CrystEngComm Blog

Happy new year from the CrystEngComm editorial team!

What a year 2024 has been! CrystEngComm published its 26^th volume with over 670 articles in issues, 23 Highlight review articles and 60 Communications, from 47 countries.  In total across the year, we published 112 HOT, reviewer recommended articles which included 11 Communications and nine Highlight review articles. Read the last quarter’s HOT articles in this collection.

We are delighted to share some further highlights of CrystEngComm in 2024, including our Outstanding Paper Award winners, the introduction of our cover collection and cover gallery, and our most popular articles from the year.

Editorial board

At the end of January, we were delighted to announce that Christian Doonan (University of Adelaide, Australia) and C. Malla Reddy (Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India) had been appointed as Co-Editors-in-Chief of CrystEngComm. They succeeded Pierangelo Metrangolo who served as the journal’s Chair for six years.

Christian Doonan is a Professor of Chemistry and a South Australian Government Future Industry Making Fellow at the University of Adelaide. He received his PhD at the University of Melbourne and carried out post-doctoral work with Professor Omar Yaghi at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research group focuses on the design and synthesis of Metal-organic Framework materials for application to biotechnology and catalysis.Christian is a member of the international MOF commission and his research has been recognised through several awards including, an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and a distinguished lectureship award from the Chemical Society of Japan.

C Malla Reddy is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH), India. He obtained his PhD in Crystal Engineering from the School of Chemistry, University of Hyderabad (2001-2006) and carried out postdoctoral work at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany (2007-2008). He established an independent group at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata in 2008 and continued there until he moved to IITH in 2023. He had been an Honorary Visiting Scientist to the University of Bradford (2015-18) and a recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Mobility Grant, Distinguished Lectureship Award from the Chemical Society of Japan (2017) and Swarnajayanti Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, India. His research group is engaged in understanding the mechanical properties of organic solids, including pharmaceutical and optoelectronic crystals. Some of his well-known contributions include the discovery of flexible elastic and plastic organic crystals, designing flexible crystals using Supramolecular Shape Synthons, etc. He has published over 90 research articles.

CrystEngComm journal covers

We published 44 covers supplied by authors in 2024, and introduced the Articles behind the 2024 journal covers collection as well as the CrystEngComm cover gallery, ensuring great visibility of both the covers and associated articles.

CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award

The Outstanding Paper Award is an award aimed at recognising the high-quality work published in CrystEngComm from the previous year, acknowledging the excellence of the paper as a whole and recognising the contributions of all the authors.

The winners of the CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award 2023 are Hunter J. Windsor, Cameron J. Kepert and Lauren K. Macreadie, for their work: ‘Spontaneous resolution of two chiral metal–organic frameworks through local geometric and lattice frustration effects’. 

Spontaneous resolution of two chiral metal–organic frameworks through local geometric and lattice frustration effects Hunter J. Windsor, Cameron J. Kepert and Lauren K. Macreadie* CrystEngComm, 2023, 25, 5428-5435

The authors presented two chiral metal–organic frameworks that are differentiated by their Cd-centred helical twists and are prepared by spontaneous chiral resolution from rigid, aliphatic, and achiral precursors. Read the winning article here.

Transparent peer review

The RSC launched transparent peer review across its portfolio in 2024.
In the interest of transparency and open science CrystEngComm offers authors the option of transparent peer review, where the editor’s decision letter, reviewers’ comments and authors’ response for all versions of the manuscript are published alongside the article. To find out more about transparent peer review Watch our video.

Most popular articles in 2024

In 2024 our articles received an average of 120 downloads within 90 days of being published, highlighting the excellent visibility your article receives. We are pleased to share a selection of these most popular articles which are all free to access until 30^th April 2025.

Impurity retention and pharmaceutical solid solutions: visualizing the effect of impurities on dissolution and growth using dyed crystals Anne Nong, Claire Schleper, Abigail Martin, Mitchell Paolello, Fredrik L. Nordstrom and Gerard Capellades CrystEngComm, 2024, 26, 5337-5350
Utilizing 3-methyl-1-butene co-units to tailor phase transition behavior in butene-1 copolymers Jiazheng Shen, Wei Li, Ruijun Zhao, Yingzhuo Liu and Zhe Ma CrystEngComm, 2024, 26, 51-60
Project M: investigating the effect of additives on calcium carbonate crystallisation through a school citizen science program Claire A. Murray, Project M Scientists, Laura Holland, Rebecca O’Brien, Alice Richards, Annabelle R. Baker, Mark Basham, David Bond, Leigh D. Connor, Sarah J. Day, Jacob Filik, Stuart Fisher, Peter Holloway, Karl Levik, Ronaldo Mercado, Jonathan Potter, Chiu C. Tang, Stephen P. Thompson and Julia E. Parker CrystEngComm, 2024, 26, 753-763

We would love you to be part of the future of CrystEngComm so on behalf of the Co-Editors-in-Chief of CrystEngComm, Professors Christian Doonan and C. Malla Reddy, we invite you to submit your research to CrystEngComm.  See our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

From all the CrystEngComm team, we thank you for your continued interest in and support of the journal and wish you well for 2025!

We are delighted to announce the winner of the CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award, 2023!

First launched in 2022, the Outstanding Paper Award is an award aimed at recognising the high-quality work published in CrystEngComm from the previous year, acknowledging the excellence of the paper as a whole and recognising the contributions of all the authors.

Congratulations to the winners of the CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award 2023, as selected by the Editorial Board, for their work on Spontaneous resolution of two chiral metal–organic frameworks through local geometric and lattice frustration effects: Hunter J. Windsor, Cameron J. Kepert and Lauren K. Macreadie.

The authors presented two chiral metal–organic frameworks that are differentiated by their Cd-centred helical twists and are prepared by spontaneous chiral resolution from rigid, aliphatic, and achiral precursors.

Read the full outstanding article:

Spontaneous resolution of two chiral metal–organic frameworks through local geometric and lattice frustration effects Hunter J. Windsor, Cameron J. Kepert and Lauren K. Macreadie CrystEngComm, 2023, 25, 5428-5435

Meet the authors of this Outstanding Paper

 Hunter J. Windsor

Hunter Windsor received his PhD in chemistry in 2022 from the University of Sydney. His research involved exploring spin crossover metal–organic frameworks and modulation of their magnetic properties through guest confinement. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate for Professor Les Field at the University of New South Wales where he is investigating the reactivity of small molecules such as carbon dioxide and acetylene with ruthenium-centred organometallic complexes. Hunter is passionate about teaching crystallography and is interested in developing new methods for crystallising reactive species that have otherwise eluded characterisation.

Cameron J. Kepert

Cameron Kepert is a Professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney. He received his B.Sc. (Hons) from the University of Western Australia, PhD from the Royal Institution of Great Britain/University of London and was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford from 1995-1998. He is a recipient of the Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, the Le Fèvre Memorial Prize of the Australian Academy of Science, the Burrows Award and Rennie Medal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. His research interests include nanoporous metal—organic framework materials, spin-crossover, molecular magnets, molecular conductors, and negative thermal expansion materials.

Lauren K. Macreadie

Dr Lauren Macreadie is an ARC DECRA fellow and a UNSW Scientia Fellow at the University of New South Wales and investigates how porous materials can be used to solve our key energy questions around hydrogen storage and transport, and chemical separations. Following the completion of her PhD at the CSIRO and Monash University in 2016, she worked at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, on water splitting MOF systems, followed by research with the CSIRO in Melbourne on MOFs as adsorbents for respiratory canisters with the Defense Science and Technology group. Lauren then became a lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand in 2020. In 2021 she began her DECRA fellowship at the University of Sydney and moved to UNSW in 2022.

Please join us in congratulating this year’s winners!

We are delighted to share with you our latest collection showcasing the articles behind the 2024 CrystEngComm covers.

This latest collection of recently published articles brings together all the cover articles published so far this year, which showcases the wide range of research found in the journal. Further articles will be added to this collection as they are published.

Full collection

Here is  a selection of some of the articles in the collection:

Nitro group and K+-based secondary building units for the self-assembly of 3D coordination polymers built on dinuclear dianionic helicate connectors Raúl Mendoza-Báez, Alan Molina-Renteria and Juan Olguín CrystEngComm, 2024, 26, 2346-2352	Outside front cover of issue 18
Pure organic TPB single crystal for direct X-ray detection Kai Jiang, Lingyan Xu, Rongjin Shang, Lu Liang, Yingming Wang, Zhentao Qin and Wanqi Jie CrystEngComm, 2024, 26, 2241-2247	Inside front cover of issue 17
Effect of grain coalescence on dislocation and stress in GaN films grown on nanoscale patterned sapphire substrates Zuojian Pan, Zhizhong Chen, Yiyong Chen, Haodong Zhang, Han Yang, Ling Hu, Xiangning Kang, Ye Yuan, Chuanyu Jia, Zhiwen Liang, Qi Wang, Guoyi Zhang and Bo Shen CrystEngComm, 2024,26, 620-630	Outside back cover of issue 5

We hope you enjoy these articles and the rest in the collection. Read these articles for free until 15^th July 2024.

Have you thought about highlighting your work on one of our covers? *

Covers provide a unique opportunity to amplify your research:

 Achieve greater visibility:

• Your article will be free to access for 6 weeks.
• We will give prominence to your article in the issue.
• We will give your research group additional promotion via our networks.
• We will include your article in the covers collection and in the cover gallery on our blog.

Showcase your research:

• We will highlight your cover on the journal table of contents.
• Your cover is included as the first page of your article PDF.
• We will share a high-resolution version of the cover for you to use in presentations or display at your institution.

If you are interested in showcasing your research on one of our covers, once your article has been accepted for publication please do contact the Editorial Team for further information: Crystengcomm@rsc.org

* Please note that authors are required to pay a fee for this service. Front covers are currently being offered at a reduced rate of just £250, while a back cover is typically £1000 (plus applicable taxes).