Connecting the world with the chemical sciences – free to read, free to publish

Making our best content accessible to all

As we reach the beginning of our 10^th volume, I’m delighted to be writing this editorial as Executive Editor for Chemical Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship journal.

This is a truly exciting time for Chemical Science. As a fully open access multidisciplinary journal, we are ideally placed to be able to publish the highest quality chemical research from all over the globe, regardless of where a researcher is based and of their funder mandates. Everyone can read the latest developments in Chemical Science, and authors can be sure that their research will reach the widest possible audience.

The journal is not only free to read, but all publication charges are paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry. This year I’m delighted to say this period will be further extended. This is generally referred to as ‘platinum’ open access but, put simply, the journal will continue to be freely available for everyone to read and completely free to publish for all of our authors (including the requirement for a CC-BY or CC-BY-NC licence).

As Executive Editor of Chemical Science, but also as a member of the RSC, it makes me extremely proud that as part of our mission as a society, we are able to offer open access for our authors, free of charge. This is not just for a handful of articles, but with Chemical Science publishing over one thousand articles in 2018, this is on a scale that has real impact across the wider chemical sciences community.

As has been observed recently in parts of Europe, the pressure from funders is increasing, who are keen to see faster progress towards an open access future. Our fundamental goal here at the RSC is to advance the chemical sciences and, through our journals, the effective dissemination of high quality research content. We believe that open access can play a key role in this, and during this period of transition, Chemical Science offers an open access solution which is accessible to all authors.

I’m pleased to say that it seems the chemistry community is beginning to embrace the further sharing of research ideas. The initial reaction to ChemRxiv, the newly launched pre-print server for chemistry, has been very positive, and at the time of going to print Chemical Science was the number one destination for articles first published in ChemRxiv. We welcome submissions of articles posted on ChemRxiv and now this is even easier with the Direct Journal Transfer, a new tool now available for easily submitting from within ChemRxiv itself.¹

Why Chemical Science as our flagship?

2018 has been a year of great change for the journal, including a greater emphasis on Chemical Science as the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

A number of researchers have asked why Chemical Science has this position in our portfolio. Simply, it is our highest impact journal publishing primary research from across the whole of the chemical sciences. In addition to this, in order to publish in Chemical Science, there are no restrictions on scope, article type or length. We aim to publish research that has broad appeal and relevance to researchers across a wide range of subject areas. Being open access and completely free to publish for authors, means the journal is accessible to researchers from across all disciplines of chemistry and allied areas. No other journal in our portfolio has such a broad remit, and whilst Chemical Science may not have the highest impact factor (as is expected from a multidisciplinary journal), it does have the broadest reach and so for this reason it is well-placed to be the flagship of the RSC.

2018 has also seen a number of changes in the people working on the journal. This year we have appointed a new Editorial team who are dedicated to working on Chemical Science. This is unique within the RSC, where all other teams work across a number of journals. The aim being that we can spend more time working with the community to find the very best discoveries, as well as doing more to promote research published in the journal.

Recent developments from this year to promote articles in the journal include:

• ChemSci Pick of the Week (a weekly Twitter announcement selecting an article to highlight with an accompanying news story on the RSC website).

• Video abstracts to promote some of our hottest content which you can now find featured on our social media sites, including Facebook.

• Front cover articles highly visible on our journal homepage with a promotional banner on our website.

In 2019, we are also planning to increase the number of Associate Editors working on the journal to improve the breadth of our subject coverage, so do watch the journal website and e-alerts for announcements of new Editors coming soon.

A number of our founding Associate Editors have reached the end of their terms and so will be retiring at the end of this year. We would like to thank Matthew Gaunt, Hubert Girault, Dave Leigh, Kopin Liu, Haw Yang, Kazunari Domen and Dean Toste most sincerely for all of their hard work, advice and support for the journal. Without them, the journal would not be in the successful position it is today.

I also would like to thank our Editor-in-Chief Dan Nocera, who is also finishing his term at the end of 2018. Throughout his period of leadership, the journal has taken great strides forward in further establishing its position within the chemistry community and offering a leading alternative to other flagship journals. Dan’s vision of the open access nature of Chemical Science, as well as broadening the footprint of the journal to embrace additional areas of the chemical sciences, has ensured that the journal has continued to evolve, and is ideally positioned going into its tenth year. His vision was crucial in maintaining Chemical Science as free to read and free to publish, and this legacy will be sure to benefit the chemistry community for many years to come. We will shortly be announcing news of who will be succeeding Dan as Editor-in-Chief, for the next four-year term.

No doubt 2019 will have further changes and surprises in store for us all, however, throughout all of this we will be aiming to help our authors publish and promote their very best research, so this can be read and shared as widely as possible. I’d like to warmly thank our Editorial and Advisory Boards for all their work and support, and of course to all our reviewers and authors who contribute so much, ensuring we can publish some of the most exciting discoveries across the chemical sciences.

My team and I hope to meet you out and about at conferences during the coming year, and we look forward to receiving some of your most significant results in 2019!

May Copsey,

Executive Editor, Chemical Science.

References

1. K. Rich, K. Wolfram, M. James, S. Irina, T. Sarah and W. Emma, et al., ChemRxiv: Year One and Beyond [Editorial], ChemRxiv, 2018 DOI:10.26434/chemrxiv.7185149.v1 , preprint.

---