Given the pace of scientific developments over the past 100 years, it is perhaps easy to forget that scientific publishing is an old institution that has evolved alongside science. Even within ACS Publications, we have celebrated 140 years of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and are currently celebrating 125 years of The Journal of Physical Chemistry. That is not to say our great-great-grandparents would recognize these journals, as the publishing landscape has also been changing at a furious rate, particularly in recent years.
One of the most striking developments has been the move away from hard copy articles and journals to a fully digital form. This has changed the way we write manuscripts, the ease with which the editorial and review process is conducted, the constraints on length and form, and the way readers access the published articles. With the physicality of journals removed, a huge barrier to access is also removed, as a reader no longer needs to obtain one of a limited number of physical copies.
In this digital world, we now see an evolving debate focused on the philosophical question of who should have free access to the results of research and, in particular, publicly funded research. Broadly this movement is called “open science” and encompasses more than open access to journal articles, including, for example, open data, open methods, and open-source software. The open access question, however, is what defines and distinguishes ACS Physical Chemistry Au most specifically. We are a gold, fully open access journal, meaning that our authors, their institutions, or their funders pay a fee to publish (article publication charge, “APC”) and all articles in our journal are freely available for anyone, anywhere to download and read. This undoubtedly contributes to the democratization of science, allowing research results to rapidly reach areas where researchers are unable or unwilling to pay subscription fees. The trade-off is that the authors rather than readers have to pay, and in today’s world there is enormous variation among countries and funding agencies whether these fees are absorbed seamlessly or are prohibitive.
On one extreme, we see researchers who are required to publish in fully open access journals, typically with national, institutional, or funding agency support to cover the APC. On the other extreme, we have researchers who are not subject to any requirements on where they publish but have no support to cover the APC other than taking this from the often limited funds they have to cover their research costs. In the broad middle ground, we have a whole swathe of permutations and combinations of varying requirements and varying means of covering APCs. One research group may actually be subject to a whole range of different publishing mandates depending on their sources of funding. In the current climate, it is a challenging task to navigate this landscape.
Given these complexities, it is clear that a “one size fits all” model for scientific publishing cannot serve all authors fairly. We believe strongly in the principles of open science, but our primary objective is to support our authors whatever their situations are. This focus is embodied in the dual roles all our editors have as Gemma continues to work with The Journal of Physical Chemistry A/B/C and Tanja and Jin with The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (Figure 1). Whatever your means, inclination, and mandates, we strive to deliver high standards for editorial assessment, peer review, processing times, and overall author experience.
Figure 1.
(Left to right) Gemma Solomon (Deputy Editor, University of Copenhagen), Tanja Cuk (Associate Editor, University of Colorado at Boulder), and Jin Z. Zhang (Associate Editor, University of California, Santa Cruz).
Equity is one of the cornerstones of the open access movement, and we believe that this is what ACS Physical Chemistry Au will deliver. By building an excellent, fully open-access physical chemistry journal, we hope to both increase equity in access and also equity in opportunities for our authors. As the transition to open access evolves across scientific publishing, there is a risk that more vulnerable members of our community are disproportionately affected, as they so often are by change. Be they underrepresented groups facing unconscious bias or early career researchers without a permanent position, taking a step outside the established norms to publish in a fully open access journal could introduce added challenges. We at ACS Physical Chemistry Au will work to mitigate this risk by providing a fully open access physical chemistry journal with the high editorial standards associated with the best specialist hybrid journals.
Critically, our objective is for ACS Physical Chemistry Au to be a journal with the same outstanding reputation for excellent physical chemistry research as the hybrid journals across the ACS Publications portfolio that publish in this area. As researchers ourselves, we know that, for every physical chemistry article published in a high-profile general chemistry or multidisciplinary journal, there are many more specialized articles that are equally important and influential in developing our ideas and research. These are the articles that provide vital details for researchers in the field, building the strong foundation that, over time, leads to high-profile, paradigm-shifting discoveries. We hope that the dual roles of our Editors and the expertise of our Editorial Advisory Board (Table 1), many of whom serve as Editors or Editors-in-Chief for other ACS journals, will give an immediate indication of the high-quality physical chemistry research we aim to publish and allow us to build a journal with a strong reputation for quality and impact.
Table 1. Inaugural ACS Physical Chemistry Au Editorial Advisory Board.
| board member | affiliation | country |
|---|---|---|
| Carles Bo | Institut Català d’Investigació Química | Spain |
| Michelle Coote | Australian National University | Australia |
| J. Justin Gooding | The University of New South Wales | Australia |
| Prashant V. Kamat | University of Notre Dame | United States |
| Lynn Kamerlin | Uppsala University | Sweden |
| Stephen R. Leone | University of California, Berkeley | United States |
| Gang-yu Liu | University of California, Davis | United States |
| Benedetta Mennucci | Università degli Studi di Pisa | Italy |
| Josef Michl | University of Colorado, Boulder | United States |
| Narayan Pradhan | Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science | India |
| Su Ying Quek | National University of Singapore | Singapore |
| Walter Richtering | RWTH Aachen University | Germany |
| Ursula Roethlisberger | Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne | Switzerland |
| George C. Schatz | Northwestern University | United States |
| Gregory D. Scholes | Princeton University | United States |
| Joan-Emma Shea | University of California, Santa Barbara | United States |
| Zhong-Qun Tian | Xiamen University | China |
| Yi-Jun Xu | Fuzhou University | China |
| Shihe Yang | Peking University | China |
| Jana Zaumseil | University of Heidelberg | Germany |
As one of the nine specialized Au journals that span the full ACS Publications hybrid journals portfolio (see DOI: 10.1021/acsphyschemau.1c00003), we encompass physical chemistry in the broadest sense. Whether your research takes inspiration from long studied areas of physical chemistry or newer ones such as computational chemistry, modeling, catalysis, energy, surface science, biophysics, atmospheric science, or condensed matter physics, we hope you will consider ACS Physical Chemistry Au. Our scientific standards for publication are high, our scope is broad, and we aim to showcase the diversity of physical chemistry in Letters, Articles, Reviews, and Perspectives.
Whether our great-grandchildren will celebrate 125 years of ACS Physical Chemistry Au together with 250 years of The Journal of Physical Chemistry will be determined, in part, by the future evolution of scientific publishing. In the meantime, we will focus on supporting researchers today to publish outstanding physical chemistry articles across ACS Publications, whatever your publishing mandates.
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS.