News from the Green Chemistry editors
2014 has been again a very fruitful year for the field of green chemistry and the success of our journal nicely reflects this continuing endeavour. Green Chemistry continues to grow both in size and quality and this is reflected in the continuing rise of the Impact Factor, which now stands at a record high of 6.85. The success and impact of Green Chemistry is, however, evident in many ways that cannot be captured by a number and reinforces that Green Chemistry serves the whole community by publishing cutting-edge research that advances our progress towards a greener, sustainable future. However, all of this would not be possible without the support of the community. We would like to thank all of our authors, referees, readers and our Editorial Board. The support and trust of the community makes all of the journal's successes possible and as a Society journal we reinvest all surplus back in to the chemical sciences community.One of the key ways we best serve the community is a constant emphasis on quality. This, we believe, is the driver of the success of Green Chemistry. Quality for us is manifested by only publishing science of exceptional rigor, but also research that demonstrates an exceptional advance in green chemistry; a full and thorough discussion that clearly demonstrates the impact of the advance is required for publication. Quality is also manifested in customer service; we are proud to have a rigorous, fair and transparent peer review process. Green Chemistry has a hybrid Editorial Office meaning we give you the choice of having your paper handled by professional Publishing Editors in the Cambridge Editorial Office, or by Associate Editors, Professor Chao-Jun Li (McGill University, Canada) and Professor Buxing Han (Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China). Whichever Editorial Office you choose, quality is the highest priority. We would also like to congratulate Professor Han on the great honour of being appointed, in early 2014, as an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The end of 2014 sees Professor Shu Kobayashi and Dr Peter Dunn retire from the Editorial Board. We would like to thank both of them for their valuable contributions to the Journal. The start of 2015 will see two new members joining the Editorial Board. Professor Motomu Kanai (University of Tokyo, Japan) and Dr Helen Sneddon (GlaxoSmithKline, UK) join us and we look forward to working with them in developing the journal.
Green Chemistry is a multidisciplinary journal; advances in the sustainability of the chemical enterprise are not limited to the traditional disciplines and as such we publish a broad range of research. This is demonstrated in Table 1 which shows the review articles that were most accessed in 2014. We also published a number of highly successful themed issues. Throughout the year we added to our online collection celebrating 15 years of Green Chemistry (rsc.li/gc-15-years) which includes articles from some of the most highly cited Green Chemistry authors. Issue 2 was a themed issue on the conversion of biomass with heterogeneous catalysts Guest Edited by Professors Paul J. Dauenhauer (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) and George W. Huber (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA). In Issue 4 we published a themed issue on sustainable polymers Guest Edited by Michael Meier (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany), run in collaboration with Polymer Chemistry, whose Issue 9 was also on the same theme and Guest Edited by Stephen A. Miller (University of Florida, USA); both are available as one web collection online. In 2015 we have another exciting line up including themed issues on elemental sustainability, chemical energy conversion and molecular design.
| Title | Authors | Shortened link |
|---|---|---|
| Green and sustainable manufacture of chemicals from biomass: state of the art | Roger A. Sheldon | rsc.li/1yYhQXq |
| Conversion of biomass platform molecules into fuel additives and liquid hydrocarbon fuels | Maria J. Climent, Avelino Corma and Sara Iborra | rsc.li/1pXhc9o |
| Solvents for sustainable chemical processes | Pamela Pollet, Evan A. Davey, Esteban E. Ureña-Benavides, Charles A. Eckert and Charles L. Liotta | rsc.li/1yix4Go |
| Recent advances in heterogeneous catalysts for bio-oil upgrading via “ex situ catalytic fast pyrolysis”: catalyst development through the study of model compounds | Daniel A. Ruddy, Joshua A. Schaidle, Jack R. Ferrell III, Jun Wang, Luc Moens and Jesse E. Hensley | rsc.li/1znMjv1 |
| Glycerol based solvents: synthesis, properties and applications | José I. García, Héctor García-Marín and Elísabet Pires | rsc.li/1w3srzY |
Research published in Green Chemistry is ground-breaking and cutting edge. However, it is very important for advances in green chemistry to be taken up by industry because advances discovered in the academic lab don't have a real world benefit until they are introduced on a wide scale. This is why we ensure we have a strong industrial presence on our Boards and encourage perspectives from Industry in the journal (see Table 2).
| Title | Authors | Shortened link |
|---|---|---|
| Overcoming barriers to green chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry – the Green Aspiration Level™ concept | F. Roschangar, R. A. Sheldon and C. H. Senanayake | rsc.li/1xt2E2E |
| Sustainable chromatography (an oxymoron?) | Emily A. Peterson, Barry Dillon, Izzat Raheem, Paul Richardson, Daniel Richter, Rachel Schmidt and Helen F. Sneddon | rsc.li/1xWiAKF |
| The evolution of life cycle assessment in pharmaceutical and chemical applications – a perspective | Concepción Jiménez-González and Michael R. Overcash | rsc.li/1HpVlx0 |
| Towards sustainable polymer chemistry with homogeneous metal-based catalysts | Kristin Schröder, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Kevin J. T. Noonan and Robert T. Mathers | rsc.li/1F3YBKs |
| The production of propionic acid, propanol and propylene via sugar fermentation: an industrial perspective on the progress, technical challenges and future outlook | Brandon A. Rodriguez, Chris C. Stowers, Viet Pham and Brad M. Cox | rsc.li/1tkcygW |
| En route to full implementation: driving the green chemistry agenda in the pharmaceutical industry | Brandon A. Rodriguez, Chris C. Stowers, Viet Pham and Brad M. Cox | rsc.li/1HpVvod |
| Pharmaceutical Green Chemistry process changes – how long does it take to obtain regulatory approval? | Peter J. Dunn | rsc.li/1An28FE |
During 2014 there were some changes to the team in the Editorial Office. Dr Anna Simpson, who has served as Deputy Editor of the Journal since 2010 was promoted to Editor and with her promotion, a new Deputy Editor, Ruth Norris was appointed.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Sarah Ruthven for her hard work and dedication to the Journal over the last 9 years. Sarah has been instrumental in the development of Green Chemistry, doubling the Impact Factor and number of issues while seeing a 4-fold rise in the number of articles published. Achieving all this whilst navigating a changing green chemistry and publishing landscape is an impressive achievement. Sarah continues as an Editor on the Royal Society of Chemistry's Inorganic Chemistry Journals and RSC Advances.
Anna is delighted to be able to continue her work with the Journal and the Community, leading the Journal as Editor. Both Anna and Ruth will be attending a number of conferences in 2015 and look forward to meeting many authors, readers and reviewers to discuss the landscape of sustainable chemistry and how the Journal can serve them. Do look out for details of where we will be on the Blog. We won't just be attending conferences; we are proud to provide sponsorship and contribute poster prizes to support emerging investigators and students. If you are organising an event please get in touch to see if we can help with prizes and promotion.
We would like to close by thanking the staff in the Cambridge Editorial Office; there is a whole team working hard behind the scenes to deliver a top quality journal in hand with excellent customer service to authors, referees and readers alike. The whole team is pictured in Fig. 1. We are always eager to hear your feedback, please contact us by emailing green-rsc@rsc.org. On behalf of the whole Green Chemistry team we would like to wish you all a very happy and successful 2015.
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| Fig. 1 Picture of the team at the Cambridge Editorial Office. | ||
Walter Leitner, Chair of the Editorial Board & Anna Simpson, Executive Editor.
| This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015 |