RSC Advances Blog

As 2012 begins to draw to a close, we wanted to take a few moments to reflect back on what has been a very successful year for RSC Advances…

…in July, just 11 months after the first issue was published, RSC Advances announced that it would now be publishing weekly issues.  The recent publication of the 2000th RSC Advances article just reinforces what a tremendous start the Journal has had.

…in August, the Journal celebrated it’s first anniversary and marked the event with a celebratory drinks reception at the EuCheMs meeting in Prague.

And not forgetting that this year has also seen the Journal indexed in major databases, offer all submitting authors the chance to publish their manuscript on acceptance and publish its first ‘Gold for Gold’ article. 

We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the success of the Journal in the last 12 months, in particular our authors and referees.  We look forward to working with many more of you to continue this success into 2013.

Stay in-touch with all the latest news from the Journal by registering for our free table of contents alerts.

The first Gold for Gold RSC advances article has been published!

The Gold for Gold initiative was recently launched and rewards UK RSC Gold subscribers with credits to publish their RSC articles via Open Science, the RSC’s Gold Open Access option.  This is the third Gold for Gold open access article to be published in RSC Journals and has been used by Aston University in Birmingham, UK. 

‘Research at Aston has a lot of relevance outside the academic community – that’s one reason we prefer to publish open access wherever possible,’ says author Philip Davies.  ‘Going for Gold enables us to do so without compromising on journal quality’

Read the full article for free here:

Concentrated seawater brines for use in solar-powered desiccant cooling cycles, George Lychnos, Ridha Amdouni and Philip A. Davies, RSC Adv., 2012, 2, 7978-7982

More information on Gold for Gold is available on our website. If you have any further questions on the procedure, or are an interested customer from outside the UK , please contact us.

The 3rd Asian-Pacific Conference on Ionic Liquids and Green Processes (APCIL’12) will be held in Beijing, China between the 17th-19th September 2012.  The main theme of this conference is ionic liquids for low carbon and sustainable development.

Topics to be covered at APCIL’12 include:

• Modeling and Computation
• Structure, Spectroscopy and Thermodynamics
• New Materials and Compounds
• Syntheses and Catalysis
• Separation and Transport Processes
• Electrochemical and Energy Applications
• Sustainable and Environmental Technologies
• Process Engineering and Industrial Applications

Invited plenary speakers include Professor Kenneth Seddon (Queen’s University Belfast, UK), Professor Robin D. Rogers (University of Alabama, USA), Professor Douglas McFarlane (University of Monash, Australia) and Professor Buxing Han (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China).  For a full list of all invited (plenary and keynote) speakers, click here.

The conference will be held at the Jiuhua Resort Convention Centre in Beijing – more information about the venue and accommodation can be found here.

Register for this conference now!

RSC Advances is one year old. You can join our first anniversary celebrations at the EuCheMs meeting in Prague, on Tuesday 28th August 2012, at 17.00-18.30. Please contact the RSC Advances Editorial Office if you wish to attend.

In the last 12 months, the journal has published 27 issues containing over 1200 articles across all of the chemical sciences, including: analytical, biological, catalysis, chemical biology and medicinal, energy, environmental, food, inorganic, materials, nanoscience, organic, physical. Our  innovative and sophisticated classification system ensures that all the articles are visibible within and/or between one or more of the above twelve subject categories featured on the RSC Advances website. All articles published in 2011 and 2012 are free to download*.

By publishing with RSC Advances, authors are benefiting from:

• Rapid publication times
• High visibility
• Open-access options via RSC Open Science
• Free electronic reprints (pdf) of own paper
• Free use of colour
• No page charges
• No page limits    

Some of the most cited and/or downloaded articles are:

Electrochemistry of graphene: not such a beneficial electrode material?
Brownson, Dale A. C.; Munro, Lindsey J.; Kampouris, Dimitrios K.; et al.
RSC ADVANCES  2011   Pages: 978-988   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00393c  

Homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for multicomponent reactions
Maria José Climent, Avelino Corma and Sara Iborra
RSC ADVANCES  2012   Pages: 16-58   DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00807B

CO2 chemistry: task-specific ionic liquids for CO2 capture/activation and subsequent conversion
Yang, Zhen-Zhen; Zhao, Ya-Nan; He, Liang-Nian
RSC ADVANCES   2011   Pages: 545-567   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00307k  

Glutathione: mechanism and kinetics of its non-enzymatic defense action against free radicals
Galano, Annia; Raul Alvarez-Idaboy, J.
RSC ADVANCES  2011   Pages: 1763-1771   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00474c

Graphene-based photocatalytic composites
An, Xiaoqiang; Yu, Jimmy C.
RSC ADVANCES   2011   Pages: 1426-1434   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00382h  

A novel application of porphyrin nanoparticles as an effective fluorescent assay platform for nucleic acid detection
Author(s): Zhai, Junfeng; Li, Hailong; Sun, Xuping
Source: RSC ADVANCES   2011   Pages: 36-39   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00026h

Recent developments in solvent-free multicomponent reactions: a perfect synergy for eco-compatible organic synthesis
Maya Shankar Singh and Sushobhan Chowdhury
RSC ADVANCES  2012   Pages: 4547-4592   DOI: 10.1039/C2RA01056A

