Chemical Communications Blog

All of the referee-recommended articles below are free to access until 7th December 2018.

Essential but sparse collagen hydroxylysyl post-translational modifications detected by DNP NMR
Wing Ying Chow, Rui Li, Ieva Goldberga, David G. Reid, Rakesh Rajan, Jonathan Clark, Hartmut Oschkinat, Melinda J. Duer, Robert Hayward and Catherine M. Shanahan
Chem. Commun., 2018,54, 12570-12573
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC04960B, Communication

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Rapid synthesis of Co3O4 nanosheet arrays on Ni foam by in situ electrochemical oxidization of air-plasma engraved Co(OH)2 for efficient oxygen evolution
Wenling Gu, Liuyong Hu, Xiaoqing Zhu, Changshuai Shang, Jing Li and Erkang Wang
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06399K, Communication

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Modification of amine-cured epoxy resins by boronic acids based on their reactivity with intrinsic diethanolamine units
Yumiko Ito, Jumpei Kida, Daisuke Aoki and Hideyuki Otsuka
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC07412G, Communication

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3-Homoacyl coumarin: an all carbon 1,3-dipole for enantioselective concerted (3+2) cycloaddition
Yi-Ru Chen, Madhusudhan Reddy Ganapuram, Kai-Hong Hsieh, Kai-Han Chen, Praneeth Karanam, Sandip Sambhaji Vagh, Yan-Cheng Liou and Wenwei Lin
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC07271J, Communication

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Coinage metal complexes of NHC-stabilized silyliumylidene ions
Philipp Frisch and Shigeyoshi Inoue
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC07754A, Communication

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An ultrafine ruthenium nanocrystal with extremely high activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction in both acidic and alkaline media
Yutong Li, Fuqiang Chu, Yang Liu, Yong Kong, Yongxin Tao, Yongxin Li and Yong Qin
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC08276F, Communication

All of the referee-recommended articles below are free to access until 4th November 2018.

Organocatalytic decarboxylative alkylation of N-hydroxy-phthalimide esters enabled by pyridine-boryl radicals
Liuzhou Gao, Guoqiang Wang, Jia Cao, Dandan Yuan, Cheng Xu, Xuewen Guo and Shuhua Li
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06152A, Communication

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A new C,N-cyclometalated osmium(II) arene anticancer scaffold with a handle for functionalization and antioxidative properties
Enrique Ortega, Jyoti G. Yellol, Matthias Rothemund, Francisco J. Ballester, Venancio Rodríguez, Gorakh Yellol, Christoph Janiak, Rainer Schobert and José Ruiz
Chem. Commun., 2018,54, 11120-11123
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06427J, Communication

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Descriptors of magnetic anisotropy revisited
Mauro Perfetti and Jesper Bendix
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC05756G, Communication

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A semiconducting metal-chalcogenide–organic framework with square-planar tetra-coordinated sulfur
Huajun Yang, Min Luo, Zhou Wu, Wei Wang, Chaozhuang Xue and Tao Wu
Chem. Commun., 2018,54, 11272-11275
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06997B, Communication

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Transition between tangential and co-axial liquid crystalline honeycombs in the self-assembly of Y-shaped bolapolyphiles
Anne Lehmann, Marko Prehm, Changlong Chen, Feng Liu, Xiangbing Zeng, Goran Ungar and Carsten Tschierske
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06281A, Communication

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Unraveling the isomeric heterogeneity of glycans: ion mobility separations in structures for lossless ion manipulations
Gabe Nagy, Isaac K. Attah, Sandilya V. B. Garimella, Keqi Tang, Yehia M. Ibrahim, Erin S. Baker and Richard D. Smith
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06966B, Communication

We are pleased to welcome nominations for the 2019 Emerging Investigator Lectureship for ChemComm.

All nominations must be received by Friday 25th January 2019.

ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship
• Recognises emerging scientists in the early stages of their independent academic career.
• Eligible nominees should have completed their PhD on or after the 15th September 2010.

