jefferson W. Tester et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b810100k
Advancing beyond current generation dye-sensitized solar cells	Joseph T. Hupp et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b809672d
Solar water-splitting into H2 and O2: design principles of photosystem II and hydrogenases	Wolfgang Lubitz et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b808792j
Biofuels: a technological perspective	Rafael Luque et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b807094f

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In-depth Analysis articles

In 2009, we introduced the new Analysis article type in the journal. Analysis articles aim to quantitatively analyse technologies and technological systems; they provide an in-depth examination of energy and environmental technologies, strategies, policies, and overarching conceptual frameworks that will be of interest to the journal's wide and global readership. So far we have published some great Analysis articles in Energy & Environmental Science and a snapshot of these can be seen in Table 2.

Table 2 Analysis articles published in 2009

Analysis articles	Authors	DOI
Co-production of decarbonized synfuels and electricity from coal + biomass with CO2 capture and storage: an Illinois case study	Eric D. Larson et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b911529c
Ethanol fuel use in Brazil: air quality impacts	Larry G. Anderson	DOI: 10.1039/b906057j
Plastic waste as a fuel - CO2-neutral or not?	Ola Eriksson and Göran Finnveden	DOI: 10.1039/b908135f
Carbon dioxide versus energy balances for transportation fuels	Huw O. Pritchard	DOI: 10.1039/b820050e
Environmental problems in the Estonian oil shale industry	Anto Raukas and Jaan-Mati Punning	DOI: 10.1039/b819315k
Nanoscale design to enable the revolution in renewable energy	Andrei G. Fedorov et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b821698c
CO2 capture and storage: are we ready?	Franklin M. Orr Jr.	DOI: 10.1039/b822107n
China's rapid deployment of SO2 scrubbers	Robert H. Socolow et al.	DOI: 10.1039/b901357c

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Free access period has expired

Readers enjoyed free online access to Energy & Environmental Science from its launch in 2008 following through until the end of 2009. The free access period has now expired, so to continue reading Energy & Environmental Science, your institution needs to subscribe to the journal. Please do recommend Energy & Environmental Science to your librarian to keep in touch with the latest and best research covering energy conversion and storage, alternative fuel technologies and global environmental science. More information is available at www.rsc.org/ees

Submit your work today

Of course, we continue to actively welcome high-quality submissions to Energy & Environmental Science. We publish a lively variety of different article types including Reviews, “Perspective” feature articles, Minireviews, Opinions, Analysis articles and, of course, original research papers and Communications. All published articles are subject to great exposure and extensive promotion, including being displayed at top international conferences.

We are happy to give authors free copies of the print issue in which their article appears, as well as sending copies to other suggested researchers in the field. We also print figures in colour, free of charge, when the use of colour enhances the scientific understanding of the figure. In addition, colour is provided at no cost in the PDF and HTML online versions of the article.

We try to make it as simple as possible for our authors at the submission stage, so we are happy to receive submissions in any reasonable layout and format.

Looking forward

I very much hope you enjoy reading this issue and future issues of Energy & Environmental Science. The journal continues to offer a unique forum for research and discourse in this vitally important area; we are committed to ensuring that we continue to publish the best and most important science spanning the broad range of research communities that we serve. We always welcome your feedback and suggestions—please do contact us at mailto:ees@rsc.org with your comments and ideas.

We would also like to thank all the members of our Editorial and Advisory Boards, our authors, referees, and readers for their continued support—it is your contribution that has given Energy & Environmental Science such a successful start—and we hope you will continue to help us build on this success in the future.

With our best wishes for the New Year

 

Jane Hordern

Deputy Editor, Energy & Environmental Science

 

Philip Earis

Editor, Energy & Environmental Science

News from RSC Publishing

New integrated content delivery platform

RSC Publishing is proud to announce the launch of our powerful new content delivery platform that supports multiple content types. Powered by the industry's leading MarkLogic Server, and benefiting from the interactive browsing functionality offered by RSC's enhanced HTML mark-up technology, the platform delivers exceptionally fast and precise results. Users can now search 165 years of world-class RSC-hosted content including 20 000 book chapters, 300 000 journal articles and 450 000 database records from a single, simple search. Designed around readers' preferences (identified from a detailed and ongoing user-interview process), our user-friendly platform offers faster browsing, intelligent searching, consistent user experience irrespective of content type sought, and simpler, more intuitive navigation. We'll be releasing even more exciting functionality later in the year. Please tell us what you think at mailto:rscpublishing@rsc.org

ChemSpider

Last year, RSC acquired ChemSpider, the richest single source of structure based chemistry information freely available online, with fast searching of over 21.5 million chemical structures. Alongside the powerful database, the ChemSpider development team brings well over 40 years of additional cheminformatics experience to the RSC, including a chemistry centric document mark-up system capable of finding chemical names and converting to chemical structures and linking to online resources. Integration of this technology with RSC's existing award winning enhanced HTML mark-up technology, RSC Prospect, will lead to substantial enhancements in semantic enrichment for the chemical sciences. Find out more at www.chemspider.com

Continued e-alert success in 2010

2009 saw the launch of the new RSC journal e-alerts; in 2010 we are hoping to see a continued rise in their popularity. The e-alerts are packed with information and links enabling readers to easily view content as soon as it's published, helping them to stay abreast of journal content. The new e-alert registration system has been designed so readers can manage their own subscriptions, tailoring the information they receive and giving them the freedom to unsubscribe at any point. You can find out more information online at www.rsc.org/alerts

New for 2010: The RSC eBook Subject Collections

In response to readers needs and testament to the innovation of RSC Publishing, we are pleased to announce the launch of new RSC eBook Subject Collections.

The 9 new RSC eBook Subject Collections, including a Tutorial Chemistry Texts and Paperbacks package, deliver the high quality content contained in our books into subject specialist packages. With new content being uploaded throughout the year, the new RSC eBook Subject Collections are set to become another key, premier resource. To find out more, please visit www.rsc.org/ebooks

High impact publishing

Publication of the 2008 impact factors, calculated by ISI, once again brought good news for authors and readers of RSC journals. Nearly all the RSC journals increased in impact factor, immediacy index and article influence, with an impressive average impact factor increase of 8.2%. Overall, the average impact factor for the RSC portfolio now stands at 4.7, equal to that of the ACS collection.

RSC journals feature in the top 10 rankings (by impact factor and immediacy index) in 6 of the 7 core chemistry categories as listed on ISI, and of the top 100 chemistry journals, ranked by impact factor, 15 are from RSC Publishing.

2009 also saw a 75% increase on the number of articles published in RSC Journals compared to 2007, not only are our impact factors leading the way in the chemical sciences, but there is also a wider variety of articles available for you to choose from.

Chemical Science

This new flagship journal will launch in mid-2010, and will publish findings of exceptional significance from across all the chemical sciences. Editor-in-Chief Professor David MacMillan of Princeton leads a dynamic international team of Associate Editors responsible for the scientific development of the journal. Free institutional online access to the entire 2010 and 2011 content of Chemical Science will be automatically provided to all existing customers.

Keep in touch with the latest news at www.rsc.org/chemicalscience

… on a related note

RSC is pleased to announce a significant new global symposium series supporting the launch of Chemical Science. The International Symposia on Advancing the Chemical Sciences (ISACS) meetings will be held on three continents, over three sequential weeks, focusing on distinct subject areas. More information can be found at: www.rsc.org/isacs

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Footnotes

† Energy & Environmental Science official Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Energy-Environmental-Science/24375018213

‡ Energy & Environmental Science official Twitter page: http://twitter.com/EES_journal.

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