Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Major society chemistry publishers jointly commit to integration with ORCID

ORCID provides an identifier for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research, scholarship and innovation activities, ensuring authors gain full credit for their work.

Today, we signed their open letter, along with ACS Publications, committing to unambiguous identification of all authors that publish in our journals.

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The Royal Society of Chemistry and the Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) today each became signatories to the ORCID Open Letter, reasserting the commitment of both organizations to enhancing the scholarly publishing experience for researchers worldwide who are involved in chemistry and allied fields.

The commitment by these two global chemistry publishers to undertake new workflow integration with technology infrastructure provided by ORCID, a not-for-profit organization that provides unique identifiers for researchers and scholars, will enable both societies to provide unambiguous designation of author names within chemistry and across the broader sciences. This partnership with ORCID will resolve ambiguity in researcher identification caused by name changes, cultural differences in name presentation, and the inconsistent use of name abbreviations that is too often a source of confusion for those who must rely on the published scientific record.

By becoming signatories to the ORCID Open Letter, these two major chemical societies are voicing their intent to collect ORCID iDs for all submitting authors through use of the ORCID API, and to display such identifiers in the articles published in their respective society journals. The integration of such activities within the publishers’ workflows means authors will benefit from automated linkages between their ORCID record and unique identifiers embedded within their published research articles, ensuring their contributions are appropriately recognized and credited.

During the publishing process, ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry will automatically deposit publications to Crossref, which in turn will coordinate with ORCID to link and update the publishing activity populated to authors’ respective ORCID profiles, thus attributing each published work to the correct researcher. Existing holders of an ORCID iD will encounter a one-time prompt to grant permission for the linkage. If authors do not have an ORCID iD, they can easily enroll without navigating away from the publishers’ manuscript submission site. If users wish to revoke integrated ORCID profile access at any time, they can elect to do so through their ACS, Royal Society of Chemistry or ORCID accounts.

Both ACS Publications and the Royal Society of Chemistry understand the importance of attributing accurately the scholarly contributions of research scientists in the context of their other professional activities. “ACS has supported ORCID since the outset of the initiative,” says Sarah Tegen, Ph.D., Vice President of Global Editorial & Author Services at ACS Publications. “We are pleased now to align with the Royal Society of Chemistry in this endeavor, as both societies underscore our willingness not only to encourage and assist our respective authors in establishing their unique ORCID profiles, but also to help tackle the broader challenge of researcher name disambiguation in the scholarly literature. With the integration of author ORCID iDs in our publishing workflows, we will ensure that researchers receive proper credit for their accomplishments.”

Emma Wilson, Ph.D., Director of Publishing at the Royal Society of Chemistry adds, “We have been a supporter of ORCID since 2013, recognizing the benefits it brings to researchers; ORCID can and will make a huge difference to our authors’ ability to gain full credit for their work. ORCID will also help researchers meet the requirements of their research funders — for example, a number of funders have already announced that all grant applicants must now include a researcher’s ORCID iD. A unified system that integrates and links research-related information with accurate and timely linkage to the publishing output of authors has the potential to simplify and speed up their grant applications — something we know is important to researchers.”

“The ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry have been long-standing supporters of ORCID,” says Laurel Haak, Ph.D., Executive Director, ORCID. “We are pleased to see ORCID integration into ACS and Royal Society of Chemistry Publications systems. This will be a substantial benefit to researchers in the chemistry community, both in improving search and discovery of research articles, and for attribution and recognition of researchers’ contributions to the discipline.”

About the American Chemical Society and ACS Publications

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

ACS Publications, a division of the American Chemical Society, is a nonprofit scholarly publisher of 50 peer-reviewed journals and a range of eBooks at the interface of chemistry and allied sciences, including physics and biology. ACS Publications journals are among the most-cited, most-trusted and most-read within the scientific literature. Respected for their editorial rigor, ACS journals offer high-quality service to authors and readers, including rapid time to publication, a range of channels for researchers to access ACS Publications’ award-winning web and mobile delivery platforms, and a comprehensive program of open access publishing options for authors and their funders. ACS Publications also publishes Chemical & Engineering News — the Society’s newsmagazine covering science and technology, business and industry, government and policy, education and employment aspects of the chemistry field.

About the Royal Society of Chemistry

The Royal Society of Chemistry is the world’s leading chemistry community, advancing excellence in the chemical sciences. With over 50,000 members and a knowledge business that spans the globe, we are the U.K.’s professional body for chemical scientists; a not-for-profit organisation with 175 years of history and an international vision for the future. We promote, support and celebrate chemistry. We work to shape the future of the chemical sciences — for the benefit of science and humanity.

About ORCID

ORCID’s vision is a world where all who participate in research, scholarship and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders and time. ORCID provides an identifier for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research, scholarship and innovation activities. It provides open tools that enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions and affiliations. The organization provides this service to help people find information and to simplify reporting and analysis. ORCID is a not-for-profit organization, sustained by fees from member organizations. Its work is open, transparent and non-proprietary. The organization strives to be a trusted component of research infrastructure with the goal of providing clarity in the breadth of research contributions and the people who make them.

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Pan Africa Chemistry Network Congress 2016 – registration open!

We are delighted to announce that Pan Africa Chemistry Network Congress 2016 – Sustainable Water Resources for Africa is being held in Kenya on 30 November – 2 December 2016 – be sure to secure your place today! For full details of speakers and conference themes, please visit the event web page.

This will be the 10th PACN Congress, and will bring together over 200 participants from across Africa and the globe to discuss current research, challenges, new developments and crucial issues on the topic of Water.

The speaker and participants will share expertise and best practice and discuss cutting edge research and applications.  It will reflect the diversity of science and research that can help solve challenges of water security and water safety, with a focus on the chemical sciences.  The conference will give all participants the opportunity to engage with other scientists, exchange ideas and previous events have led to new collaborations and partnerships.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Indo-UK Workshop on Nano-Biomaterials for Water Purification

Call for participants for the Indo-UK Workshop: Nano-Biomaterials for Water Purification

Kerala, India, 12th to 16th December 2016


Under the Researcher Links scheme offered within the Newton Fund from the British Council, Dr Durai Prabhakaran Raghavalu Thirumalai (Bangor University, Bangor, UK) and Professor Sabu Thomas (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala) will be holding a workshop on nanomaterials for water purification in Kerala, India from 12–16 December 2016.

Advances in nanoscale science and engineering suggest that many of the current problems involving water quality could be resolved using nanosorbents, nanocatalysts, bio-active nanoparticles, nanostructured catalytic membranes and nanoparticle enhanced filtration among other products and processes from the development of nanotechnology. Recent developments in technology have resulted in breakthroughs in wastewater treatment for reuse. This progress includes membrane technology, which has emerged as a significant innovation for treatment and reclamation, as well as a leading process in the upgrade and expansion of wastewater treatment plants. Membrane filtration technologies form a promising avenue of research and innovation to provide effective and lasting solutions for adequate supplies of water of suitable quality to meet human, environmental and industrial needs. Our intention is to bring together the experience from India and UK researchers in order to discuss these topics and new targets in materials and chemistry for water purification.

Early Career Researchers from the UK or India are now invited to apply to attend this workshop. All travel and accommodation expenses will be covered by the Newton Researcher Links programme.

The workshop will provide a unique opportunity for sharing research expertise and networking. During the workshops early career researchers will have the opportunity to present their research in the form of a short oral presentation and discuss this with established researchers from the UK and partner countries. There will be a focus on building up links for future collaborations and participants selected on the basis of their research potential and ability to build longer term links.

If you would like more information about the workshop please contact Dr Durai Prabhakaran Raghavalu Thirumalai (durai.prabhakaran@bangor.ac.uk) or Professor Sabu Thomas (sabuchathukulam@yahoo.co.uk).

For more information on the Researcher Links Scheme please visit https://www.britishcouncil.org/education/science/researcher-links.

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Professor Jun Ma wins Sustainable Water Award 2016

Professor Jun Ma

Professor Jun Ma of the Harbin Institute of Technology and Advisory Board member of Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology has been chosen by the Royal Society of Chemistry as the deserved winner of the Sustainable Water Award 2016. The award recognises his work on the development and application of novel technologies for wastewater treatment processes.

