Welcome to ACS Omega, the new, open-access publication from the American Chemical Society. ACS is the largest scientific society in the world and home to nearly 50 impact-making journals covering a wide range of areas related to chemistry. We are excited to announce ACS Omega as an open common platform to disseminate research in all areas with connections to chemistry.
The objective of ACS Omega is to be an open-access global publication for high quality and technically sound research articles of any length that describe new findings in chemistry and interfacing areas of science, without any perceived evaluation of immediate impact.
In this respect, it will bring together the growing potential of disciplines allied to chemistry such as materials science, life science, computational research, and engineering science as well as any other research areas interfacing with chemistry. ACS Omega seeks original articles that describe new findings on chemistry-related topics, highlighting hypothesis-driven research in emerging multidisciplinary fields. It broadens the type of published articles, which may include “negative” results, in the sense that experimentation or computation may have shown a result different from that of the initial hypothesis. While maintaining the quality standards of ACS in data and reporting, the manuscripts will be evaluated without any restrictive or subjective assessment of importance. We thus aim to provide new opportunities for publishing to the global chemistry community via dissemination of a large volume of technically validated data that could benefit researchers and other professionals. Additionally, the open access model of ACS Omega immediately makes the published knowledge available to policy makers and the general public, thereby returning scientific outcomes to society at large.
The journal endeavors to provide quality service to authors not only through fair review of submitted research but also by expedited manuscript handling with support by expert editors and professional editorial staff. Formatting requirements at the time of submission are simplified, leaving details to ACS staff so that authors can focus on the scientific content. An attractive feature of ACS Omega is the facile, efficient, and organized transfer of manuscripts from other ACS journals, with or without referee reports.
With the four co-editors in multidisciplinary chemistry areas drawn from across the globe, ACS Omega will have worldwide reach and aims to greatly expand the pool of international reviewers. All four editors are active researchers and possess wide publishing, reviewing, and editorial experience.
The fresh and important features that ACS Omega brings to the chemistry publication world are the following:
Innovative research outcomes in chemistry-relevant areas of science
Multidisciplinary research in chemical science and engineering that defies conventional categorizations and describes new findings in high-quality original articles of any length.
Extremely broad in scope, publishing work that is scientifically valid while foregoing any subjective assessment by reviewers and editors of the work’s novelty or general interest
Original submissions that may not fit the scope of other ACS journals but are of high technical quality, including negative results or unambiguous confirmation of preliminary published results
Compatibility with other ACS journals with the unique benefit of seamless transfer of manuscripts with or without referee reports, facilitated resubmission by authors, and rapid decision-making by ACS Omega
Full citations with page numbers at the time of Web publication, enabling greater visibility and citations to published articles
Expanding the emerging open access publishing model to chemistry to provide immediate visibility in an accelerated manner to the global audience of academics, industry, and the public at large
Fair publication fees, with ACS member and countrywide discounts. Authors may also use ACS Author Rewards from their previous publications. Details are reported on the ACS Web site: http://pubs.acs.org/journal/acsodf
We hope that ACS Omega will create a unique author community of scientists working in chemistry and associated areas, as future challenges in science and breakthroughs will necessarily come from a confluence of disciplines.
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS.