Simon R. T. Neil, Deputy Editor

Author Archive

Reviewer Panel Member Terms of Reference

01 Dec 2015

RSC Advances
Reviewer Panel Member

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Role
To be a member of the RSC Advances Reviewer Panel and provide 24, 36 or 48 reviews per year.

You will be invited by Associate Editors to review submissions in your selected area(s) of expertise. Associate Editors will use your chosen areas of expertise, along with subject areas provided by authors during submission of their manuscript, to invite you to review suitable manuscripts.

Responsibilities of a Reviewer Panel Member

To act as a reviewer for RSC Advances. Panel members can expect to receive, on average, from two to four manuscripts to review per month within their field of expertise.
To advise and assist the RSC Advances Associate Editors in assessing manuscripts against the publication criteria of the Journal (see below) and to recommend suitable papers for publication in RSC Advances.
To provide a recommendation and report via the manuscript processing system within the timeframe specified on the reviewer invitation email.
To provide advice to the RSC Advances Associate Editors on borderline papers and act as adjudicator in cases involving conflicting reviewer reports and appeals where appropriate.
To inform the Associate Editor, by responding appropriately to the reviewer invitation, if a manuscript sent to you for review cannot be assessed for any reason (including conflicts of interest) and where possible suggest an alternative member of the Reviewer Panel.
To notify the Editorial Office, in advance, of any significant periods of time that you will be unavailable for reviewing.
To regularly update your research interests via the manuscript processing system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rscadv).

Criteria for publication in RSC Advances

When assessing articles for publication in RSC Advances, please consider the following:

Does the work present a significant advance over the existing literature? Is the advance clearly highlighted in the main article?
Has sufficient evidence/data been provided to support the conclusions of the work?
Has adequate characterisation data been provided for any materials/compounds that are reported? For full details, please see the “Characterisation of new compounds” section within our Journal’s webpage here: http://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/about-journals/rsc-advances/
Are the results discussed in the context of the literature?
Are the references relevant and do they appropriately reflect the existing literature?
Do the figures and tables in the paper assist the reader in understanding the work? Are the structures of any compounds presented accurately drawn?

Recognition of services

As member of the RSC Advances Reviewer Panel your name will be displayed on the Journal’s website.

In recognition of the service you are providing, members of the RSC Advances Reviewer Panel will be issued with a certificate at the end of each year highlighting the valuable contribution you have made to the Journal.

Term

Membership of the Reviewer Panel is on a rolling basis from the date of your enrolment. If you wish to resign from the Reviewer Panel please contact the Editorial Office.

The Editorial Office will review your membership against the responsibilities listed above on an annual basis.

Confidentiality

The Panel Member shall keep strictly confidential all information which comes into his/her possession as a result of carrying out the activities specified herein which in any way relates to the business of the Royal Society of Chemistry. This obligation shall have no effect in relation to any such information which is (i) already known to him/her at the time of its disclosure to him/her or (ii) public knowledge or becomes so without his/her fault or (iii) disclosed to him/her subsequently by a third person or (iv) required to be disclosed by order of any court of competent jurisdiction or governmental authority.

Intellectual Property Rights

All material produced by you while carrying out your role as a Panel Member belongs to the Royal Society of Chemistry. The Royal Society of Chemistry retains the sole right and licence to publish such material in any format (including electronic) and to sub-license a third party to publish the material. The Panel Member must ensure that the material does not infringe the copyright of others.

Any articles submitted by you as an author or co-author for publication in any Royal Society of Chemistry journal are not covered by these arrangements. Any such articles will be dealt with according to the usual Royal Society of Chemistry publishing procedures and will require a signed “Licence to Publish” to be completed for each submission.

Data Protection

As a Panel Member you must protect the personal data of individuals, both members and non-members, in accordance with the provisions and principles of the Data Protection Act 1998. “Personal data” has the same meaning as in the Data Protection Act 1998.

Queries

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office at:
advances-rsc@rsc.org – for queries regarding this role; or
advances@rsc.org – for all queries relating to specific manuscripts or using ScholarOne.

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Celebrating 100,000 pages of RSC Advances in 2015!

26 Nov 2015

We are delighted to announce that RSC Advances has for the first time passed 100,000 pages of published work in 2015. This is a great achievement that we could not have reached without the outstanding support and enthusiasm of our authors and our community.