The Royal Society of Chemistry prizes and awards celebrate the achievements by individuals, teams and organisations in advancing the chemical sciences – and rewarding those who undertake excellent work in the chemical sciences across the world.

Jun Ma graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology (BS, MS and PhD), and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Imperial College London (recipient of Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship). He has been a Senior Visiting Scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) at Switzerland. Professor Ma is now the Changjiang Scholar Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology and the Deputy Director of the National Engineering Research Centre of Urban Water Resources, China.

Congratulations Professor Ma from the entire Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology team!

Professor Jun Ma’s webpage can be found here.

Full details of all 2016 prize and award winners can be found here.

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Chemistry and Water: Challenges & Solutions in a Changing World

We are all aware of the breadth of issues that we face as a planet when it comes to securing sustainable water supplies in the future. Global changes in climate, land use and demographics mean that there will be different pressures on water availability and quality and these have the potential to affect human health and the environment. Whilst some challenges are long-standing, such as ensuring adequate sanitation for all, we also face emerging issues, in the form of new pollutants, such as hormones and pharmaceuticals.

Last year in Leipzig, leading scientists from China, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA met at the 6th Chemical Sciences in Society Symposium (CS3) to discuss how chemistry could contribute to future global water security. The meeting is part of an ongoing series that brings together leading scientists from these nations, with the support of their national chemical societies and national funding bodies to discuss the role of the chemical sciences in different global challenges.

The discussions from the meeting have been captured in the recently launched white paper Chemistry and Water: Challenges and Solutions in Changing World, which highlights the future research directions, collaborations and policies that are needed to ensure global water needs can be met in the future. A wide range of issues was examined, including  the link between water, the environment and human health, the need for ever-evolving detection methods, improved water treatment techniques for water reuse and the opportunities presented for recovering valuable materials from water.

A number of themes emerged from discussions across all areas, such as the need for chemists to work alongside other disciplines, such as engineering, ecology and epidemiology and the importance of continual international knowledge exchange and collaboration.  The white paper also makes more detailed recommendations for research directions in the different themes of environment and health, detection, treatment and recovery of materials and includes case studies on how water challenges are being tackled in each nation.

The meeting demonstrated the range of challenges where we can share knowledge and learn from the experiences of other nations.  By capturing the discussions in the white paper, the recommendations from the meeting can help research funders, as well as the wider research community, in taking future steps to make sure chemistry is fully contributing to its part in securing future global water supplies.

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30th Annual WateReuse Symposium

Celebrating 30 Years of Securing Our Water Future!
Scientifically-proven advances in water technology allow us to treat any water clean enough for any use, including industrial, irrigation, and drinking. For the past 30 years, the Annual WateReuse Symposium has been the place to get the information you need to develop the right water for the right use.

Don’t miss this year’s Symposium to get even more:

  • Case studies of innovative projects
  • Updates on technology innovation
  • Highlights of cutting-edge research
  • Water treatment insight
  • Legislative and regulatory perspective

Come for the experience. Leave with the knowledge you need.

30th Annual WateReuse Symposium
Sheraton Seattle
Seattle, WA
September 13-16, 2015
www.watereuse.org/symposium

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Emerging Investigators Series – Open Call for Applications

We are delighted to announce a new initiative in which we wish to highlight the very best work from environmental scientists, working in the area of water engineering and technology, who are in the early stages of their independent career. Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology has created an on-going Emerging Investigators Series that will feature articles published by up-and-coming researchers who have been identified as having the potential to influence future directions in water research and technology.

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology showcases high quality research and innovative technologies that promote sustainable water resources. The journal provides a comprehensive and relevant forum that unites the diverse communities and disciplines conducting water research relevant to engineered systems and the built environment.

This is an open call for applications to the Series. Environmental scientists who have completed their PhD (or equivalent degree) within the last 10 years, and have an independent career, can apply to have their research highlighted in the Emerging Investigators Series.

To make an application please email eswater-rsc@rsc.org with the following information:

  • Your name, affiliation, position and contact details
  • Your up-to-date CV (no longer than 2 pages), which should include a summary of education and career, a list of relevant publications, any notable awards, honours or professional activities in the field, and a website URL if relevant
  • A synopsis of the article intended to be submitted to the Series, including a tentative submission date. This can be an original research article (Communication or Full Paper) or a review-type article (Critical Review, Frontier Review or Tutorial Review). Please see the journal website for more information on our article types.

