EES Blog

Here at the Royal Society of Chemistry, we want to make the publishing experience as an author as easy and transparent as possible. We’re therefore delighted to introduce two great new features for you when publishing with us: concurrent editing and transparent peer review!

Concurrent editing and Transparent Peer Review are both available on Energy & Environmental Science, Sustainable Energy & Fuels and Energy Advances.

Concurrent Editing

Concurrent editing is a new tool enabling you and your co-authors to work on an accepted manuscript’s corrections at the same time, while corresponding authors can track, review and approve all changes. Find out more.

The option to share access with co-authors will be listed on the initial instructions panel and tracked on the workflow and editing panel as you work on your corrections together.

To use concurrent editing, the corresponding author can share the proof with any co-authors using the “Invite Collaborators” feature in Proof Central. This will give each invited author a unique link, allowing their changes to be tracked and all authors to work on corrections at the same time. The corresponding author can then review and approve all changes before submitting the final corrections. You can find full instructions on Proof Central.

Alternatively, if you would prefer to supply proof corrections by annotating the PDF, this option will still be available and can be done through Proof Central, where an editor will apply the corrections on your behalf.

Transparent Peer Review

Transparent peer review is now offered to authors at submission and throughout peer review. If you opt in during the submission or peer review process, the editor’s decision letter, reviewers’ comments and authors’ responses for all versions of the manuscript are published alongside the article under an Open Access Creative Commons licence (CC-BY).

You can change your mind about transparent peer review at any point prior to acceptance. Reviewer comments remain anonymous unless the individual chooses to sign their report.

The Royal Society of Chemistry supports the principles of open science, which include working towards a more open and transparent research culture. Transparent peer review is an important strand of our commitment to open science.

Transparent peer review serves to shed light on the aspects of the journal publication process that are usually hidden. The benefits include:

• Increasing transparency in editorial decision-making.
• Readers can learn from the editors’ and reviewers’ insights, and the published peer reviews can serve as an educational tool for those new to peer review.
• Showcasing the hard work and effort of editors and reviewers in evaluating a manuscript, and of the authors in revising their work in response.
• Encouraging higher-quality and more constructive reviewer comments.

Find out more in this video https://youtu.be/-GvnyVZMNmk or on the RSC webpage: https://rsc.org/journals-books-databases/author-and-reviewer-hub/process-and-policies/#peerreview

We are delighted to announce that Professor Xiaojing Hao (University of New South Wales, Australia) has joined the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board.

Prof Xiaojing Hao obtained her PhD in the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering of UNSW in 2010. She has focused her research on low-cost, high-efficiency thin film solar cells and tandem solar cells since her PhD. Her research interests include the design, synthesis and optimization of light harvesting materials, and associated optoelectronic devices for both solar PV and solar fuel applications.

Prof Hao has attracted >$46 million research grants since 2011, published >200 peer-reviewed journal papers, including publications in Nature Energy, Nature Photonics and Energy & Environmental Science with several fellowships and awards for her research excellence, including 2020 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science: Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, and 2021 Australian Academy of Science Pawsey Medal.

Please join us in welcoming Xiaojing to the Editorial Board!

In celebration of International Women’s Day 2024, the RSC’s Energy journals are delighted to celebrate some of the amazing women in energy with an article collection highlighting recent work led by women around the world, published in our energy journal portfolio.

Read the collection

We welcome any women corresponding or first authors who have published work in the above energy journals in 2023 to get in touch and have their work featured in the collection. Thank you to all contributors and we hope that you enjoy reading the collection.

We are delighted to announce that the 2023 EES Lectureship has been jointly awarded to Dr Hanna Breunig and Prof Dongliang Chao.

Established in 2012, the Lectureship recognises outstanding emerging investigators working in an energy research topic within the scope of Energy & Environmental Science, providing a platform to showcase their research to the wider scientific community. The EES Lectureship is awarded annually through a process whereby nominations of candidates are invited from our fantastic community.

Hanna Breunig is a Research Scientist and Deputy-Head of the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her group focuses on process design, modelling, and systems analysis of low Technology Readiness Level energy systems including hydrogen, energy storage, and negative emissions technologies.

Since 2022, Hanna has acted as co-Director of the multi-lab United States Department of Energy Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC), where she works closely with teams conducting material discovery and characterization to accelerate the selection and development of material-based storage solutions that can compliment or outcompete compressed and liquid hydrogen storage. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Civil and Environmental Engineering (2015).

Read Hanna’s recent work in the journal:

Green steel: design and cost analysis of hydrogen-based direct iron reduction

Emerging concepts in intermediate carbon dioxide emplacement to support carbon dioxide removal

Technoeconomic analysis of metal–organic frameworks for bulk hydrogen transportation

Dongliang Chao is an Executive Director of the Centre for Aqueous Battery at Fudan University. Prof. Chao obtained his PhD from Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore). He joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA, USA) in 2016 as a joint researcher. Dr Chao served as Research Fellow and senior researcher respectively, at NTU and The University of Adelaide (UoA, Australia).

Prof. Chao’s main research activity is high-energy aqueous batteries. He has published 1 authored book and >150 journal articles; 1/3 of them are ESI H.C. papers, with an H-index of 70 and citations over 22,000. His awards include Innovators Under 35 (MIT Technology Review), Shanghai S&T 35, Rising Star Australia, DECRA Fellow Award (Australian Research Council), and Global Highly Cited Researcher (2020–2023, Clarivate).

