ChemComm is publishing its 60th volume in 2024. Over the past 60 years, ChemComm has been the RSC’s most cited journal, and one of the most trusted venues for rapid publication of short communications. In our anniversary year, we recognise the important contributions ChemComm has made, and continues to make, in advancing the chemical sciences.
As part of our anniversary celebrations, we’ve brought together a collection featuring the latest research from some of our most loyal and dedicated authors. From those marking the beginning of their independent academic career by publishing their first article with us, to the rising stars and established leaders publishing in our yearly ‘Emerging Investigators’ and ‘Pioneering Investigators’ collections, this collection champions the contributions of our worldwide author community. We are proud many authors choose to support our journal by regularly publishing their best work with us. This collection also features papers from our ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship winners, and our Outstanding Reviewer awardees, whose invaluable feedback has shaped our published content through the years.
To accompany the collection, we’ll be publishing interviews with contributing authors where they provide further insight into their research and reflect on their journey with ChemComm.
Check out our interview with Susumu Saito (Nagoya University, Japan) below!
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Susumu Saito obtained his doctoral degree of Engineering (1998) from Nagoya University (NU). He attended Prof. E. Jacobsen’s group at Harvard, USA, as a Visiting Researcher (1994). His first academic position was as Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Engineering, NU (1995), and he became Associate Professor of the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR), NU (2002), and Full Professor and IAR Fellow, NU since 2015. He is an Asian Core Program Lecturer awarded from China (2009) and Taiwan (2009), a recipient of the Nagase Research Award (2018) and SSOCJ Tosoh Award for Environment and Energy (2019); PI of CREST project, JST since 2022. Web page link: http://noy.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp/S_Saito-E/ |
How have you seen ChemComm evolve over the years, and what aspects do you find most noteworthy?
Evolution is not necessarily needed. Keeping traditions is sometimes very important. ChemCommun is concise and friendly to many new and young authors who just joined our community as principal investigators (PIs). They can share their new findings very quickly with their peer researchers. Technically, we can see some evolution or advancement in your internet submission systems. For example, clearcut peer-review/decision processes, which can be tracked by the authors daily, are useful and intriguing to see for the authors to check the real-time reviewing progress.
What is your favourite thing about ChemComm?
ChemCommun continues accepting fundamentally compact and sharp, but novel scientific findings in pure chemistry rather than a big science. A plethora of new journals recently launched try to be adaptable to fashionable and mainstream trends, more applied materials-oriented, and are too interdisciplinary. Those journals in their entirety frequently ask us to include time-consuming corroborations and profound proof-based interpretations using expensive in silico calculation and machinery analysis.
How would you describe the peer review process and interaction with the editorial team at ChemComm?
Reviewers evaluate the novelty, and urgency of the research results as usual but at the same time not so picky about how the authors went in depth to demonstrate/corroborate the mechanism which takes huge time to firm up and publish it. It is very nice to accept only new research results as far as the obtained fact is sound and solid.
Are there ways in which the journal can further support and engage with future generations of scientists?
Please keep the traditions. Please be tolerant of the research results of young scientists who are just getting started with his/her professional career. They are sometimes rough, but just need a novel outstanding fact which cannot be clearly explained and rationalized.
Could you provide a brief summary of your recent ChemComm publication?
We looked at how we could use renewable energy (including sunlight), water and minimal fuel (organic compound) more effectively for a green and uphill (endergonic: DG > 0) organic synthesis (with no salt/organic waste formation) in the future direction of the sustainability.
In you opinion, what are the next steps or potential areas of research that could build upon the findings in this paper?
Artificial photosynthesis directed toward organic synthesis, in which a non-natural and thermodynamically endergonic (ΔG° > 0, uphill) reaction that uses water as an electron donor, rather than a source material, is driven by solar-energy. A preprint of the preliminary results has been uploaded (DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4943835/v1) by our group. This result we believe is the dawn of a new era of catalytic organic synthesis for sustainability chemistry, which will hopefully be more rationally and diversely advanced soon.
Be sure to read Susumu’s full article, “PdPt/SrTiO3:Al-catalysed redox-selective photoreduction of unsaturated carboxylic acids using minimal electron-donor and water” to learn more!