Applications will be reviewed by the Executive Editor, Editor-in-Chief and members of the Editorial Board. The selection criteria for the Emerging Investigators Series will be based on the following:

  • Innovation and impact of research program
  • Quality of publications and/or patents and/or software
  • Profile within institute and/or community

Please note that articles submitted to the journal for the Series will undergo the usual peer-review process, and no guarantees of publication can be given to successful applicants.

In return, successful applicants will receive additional visibility of their research through the inclusion of their article in a high profile themed collection on the journal website, a feature interview on the journal blog devoted to the investigator’s research program (read the latest interviews here), and the offer of discounted membership to the Royal Society of Chemistry, at an appropriate level of membership, for the first year.

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology authors also benefit from rapid publication times, a simple and user-friendly online submission process and all articles are in colour, free of charge.

Contact and further information
Sarah Ruthven, Executive Editor
Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology
Royal Society of Chemistry
Thomas Graham House, Science Park,
Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WF, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 432129
Email: eswater-rsc@rsc.org

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Top 10 most accessed Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology articles from April – June 2015

From April – June 2015, our most downloaded Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology articles were:

Casey Forrestal, Zachary Stoll, Pei Xu and Zhiyong Jason Ren
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00050a

Munmun Mukherjee and Sirshendu De
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00094c

M. Rodríguez Arredondo, P. Kuntke, A. W. Jeremiasse, T. H. J. A. Sleutels, C. J. N. Buisman and A. ter Heijne
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00066h

David T. Tan and Danmeng Shuai
DOI: 10.1039/c5ew90011e

Diana N. H. Tran, Shervin Kabiri, Ting Rui Sim and Dusan Losic
DOI: 10.1039/c5ew00035a

Somak Chatterjee and Sirshendu De
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00075g

A. L. Smith, S. J. Skerlos and L. Raskin
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00070f

Yufeng Cai, Wenming Shen, Jing Wei, Tzyy Haur Chong, Rong Wang, William B. Krantz, Anthony G. Fane and Xiao Hu
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00073k

Jacob Lalley, Changseok Han, Gayathri Ram Mohan, Dionysios D. Dionysiou, Thomas F. Speth, Jay Garland and Mallikarjuna N. Nadagouda
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00020j

Blain Paul, Vyom Parashar and Ajay Mishra
DOI: 10.1039/c4ew00034j

Interesting read? Let us know your thoughts below.

And remember, you can submit directly to Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology!

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2nd National Environmental Eco-Toxicology Conference

The 2nd National Environmental Eco-Toxicology Conference was held in Xiamen, China, 25th-28th of April, 2015.

This exciting conference was jointly organised by the Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Xiamen University and the Institute of Urban Environment of CAS.

More than 700 attendees shared new ideas and recent development on the are six topics discussed during this conference:

  • Screening and assessment of high risk chemical contaminants
  • Transfer and distribution of chemical contaminants in the environment and organisms
  • Chemical hazards evaluation
  • Toxicology mechanism of chemical ecology
  • Toxicological mechanism of chemical health effects
  • Chemical risk management


During the conference, the Environmental Science (ES) series of journals sponsored three poster prizes. Let’s introduce the winners!

ES: Processes & Impacts: ‘Study on the toxicity behavior of organic phosphate ester flame retardant to pattern fish’, by Liwei Sun (Zhejiang Institute of Technology)

ES: Water Research & Technology: ‘Bioaccumulation behaviour of short chain chlorinated paraffins in Antarctic ecosystem’, by Huijuan Li and Aiqian Zhang (Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences)

ES: Nano: ‘Proinflammatory effects of silver nanoparticles and silver ions on human skin keratinocytes’, by Yang Di, Wei Hong-ying, Wang Bin, Fan Jing-pu, Qin Yu, Liu Yue, Guo Xin-biao and Deng Fu-rong (Peking Universty)

Congratulations to all the winners!

The judges of the prize thought the quality of the posters was really high and, from the Environmental Science team, we would like to thank all the researchers that attended or presented at the conference.

