The development of Energy & Environmental Science

It was with considerable ambition that Energy & Environmental Science was launched six years ago.

From the journal's earliest days, our aim has always been to be the home for exceptional, insightful research into sustainable energy conversion and storage and associated global environmental impacts, bringing communities together and helping to break down traditional subject boundaries.

As the launch Managing Editor, I was very aware of the responsibility for ensuring we achieved our grand ambitions. Paramount in my mind then, and since, has been the need to earn and maintain the confidence and support of the international research communities we serve.

For Energy & Environmental Science to be successful it would need to compete for and attract world class research across a consistently broad scope. We had to ensure the journal always operated rigorous, fair and efficient review processes, for all submissions. We had to build and maintain a supportive and global network and readership. Not least, we must publish research which would be well read, well respected, trusted and cited.

Ambition and competition are powerful emotions, and can be powerful driving forces. In less than six years, I am delighted that Energy & Environmental Science has indeed fulfilled its ambitions and potential. By any measure we have become a renowned, community-spanning, truly international journal and high-impact forum for scientists worldwide.

We have published more than 2000 articles since launch, with a reputation for the highest scientific and ethical standards. The articles we have published have been downloaded literally millions of times. We now receive over 4000 manuscript submissions a year, a number which continues to rise. The journal's h-index, a measure of broad impact, is already over 100 – an outstanding achievement. Moreover, our new official Impact Factor (released in July) is a truly outstanding 15.49, a value never previously reached by a sizeable original-research journal in the physical or chemical sciences.

With this editorial, I announce that I am leaving my role as Executive Editor of Energy & Environmental Science. It has been an immense pleasure to launch, nurture, expand and develop the journal, and I am proud of our many achievements.

It has been a particular honour to have met and interacted so extensively with scientists across the world. As well as having directly handled thousands of submissions, I have travelled very extensively to learn more about and discuss the latest research, to meet current and potential authors, readers, reviewers and Board members, building supportive networks for the journal. In a previous Editorial, I said, “The determination, dedication, kindness, judgement, ambition and indeed constructive competitiveness shown by scientists around the world leaves me humbled, joyful and optimistic”. It still does. I thank you all for your advice, suggestions, feedback, friendship and, especially, for your strong support of the journal.

Energy & Environmental Science is truly a team journal, and I would like to sincerely thank both our Board members, under the direction of exceptional Editorial Board Chair Professor Nathan Lewis, and my many Royal Society of Chemistry colleagues who have supported the journal's development. In particular, I would like to recognise the contribution since launch of the wonderful RSC Editorial Production and Journals Development teams. It is always invidious to single out names, but I am especially grateful to my colleagues who have deputised for me or coordinated the Editorial & Production aspects of the journal: chronologically Nicola Nugent, Jane Hordern, Anna Pendlebury, Heather Montgomery, Susan Weatherby, Jeanne Andres, Anna Simpson and Catherine Bacon.

I believe I leave the journal in excellent shape, and I ask you to join with me in giving Energy & Environmental Science your continued support. Much has happened in a short time: it's been an amazing journey.

To ensure the continued success of Energy & Environmental Science, we are pleased to inform you that Dr Anna Simpson has been appointed as the new Executive Editor. Anna brings to this role her extensive experience as Deputy Editor of the Royal Society of Chemistry journals Green Chemistry, Food & Function and Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences and, more recently, Deputy Editor of Energy & Environmental Science itself. Anna grew up in Edinburgh and performed her undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Durham University, graduating in 2005. She received her PhD in Biochemistry from Cambridge University in 2009. After spending a year on the Royal Society of Chemistry's Science, Education and Industry Graduate Training Scheme, she joined the Publishing department in 2010.

Philip Earis

Anna Simpson

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