Read Dongliang’s recent work in the journal:

The origin of capacity fluctuation and rescue of dead Mn-based Zn–ion batteries: a Mn-based competitive capacity evolution protocol

Advanced in situ technology for Li/Na metal anodes: an in-depth mechanistic understanding

A scalable top-down strategy toward practical metrics of Ni–Zn aqueous batteries with total energy densities of 165 W h kg⁻¹ and 506 W h L⁻¹

The winners will each receive a £500 honorarium and will be given the opportunity to attend and present their research at a leading international conference. Nominations for the 2024 EES Lectureship will open later this year, and you can find out more about the EES Lectureship award and criteria on our website.

Many congratulations to our winners, and we hope that you enjoy reading their work.

This year, we plan to celebrate some of the amazing women in energy with an article collection highlighting recent work led by women around the world, published in our energy journal portfolio. This collection will showcase the impact these leading individuals have on their fields. 

If you have published in any of the journals below in 2023, and either the first and/or corresponding author of the article is a woman, your article can feature in our 2024 collection!

If you are interested, please email EES-rsc@rsc.org with the title of your article, DOI, and the journal in which your article is featured by the 29th of February 2024. The collection will be promoted this International Women’s Day, 8 March 2024. At the Royal Society of Chemistry, we foster a culture of inclusion of women from all walks of life and look forward to continuing to celebrate the wonderful women in energy science.

If you have any colleagues who may have published in any of these journals in 2023 and would be suitable to feature in the collection, please do let us know.

Energy & Environmental Science is proud to publish research that tackles the key global and societal challenges of ensuring the provision of energy and protecting our environment for the future. In an era defined by the pressing need for sustainable energy solutions, the intersection of energy policy and techno-economics holds paramount significance.

This collection showcases a selection of impactful work published in EES in the field of, or relating to, energy policy and techno-economic analysis. We hope the articles highlighted in this collection emphasize the need for an integrated approach to tackle the energy and environmental challenges of our time and provide valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and industry experts striving for a sustainable energy future.

Read the collection

If you’re working at the forefront of this research area, we welcome you to submit your next paper to Energy & Environmental Science.

We are delighted to introduce the newest member of the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board, Professor Kazunari Domen.

Kazunari Domen is a University Professor at the University of Tokyo and a Special Contract Professor at the Research Initiative for Supra-Material (RISM), Shinshu University, Japan.

Professor Domen received his B.S. (1976), M.S. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) honors in Chemistry from the University of Tokyo. He then joined the Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982 as an Assistant Professor and was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and Professor in 1996. He moved to the University of Tokyo as a Professor in 2004 and was cross appointed by Shinshu University as a Special Contract Professor in 2017. He became a University Professor at the University of Tokyo in 2019.

His research interests include heterogeneous catalysis and materials chemistry, with a particular focus on surface chemical reaction dynamics, photocatalysis, solid acid catalysis, and mesoporous materials. Recently, his effort is focused on the development of photocatalysts for water splitting and the construction of practical solar hydrogen production systems.

Read some of Kazunari’s recent work in EES:

Design of semitransparent tantalum nitride photoanode for efficient and durable solar water splitting

Ta₃N₅-Nanorods enabling highly efficient water oxidation via advantageous light harvesting and charge collection

Probing fundamental losses in nanostructured Ta₃N₅ photoanodes: design principles for efficient water oxidation

Please join us in welcoming Professor Kazunari Domen to the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board!

We are delighted to introduce our five new members of the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board. We would like to extend a warm welcome to Christoph Brabec, William Chueh, Jan Rossmeisl, Jennifer Wilcox, and Karen Wilson.

Christoph Brabec is a Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and Director at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg (HI-ErN), FZJ. His research interests include all aspects of solution processing organic, hybrid and inorganic semiconductor devices with a strong focus on photovoltaics and renewable energy systems.

Read some of Christoph’s work in EES: A top-down strategy identifying molecular phase stabilizers to overcome microstructure instabilities in organic solar cells

William Chueh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and in the Department of Energy Science & Engineering, a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, and a faculty scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He leads a group of more than thirty researchers tackling the fundamentals of redox and electrochemical processes in the solid state.

Read some of William’s work in EES: Coulombically-stabilized oxygen hole polarons enable fully reversible oxygen redox

Jan Rossmeisl is a Professor of Theoretical Catalysis and heads the Center for High Entropy Alloy Catalysis at the Department of Chemistry at Copenhagen University. Before joining the University of Copenhagen in April 2015, Jan was an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark.

Read some of Jan’s work in EES: Towards an atomistic understanding of electrocatalytic partial hydrocarbon oxidation: propene on palladium

Jennifer Wilcox is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research takes aim at the nexus of energy and the environment, developing both mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize negative climate impacts associated with society’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Read some of Jennifer’s work in EES: Carbon capture and storage (CCS): the way forward

Karen Wilson is Professor of Catalysis in the Centre for Catalysis and Clean Energy at Griffith University, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Zhengzhou University, China. Her research focusses on the development of tunable porous heterogeneous catalysts for use in green and sustainable chemistry, and the valorisation of waste bio-derived feedstocks for biofuels and chemicals production.

Read some of Karen’s work in EES: Catalytic selective ring opening of polyaromatics for cleaner transportation fuels

Find out more about our new Board members on our website!

Introducing our newest Advisory Board appointments

We are also pleased to announce new appointments we have made to the Energy & Environmental Science Advisory Board. Please join us in welcoming the following additions to the EES family:

• Nieves Espinosa, University of Murcia, Spain
• Thomas Kirchartz, Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), Germany
• Zhiyong Jason Ren, Princeton University, USA
• David Sinton, University of Toronto, Canada

Our Advisory Board play an important role in assisting our editorial team with submissions to the journal, so we are very excited to have them on board.

Please join us in welcoming all our new Energy & Environmental Science Board members!