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Meet our Advisory Board

We are incredibly proud to present our Advisory Board, a group of distinguished experts in the field of water research and technology, who will provide us with valuable external perspectives on our current plans and strategy, and will actively help us shape the future of the journal.

Let’s find out a bit more about them:

Nandita Basu
University of Waterloo, Canada

Nandita is an Assistant Professor of Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology at the University of Waterloo, in Canada. Her research revolves around an interest in the sustainable management of water resources. The question of sustainable management of water is inherently interdisciplinary and requires research at the interfaces of hydrology, biogeochemistry, ecology, social sciences and economics. Her expertise lies at the interface of hydrology and chemistry, but she is also actively involved in collaborations with ecologists, social scientists and economists to explore other interfaces.


Dionysios Dionysiou
University of Cincinnati, USA

Professor Dionysiou is a UNESCO Chair Professor on “Water Access and Sustainability” and a Herman Schneider Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Cincinnati where he teaches courses on drinking water quality and treatment, advanced unit operations for water treatment, advanced oxidation technologies, and physical-chemical processes for water quality control. His research interests include treatment of water contaminated by harmful algal blooms with conventional and advanced technologies, advanced technologies for water treatment, advanced oxidation technologies, transition metal-based chemical oxidation, and nanotechnology.

Ferdi L. Hellweger
Northeastern University, USA

Dr. Hellweger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. His research interests are in the ecology of microbes in surface water systems, including harmful algal blooms in lakes and antibiotic resistance in rivers. He specialises in the development and application of mathematical models, with a focus on agent-based techniques. Locally, he is especially interested in the Charles River and wants to contribute to making it swimmable again. His goal is to build a forecast system that can be used to predict when & where it is safe to swim.


Jun Ma
Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Professor Ma is the Changjiang Scholar Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology and the Deputy Director of the National Engineering Research Center of Urban Water Resources, China. Jun’s interest has been in the area of water and wastewater treatment, he has been working in the processes of oxidation, nanoparticles and membranes.  He is the recipient of China Young Scientist Award, and the Achievement Award of Chiangjiang Scholars (Engineering Science Award) and holds over 80 invention patents and over 180 peer reviewed international journal papers.


Julie Minton
WateReuse Foundation, USA

Julie Minton has been the Director of Research Programs for the WateReuse Research Foundation for nearly five years and previously worked at the Foundation managing research projects.  She is responsible for planning and managing a comprehensive research program and staff.  Collectively, they manage over 50 active projects, worth more than $6 million annually. Ms. Minton has the programmatic responsibility for the Foundation’s fundraising initiatives, federal grants and cooperative agreements and has directed programmatic monitoring, reporting, outputs, and outcomes on multiple federal, state, and partner awards totaling over $20 million. Ms. Minton is also responsible for maintaining collaborative relationships with U.S. and international research organizations, cooperative funding of research programs and projects, and joint outreach activities. She has a B.A. in Biology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.


Simon Parsons
Scottish Water, UK

Simon Parsons is Director of Strategic Customer Service Planning at Scottish Water. He was formerly Chief Scientist and General Manager of Scientific Services and represented Scottish Water in science, research and public health communities. Simon won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s prestigious Sustainable Water Award for 2014 for advancing the understanding of natural organic matter in water treatment and for the development of treatment processes to improve water quality and sustainability.


Kai Udert
EAWAG, Switzerland

Dr. Udert has a background in environmental engineering. He received his PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 2003. After a postdoctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) in 2006. His main research focus has been on decentralized wastewater treatment and source separation. Besides working as a researcher, Dr Udert is also a lecturer at ETH Zurich for process engineering in water and wastewater treatment.


Lizhong Zhu
Zhejiang University, China

Lizhong Zhu is a Professor in Environmental Science and Director of Faculty of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. His research mainly focuses on interfacial behavior of organic pollutants and its regulation technology, which are essential to understanding source-sink dynamics, predicting bioavailability, and developing new pollution control materials and methods.


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All in all, a team of leaders in water research who are happy to join us in our great adventure.

Do you want to know more about the latest news in the journal? Follow us on Twitter @ESWater_RSC!

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