Chemical Science Blog

Welcome to your

Chemical Science Newsletter

Welcome to the second Chemical Science newsletter of 2023! We introduce Samantha Apps as the new Deputy Editor of Chemical Science. Scientific Editors Jingtao, Sophie and Richard share their experiences attending conferences covering organic synthesis, structural chemistry and biophotoelectrochemistry. We also introduce ChemSciVoices, a new way for authors in Chemical Science to share their research and experiences working in the chemical sciences. Finally, we have announced this year’s Chemical Science Symposium on the chemistry of polymers (26-27 October in London). Poster abstract submission is now open until the 17^th of August!

Catch up with your Chemical Science team

Samantha Apps joins the team as Deputy Editor!

Samantha Apps completed her PhD in inorganic chemistry at Imperial College London, followed by a Postdoctoral research position at the University of Minnesota. Her PhD and postdoctoral research focused on dinitrogen activation and functionalisation using transition metal complexes.

Samantha joins the Chemical Science team having previously worked as a Development Editor at the RSC, on the journals Dalton Transactions and RSC Medicinal Chemistry.

Highlights from the National Academic Conference on Structural Chemistry (China), Jingtao Huang (Scientific Editor)

“In April, I attended the 9^th National Academic Conference on Structural Chemistry, held in Fuzhou, China, representing Chemical Science. The three-day conference covered inorganic, materials, supramolecular and catalysis chemistry and saw over 1200 attendees with around 500 academic talks given. Chemical Science, along with Dalton Transactions, sponsored the poster prizes and awarded certificates to 20 winners. Our Advisory Board member, Professor Song Gao from Peking University, delivered a presentation on spin chemistry at the opening plenary session. I had the chance to speak with Professor Gao after his presentation about quantum computing and how the field would benefit the chemistry community, given the current strong interest in quantum chemistry. I also talked with other attendees, mostly early-career researchers, about how they felt submitting to Chemical Science after giving a talk on publishing in the journal, sharing the benefits of our diamond open access policy. I look forward to meeting more researchers and promoting Chemical Science on such occasions in the future.”

Highlights from the Bristol Synthesis Meeting (UK), Sophie Orchard (Scientific Editor)

“At the beginning of April, I represented Chemical Science at the 2023 Bristol Synthesis Meeting held in the picturesque Victoria Rooms, Bristol. This meeting celebrated the 20th Bristol Synthesis Meeting, chemistry’s largest one-day meeting in Europe. The one-day event hosted five speakers, all giants in organic chemistry. I also had the pleasure of giving a five-minute talk, discussing four RSC journals which were sponsoring the meeting – Chemical Science, ChemComm, RSC Advances and Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry. I had the opportunity to speak to various members of the organic chemistry community, gaining feedback on how Chemical Science can best serve the organic chemistry field. All delegates were passionate about their field, and it was an inspiring event to attend.”

Highlights from the Biophotoelectrochemical Systems: Solar Energy Conversion and Fundamental Investigations Meeting (UK), Richard Thompson (Scientific Editor)

“I recently had the privilege of attending the 2023 Biophotoelectrochemical Systems: Solar Energy Conversion and Fundamental Investigations meeting on behalf of Chemical Science. The meeting was held over three days at the University of Cambridge, bringing together academics and students from all over the world and covering a wide range of interdisciplinary topics from across biophotoelectrochemistry. The conference had a unique workshop format in which emphasis was placed on group discussions following each of the academic talks, and I was particularly impressed by the levels of engagement and enthusiasm coming from some of the younger researchers. I had the opportunity to speak with authors, students and readers during the engaging poster sessions and gained valuable feedback on Chemical Science and how we can best serve the community. It was a pleasure to meet the attendees, and to hear about the latest advancements in this fascinating field.”

Contact us at chemicalscience-rsc@rsc.org if you are attending a conference and would like to connect with our editors.

Click here to find out more about the editorial office team.

ChemSci Voices

The chemical science community is a thriving network of incredible scientists. We publish work in a broad range of areas and from researchers all over the world. But how can we make sure that everyone has a chance to be heard?