Long term cycling studies of electrospun TiO2 nanostructures and their composites with MWCNTs for rechargeable Li-ion batteries
Zhu, Peining; Wu, Yongzhi; Reddy, M. V.; et al.
RSC ADVANCES  2012   Pages: 531-537   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00514f 

Transition metal complexes with strong absorption of visible light and long-lived triplet excited states: from molecular design to applications
Zhao, Jianzhang; Ji, Shaomin; Wu, Wanhua; et al.
RSC ADVANCES  2012   Pages: 1712-1728   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00665g
 
Cucurbituril chemistry: a tale of supramolecular success
Masson, Eric; Ling, Xiaoxi; Joseph, Roymon; et al.
RSC ADVANCES  2012   Pages: 1213-1247   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00768h  

Graphene-inorganic nanocomposites
Bai, Song; Shen, Xiaoping
RSC ADVANCES  2012   Pages: 64-98   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00260k  

Bioaugmentation of an electrochemically active strain to enhance the electron discharge of mixed culture: process evaluation through electro-kinetic analysis
Raghavulu, S. Veer; Babu, P. Suresh; Goud, R. Kannaiah; et al.
RSC ADVANCES  2012   Pages: 677-688   DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00540e 

 *All articles published in 2011-2012 are free to download after a simple login/registration process.

We are very pleased to announce that RSC Advances is now fully indexed in Scopus. 

SciVerse Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. By featuring in Scopus, RSC Advances articles become even more discoverable and visible to scientists. All our 2011-2012 content are completely free to access subject to a simple registration process.

According to Scopus, RSC Advances has published over 700 articles since our launch in August 2011. Why not join your peers and take this opportunity to submit your work today!

PS: We are also indexed in other major databases such as Thomson Reuters SCI-expanded databases including ISI Web of Science and CAS.

Dr Claudio Santi (left), poster prize winner, University of Perugia, Italy with Professor George Varvounis (right), Vice Chairman of Eurasia 2012

RSC Advances was proud to sponsor the poster prize at the recent Eurasia conference in Corfu, Greece. Held every 2 years since 1988, the meeting was the 12th of its kind and hosted for the first time in Europe. About 450 delegates from over 55 countries engaged in discussions about their latest findings on the chemical sciences. The meeting kicked off with a plenary lecture from the Nobel laureate, Professor Akira Suzuki, providing updates on the metal-catalysed Suzuki reaction.

The conference then proceeded with 6 daily parallel sessions covering the following topics:

Bioinorganic Chemistry
Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Diagnostics
Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Drugs Design
Environmental and Green Chemistry
Physical Chemistry and Spectroscopy
Theoretical and Computational Chemistry
Organometallic Chemistry and Catalysis
Coordination Chemistry and Inorganic Polymers
Analytical and Solution Chemistry
Organic Synthesis and Natural Products
Food Chemistry
Supramolecular Chemistry and Nanomaterials
Polymer Science
Chemical Education

The delegates were graced with over 200 posters on the above subjects. The poster winner in the Environmental and Green Chemistry category went to Dr Claudio Santi, University of Perugia, Italy. Claudio presented his work on “PhSeZn-Halides:Nucleophilic Reagents in on Water Conditions”. On behalf of  RSC Advances, Professor George Varvounis, University of Ioannina, Greece, Vice Chairman of Eurasia 2012, presented Claudio with an RSC Book on Molecular Solar Fuels and a certificate (see photo above). Many congratulations to the winner!

Vera Thoss tells Elinor Richards about her bluebell business and research, using her car in her experiments and analysing whale vomit

Vera Thoss is an environmental chemistry lecturer at Bangor University, UK. Her research is based on ecological chemistry, which addresses processes mediated through specific compounds within ecosystems and environmental chemistry, which is concerned with the impact of human activities on the environment

What inspired you to become a scientist?
It all started when I was 13 and I had my first chemistry lesson. I instantly took to the subject and from then my mind was made up. I was also curious and wanted to ‘understand the world’.

What projects are you working on?
Currently, my group is working on oil pollution, composting and plant-derived products. It seems a bit of a stretch but it is all part of carbon cycling: plants build precious molecules, most of the time these remain intact but may transfer into air, water or soil. Crude oil is the remnants of sunken forests. So in the end, all the chemistry comes from plants photosynthesising and creating complex fragrances, tastes and colours. It is fascinating.

What discoveries have you made during your research on bluebells?
Bluebell seeds have a high oil content and the oil has an unusual composition. Even though this is the first chemical assessment of Hyacinthoides non-scripta  oil, the chemistry is not earth-shattering. The ecology aspects gave room for more discoveries, for example we found seed stores on the site, meaning that possibly voles or shrew have collected the seeds for storage. This has never been reported before.

Tell us about your bluebell conservation efforts and how your research can help.
We are hoping to show that bluebell seeds can be a source of fine chemicals. We obtain an oil of unusual composition from the seeds. The residue contains iminosugars, which may be of use in future medicines. I am hoping that the compounds isolated from bluebell seeds will be of commercial value, which in turn means that the conservation of bluebells pays for itself. We are hoping to paint the mountains and woodlands blue again.

Find out more about the Vera Bluebell farm and the BEACON and PROBECO projects in Chemistry World

Link to journal article
Triacylglycerol Composition of British Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) Seed Oil
Vera Thoss ,  P J Murphy ,  Ray John Marriott and Thomas Wilson
RSC Adv., 2012, Accepted Manuscript, DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20090B