“This milestone is a great success” said Dr Binbin Zhang, Professor Yantao Li and Professor Baorong Hou, the authors of our first published article to have page numbers in the 100,000s:
One-step electrodeposition fabrication of a superhydrophobic surface on an aluminum substrate with enhanced self-cleaning and anticorrosion properties
RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 100000-100010

“Many outstanding research groups around the world have published their research works in RSC Advances. The quality of the papers published in the Journal is high, and the research works are well conducted and advance the development of the field. We believe that the research works published in RSC Advances must be interesting and attractive to most researchers in the world.”

They went on to say that “the speed of the manuscript handling process is amazing and impressive … The professional and systematic peer-review process and the first publication of the accepted manuscript play a key role. RSC Advances is a young journal, but it has received a lot of attention from the very beginning”

Congratulations and thanks to all of our authors, who have contributed to reaching this milestone. We also thank Dr Zhang, Prof. Li and Prof. Hou for their kind words and we encourage you to read their excellent article!

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Subject Area & Keyword selection during your manuscript submission

16 Oct 2015

Our new peer review process for RSC Advances means that you can be sure your work will be in the safe hands of an expert, every step of the way.

To help ensure that your manuscript will be assigned to an appropriate Associate Editor, we’re now asking you, our authors, to select a Subject Area and Keyword during the manuscript submission process online.

During the submission of your manuscript, simply use the drop-down menu, as shown below, to pick the Subject Area and Keyword that best describes your work.

Subject Area and Keyword selection

Submit your manuscript online now!

For pre-submission queries, please feel free to send us an email.

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What a pain in the piezoelectrics

02 Aug 2015

What is pain? It can be described as a feeling. It alerts us to damage, and its onset can help to protect us from hurting ourselves again or further.

According to the T-800 of the Terminator series, pain is data, and there are many scientists out there who would agree; however, it would have been an entirely different film if Arnold Schwarzenegger had threatened people with processing proteomics analyses.

While making robots ‘feel’ pain may seem the stuff of sci-fi movies, Yeri Jeong and co-workers show us in their recent publication in RSC Advances, that it is a very legitimate line of research. If robots can feel pain, it can improve their range of applications, especially in harsh environments as they may engage a protective mode.

The research team, based in Korea and the UK, have created a nanowire array that can detect signals based on pattern analysis and pressure, for example, the sharp point of a pencil would be more painful than the soft end with the eraser. The electromechanical structure used comprising flexible ZnO nanowires can mimic the different deformations of the skin to generate a signal. Once that signal goes above a threshold pressure level, it yields an artificial pain signal based on both pattern analysis and force.

They tested the array with a variety of different objects and pressure levels with an earplug and a pen lid, amongst other objects of torture. The array produced a ‘pain’ signal when stabbed with a sharp object at high force, in a quick response time. Yeri Jeong said ‘I’ll be back’ with more sensors – ok, I made that bit up but they do write that the simple design may find application in various devices and the robot industry.

To find out more, click below to read the full article in RSC Advances.

Psychological tactile sensor structure based on piezoelectric nanowire cell arrays, Yeri Jeong, Minkyung Sim, Jeong Hee Shin, Ji-Woong Choi, Jung Inn Sohn, Seung Nam Cha, Hongsoo Choi, Cheil Moon and Jae Eun Jang, RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 40363-40368 (DOI: 10.1039/C5RA05744B)

Sarah Brown is a guest web-writer for RSC Advances. Sarah hung up her lab coat after finishing her PhD and post-doctorate in nanotechnology for diagnostics and therapeutics and now works in academic publishing. When not trying to explain science through ridiculous analogies, you can often find her crocheting, baking or climbing, but not all at once.

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Announcing our new peer review process for RSC Advances

03 Jun 2015

Since we launched RSC Advances in 2011, the response from you – our authors and readers – has been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks to you, the journal continues to go from strength to strength, publishing only high quality work that is well conducted and adds to the development of the field, across the breadth of the chemical sciences.

So, we are excited to tell you that – to support this success and our commitment to publishing high-quality research, and to ensure we continue to provide the standard of author service you expect – RSC Advances will shortly be adopting a new Associate Editor peer review process.

What does an Associate Editor peer review process mean?