Lectureship details
• The recipient of the lectureship will be invited to present a lecture at three different locations over a 12-month period, with at least one of these events taking place at an international conference.
• The recipient will receive a contribution of £1500 towards travel and accommodation costs for their lectures, as well as a certificate.
• The recipient will be asked to contribute a review article for the journal.

How to nominate
Self-nomination is not permitted. Nominators must send the following to the editorial team via chemcomm-rsc@rsc.org by Friday 25th January 2019.
• Recommendation letter, including the name, contact details and website URL of the nominee.
• A one-page CV for the nominee, including a summary of their education, dates of key career achievements, a list of up to five of their top independent publications, total numbers of publications and patents, and other indicators of esteem, together with evidence of career independence.
• A copy of the candidate’s best publication to date (as judged by the nominator).
• Two supporting letters of recommendation from two independent referees. These should not be someone from the same institution or the candidate’s post doc or PhD supervisor.

The nominator and independent referees should comment on the candidate’s presenting skills.

Incomplete nominations or those not adhering to the above requirements will not be considered, and nominees will not be contacted regarding any missing or incorrect documents.

Selection procedure
• The editorial team will screen each nomination for eligibility and draw up a shortlist of candidates based on the nomination documents provided.
• Shortlisted candidates will be asked to provide a brief supporting statement summarising their key achievements, highlighting the impact of their work and justifying why they deserve the specific lectureship for which they have been entered.
• The recipient of the lectureship will then be selected and endorsed by a selection panel composed of members of the ChemComm Editorial Board. The winner will be announced in the first half of 2019.

NB: Please note that members of the selection panel from the ChemComm Editorial Board are not eligible to nominate, or provide references, for this lectureship.

For any queries, please contact the editorial team at chemcomm-rsc@rsc.org.

This August saw the occasion of the 14th European Biological Inorganic Chemistry Conference (EuroBIC), held at the University of Birmingham in the UK. With an excellent line up of internationally renowned plenary and keynote speakers the event was a huge success, attracting around 400 attendees.

The Royal Society of Chemistry was pleased to support the event, offering poster prizes of books and book vouchers. The winners of RSC vouchers were:

• Raul Berrocal-Martin (University of Glasgow) – Dalton Transactions Poster Prize
• Wilma Neumann (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) – Metallomics Poster Prize
• Ying Zhou (University of Hong Kong) – ChemComm Poster Prize
• Leon Jenner (University of East Anglia) – Chemical Science Poster Prize

The following presenters also won the RSC Highly Commended Poster Awards:

• Gloria Vigueras Bautista (University of Murcia)
• Nicolai Burzlaff (Friedrich-Alexander University)
• Samya Banerjee (University of Warwick)
• Riccardo Bonsignore (Cardiff University)
• Philip Ash (University of Oxford)

Dalton Transactions associate editor Nils Metzler-Nolte (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and Chemical Science assistant editor William King were on hand to award the prizes.

Raul Berrocal-Martin (left) receiving the Dalton Transactions prize from Nils Metzler-Nolte (right)	Ying Zhou (left) receiving the ChemComm prize from Nils Metzler-Nolte (right)
Leon Jenner (left) receiving the Chemical Science prize from William King (right)	Gloria Vigueras Bautista (left) receiving a Highly Commended Poster Prize from William King (right)
Riccardo Bonsignore (left) receiving a Highly Commended Poster Prize from William King (right)	Philip Ash (left) receiving a Highly Commended Poster Prize from William King (right)

The RSC offers a hearty congratulations to all poster prize winners!

Next year the 19th International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry (ICBIC 19) will be held in Interlaken, Switzerland – August 11th to 16th. The next European Biological Inorganic Chemistry Conference (EuroBIC 15) will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland, in August 2020. 

The 28th International Symposium on the Organic Chemistry of Sulfur (ISOCS 28) was held in Tokyo, Japan, from 26th – 31st August.