First and foremost, it means that you can be sure that your work will be in the safe hands of an expert, every step of the way.

Phase 1: Your manuscript will be assigned to an Associate Editor, matching its subject area to the Associate Editor’s knowledge and expertise.

Phase 2: Expertise from an extended Reviewer Panel will be utilised; reviewers will assess your article and submit a report to the Associate Editor. In parallel, the Associate Editor will prepare a report on your paper.

Phase 3: The Associate Editor assigned to your work will make a decision about your manuscript based on both their report and the reviewer’s report.

RSC Advances Editor-in-Chief Mike Ward will continue in his position, helping to guide and develop the journal. Both he and the Editorial Board have provided their full support to the new process, which, in the coming months, will see the appointment of additional Associate Editors, all experts in their field, and an extended specialist Reviewer Panel.

Leading the way in innovation

On launch in 2011, RSC Advances’ sophisticated topic modelling provided users with enhanced browsing, enabling you to search for articles under one or more of 12 main subject categories. This search capability was soon extended by more than 100 additional sub-categories. In November 2013, the capacity to sign up to subject-based alerts, taking you straight to the content that is most relevant to you, again made RSC Advances stand out from the crowd.

Now, the journal is proud to once again be leading the way with an innovative new peer review process that will ensure we continue to publish only quality research, whilst providing the best customer service for our authors.

Submit your article now, and see the benefits for yourself.

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Bacteria redefine reinforced concrete

06 May 2015

Let’s talk good bacteria, and I don’t mean the kind in your yoghurt. No, I’m talking the kind in your concrete. Fear not, it is not a new breakfast craze. E. coli-based bioconcrete materials have been around for some time now, imbuing properties that allow cracks in the concrete to heal, improving the strength and durability of this material and also all lovely and green – reducing the overall energy cost and carbon dioxide generated in comparison to conventional processes.

Writing in RSC Advances, Manas Sarkar and co-workers have made the good bacteria even better by taking a gene from a bacterium that survives in hot springs, thriving at around 65 ˚C, amplifying it by PCR and implanting it in E. coli bacteria, engineering a unique strain. The gene in question is a silica leaching gene, which has previously been reported to impart higher compressive strength and durability. They add the gene into E. coli as these bacteria are easy to handle, effective at ambient temperatures and more efficient economically.

Concrete samples with the modified bacteria were shown to be 30% stronger than the control, thought to be in part a result of the protein producing a new silicate phase that fills the matrices of micropores in the material.

So, while you may think it a good idea to slather that crack in your ceiling with some probiotic yoghurt from the fridge – stand fast. The smarter bioconcrete is coming.

To find out more, click below to read the full article in RSC Advances.

Development of an improved E. coli bacterial strain for green and sustainable concrete technology
Manas Sarkar, Nurul Alam, Biswadeep Chaudhuri, Brajadulal Chattopadhyay and Saroj Mandal
RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 32175-32182

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New themed collection: Materials for energy storage

24 Apr 2015

Our latest themed collection, ‘Materials for energy storage,’ Guest Edited by Professor Chang Ming Li (Southwest University, China), presents a broad range of materials for energy storage, in particular for sustainable clean energies such as Li batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells and solar cells.

This collection demonstrates various novel methods to tailor nanoscale materials in both physical structure and chemical composition for superior performance of energy storage. In addition the collection gives fundamental insights into the relation of energy storage to the nanostructure of the materials.

These excellent works – just a few of which are illustrated below – powerfully illustrate the great promise of nanoscience for solutions to the fast depletion of fossil fuels and environmental contamination issues.

Selected graphical abstracts from Materials for energy storage collection

View the themed collection here.

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RSC Advances sponsors 6th Iberian Meeting on Colloids and Interfaces

20 Mar 2015

RSC Advances is proud to sponsor the 6th Iberian Meeting on Colloids and Interfaces, which will be held in the Hotel Guimarães – Guimarães, Portugal, from 8th to 10th July 2015.

The meeting will consist of 5 Plenary Lectures and 5 Invited Lectures, given by outstanding young researchers, together with a large number of Oral Contributions and Posters.

The topics covered will include all areas of colloid and interface science, from a broad and interdisciplinary perspective.

View the preliminary programme here.

Abstract submission deadline: 31 March 2015
Early bird registration: 1 April 2015

Register and submit your abstract now!

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