Over 220 delegates attended the symposium which was chaired by Professor Kei Goto (Tokyo Institute of Technology). ISOCS symposia are prestigious international scientific events with a tradition of over 50 years that cover the whole fascinating range of sulfur chemistry from theory to practical applications. ISOCS-28 has offered a scientific program dealing with the latest developments in sulfur chemistry presented by leading international experts including six Plenary Lecturers and twenty Invited Lecturers. The next symposium, ISOCS-29, will be held in 2020 in Ontario, Canada, under the chairmanship of Professor Adrian L. Schwan (University of Guelph).

Mr Ryosuke Masuda from Tokyo Institute of Technology was awarded the ChemComm Poster Prize for his piece titled ‘Model Study of a GPx-derived Selenenic Acid with Thiols by Utilizing a Cradled Selenocysteine’.

Mr Tomohiro Sugahara from Kyoto University was award the Chemical Science Poster Prize for his piece titled ‘Chalcogenation Reactions of 1,2-Digermacyclobutadiene’.

Congratulations to both!

Mr. Tomohiro Sugahara was awarded the Chemical Science Poster Prize by Hiromitsu Urakami

Mr. Ryosuke Masuda was awarded the ChemComm Poster Prize by Hiromitsu Urakami

All of the referee-recommended articles below are free to access until 5th October 2018.

Induced circular dichroism of monoatomic anions: silica-assisted the transfer of chiral environment from molecular assembled nanohelices to halide ions
Yutaka Okazaki, Naoya Ryu, Thierry Buffeteau, Shaheen Pathan, Shoji Nagaoka, Emilie Pouget, Sylvain Nlate, Hirotaka Ihara and Reiko Oda
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC05449E, Communication

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Arsagermene, a compound with an –AsGe double bond
Vladimir Ya. Lee, Manami Kawai, Olga A. Gapurenko, Vladimir I. Minkin, Heinz Gornitzka and Akira Sekiguchi
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC05630G, Communication

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Progress in selective oxidative dehydrogenation of light alkanes to olefins promoted by boron nitride catalysts
Lei Shi, Yang Wang, Bing Yan, Wei Song, Dan Shao and An-Hui Lu
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC04604B, Feature Article

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Photochemical and electrochemical hydrogen evolution reactivity of lanthanide-functionalized polyoxotungstates
Marzieh Arab Fashapoyeh, Masoud Mirzaei, Hossein Eshtiagh-Hosseini, Ashwene Rajagopal, Manuel Lechner, Rongji Liu and Carsten Streb
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06334F, Communication

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A tetravalent sialic acid-coated tetraphenylethene luminogen with aggregation-induced emission characteristics: design, synthesis and application for sialidase activity assay, high-throughput screening of sialidase inhibitors and diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis
Guang-jian Liu, Beihan Wang, Yuan Zhang, Guo-wen Xing, Xiaoli Yang and Shu Wang
Chem. Commun., 2018, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC06300A, Communication

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A C–C bonded 5,6-fused bicyclic energetic molecule: exploring an advanced energetic compound with improved performance
Yongxing Tang, Chunlin He, Gregory H. Imler, Damon A. Parrish and Jean’ne M. Shreeve
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC05987J, Communication

All of the referee-recommended articles below are free to access until 5th September 2018.

Transformation of single MOF nanocrystals into single nanostructured catalysts within mesoporous supports: a platform for pioneer fluidized-nanoreactor hydrogen carriers
Ignacio Luz, Mustapha Soukri and Marty Lail
Chem. Commun., 2018,54, 8462-8465
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC04562C, Communication

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Defective Pt nanoparticles encapsulated in mesoporous metal–organic frameworks for enhanced catalysis
Qiang Wang, Xu-Sheng Wang, Chun-Hui Chen, Xue Yang, Yuan-Biao Huang and Rong Cao
Chem. Commun., 2018,54, 8822-8825
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC04485F, Communication

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Tetrahedral DNAzymes for enhanced intracellular gene-silencing activity
Hien Bao Dieu Thai, Fabienne Levi-Acobas, Soo-Young Yum, Goo Jang, Marcel Hollenstein and Dae-Ro Ahn
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC05721D, Communication

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Strong carbon cage influence on the single molecule magnetism in Dy–Sc nitride clusterfullerenes
Christin Schlesier, Lukas Spree, Aram Kostanyan, Rasmus Westerström, Ariane Brandenburg, Anja U. B. Wolter, Shangfeng Yang, Thomas Greber and Alexey A. Popov
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC05029E, Communication

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CdZnSe@ZnSe colloidal alloy quantum dots for high-efficiency all-inorganic perovskite solar cells
Qinghua Li, Jinke Bai, Tingting Zhang, Chao Nie, Jialong Duan and Qunwei Tang
Chem. Commun., 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC05517C, Communication

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Upgrading gasoline to high octane number using Zeolite-like Metal Organic Framework molecular sieve with ana-topology
Mohamed Eddaoudi,  M Infas Mohideen,  Youssef Belmabkhout,  Prashant Bhatt,  Zhijie Chen,  karim adil  and  Aleksander Shkurenko
Chem. Commun., 2018, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C8CC04824J, Communication

Since July 2017, ChemComm has been running an experiment; offering authors a choice on how their manuscript is peer reviewed. Authors have had the option to choose between the customary ‘single-blind’ peer review, where reviewers remain anonymous while knowing who the authors are or choose to keep their identity from reviewers, who will assess the work without knowing who the authors are – i.e., ‘double-blind’ peer review. 12 months on, as our experiment comes to a close, we want to share some of our findings, which have led us to decide to keep optional double-blind peer review on ChemComm.

Over the last 12 months, 10% of ChemComm authors chose the double-blind option at submission. In line with data published in the Peer Review Congress abstracts¹, authors from India and Iran had higher than average uptake, whereas USA, Japan, Germany and the UK all showed less than 5% uptake. During the trial we gathered feedback from authors to understand their motivations for choosing either single- or double-blind peer review. We found that those who chose double-blind, perceived this option to be more fair and all said they would choose it again next time they submit. Those who opted for single-blind peer review did so because of familiarity with the process, with a small proportion saying they would chose double-blind next time.

Authors are responsible for anonymising their own manuscripts, and we found that a significant portion of manuscripts were not fully anonymised, in many cases due to author and/or affiliation details being present in the main article. This is something we want to explore further to see if there are actions we can take to increase the proportion of manuscripts that are fully anonymised. If you do want to choose double-blind peer review for your submission, guidelines for successfully anonymising your manuscript can be found in our handy checklist along with more detailed guidelines for authors and reviewers.

Overall, our findings suggest that the quality of the reviews received was comparable for both single- and double-blind review and author satisfaction levels were also equal for both. Although it is unclear at this stage whether double-blind peer review truly reduces bias during the peer review process, it has been clear to us that there is strong advocacy for it from some members of our community. Therefore, we want to continue offering our authors at ChemComm a choice and therefore the option to choose double-blind peer review will remain as a permanent feature.

We continue to welcome your comments and feedback and encourage you to try double-blind peer review for your next submission.

¹Elisa De Ranieri et al. Analysis of Uptake and Outcome in Author-Selected Single-blind vs Double-blind Peer Review at Nature Journals https://peerreviewcongress.org/prc17-0305

The 3rd International Conference on Proton Coupled Electron Transfer (PCET) was held recently from 10 – 14 June in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, USA. The meeting was a great success and one that ChemComm was very happy to support.

There were 128 attendees overall included attendees spanning 15 countries. The topics of the 81 posters and 34 talks presented covered all areas of Chemistry, one of which was presented by Ken Sakai, Kyushu University and sponsored by ChemComm.

The 4th PCET meeting will be held in 2021 in Catalonia, Spain, and will be hosted by Toni Llobet.