ChemSci Voices is a new series of interviews via video and text that gives researchers a platform to talk about their discoveries. We are interested in hearing every voice from our authors around the globe. Help us celebrate and promote your future discoveries and get in touch to find out more.

Check out our series of videos on ChemSci Voices here, including our latest interview with Professor Raffaella Buonsanti (EPFL, Switzerland) covering her work in the area of materials chemistry and catalysis.

Dr Sheel Dodani (UT Dallas, USA) has also spoken with us about her recent Chemical Science paper, ‘Discovery of a monomeric green fluorescent protein sensor for chloride by structure-guided bioinformatics’. Read the full blog covering Sheel’s research, and find out how open access plays an important role in sharing her publications within the community, here.

Share your research experiences and the work you’ve published in Chemical Science with us and the wider community using #ChemSciVoices on social media.

Click here to learn more about publishing in Chemical Science and ChemSci Voices.

Celebrating 5 years of ChemRxiv

ChemRxiv is celebrating its 5th anniversary after being launched in 2017!

ChemRxiv provides researchers in chemistry and related fields a home for the immediate sharing of their latest research.

To celebrate this anniversary, we are highlighting some recent Chemical Science publications that were first uploaded as preprints on ChemRxiv, covering all topics across the chemical sciences.

Read the free collection here.

Introducing Transparent Peer Review

Transparent peer review is now available in Chemical Science

Transparent peer review aims to cultivate a more open, robust and accessible research environment. If an author has chosen this option when submitting to Chemical Science, the peer reviewers’ reports, authors’ responses and editors’ decision letters are published alongside the accepted article.

Transparent peer review is compatible with both single- and double-anonymised peer review and reviewer anonymity is preserved by default with transparent peer review.

Find out more about this new feature in our FAQs and read our editorial from May Copsey, Executive Editor, and Andrew Cooper, Editor-in-Chief.

Welcome to your Chemical Science Newsletter

Welcome to the first Chemical Science newsletter of 2023! We ended last year on a high with the first in person Chemical Science symposium since 2019 and this year we’ve seen some major changes to our Scientific Editor team – read on to find out about our new editors. Additionally, Scientific Editor Sophie shares her experience of attending the MASC meeting in December, and we have highlights from the ChemSci2023: Leaders in the Field Symposium. Finally, we are excited to announce that the next Chemical Science symposium will be held on 26-27 October, both in London and online – this year’s theme is the chemistry of polymers, so be sure to save the date!

Catch up with your Chemical Science team

We are excited to introduce three new Scientific Editors that have joined the Chemical Science team in 2023. Join us in welcoming Richard, Jingtao and Esther.

Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson obtained his PhD in polymer and surface science at the University of Leeds, UK, having also previously completed his BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry at Leeds. His research focussed on using plasma treatments and plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition processes to provide surface modifications to polymer/textile materials.

Richard joins the Chemical Science team having previously worked as an editor within the RSC on the journals Green Chemistry and Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

Jingtao Huang

Jingtao Huang completed his PhD in materials science and engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, after obtaining his BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry from Xiamen University, China, and University of Washington, Seattle, US, respectively. His research focused on functional nanomaterials in heterogeneous catalysis, energy storage and conversion and sensing.

Jingtao joins the Chemical Science team having previously worked as an editor with Chemistry – A European Journal and ChemElectroChem, and is based in our Shanghai office.

Esther Johnston

Esther Johnston completed a PhD in bioinorganic chemistry at Stanford University in 2015 working with Professor Edward Solomon, and then worked as a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of York with Prof. Paul Walton and Prof. Gideon Davies. Her research used spectroscopy to explore the mechanisms of copper-containing metalloenzymes.

Esther joins the Chemical Science team having previously worked as an editor within the RSC on the journals Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Nanoscale, RSC Chemical Biology, and Sensors & Diagnostics.

Highlights from the Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Group meeting, Sophie Orchard (Scientific Editor)

“In December I had the pleasure of attending the 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry’s Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry (MASC) Group’s annual meeting, held in Nottingham, representing Chemical Science. The meeting, held over 2 days, covered the breadth of supramolecular and macrocyclic chemistry with 21 academic talks and an impressive 134 poster presentations. I spoke with many authors, students and readers, gaining feedback on how Chemical Science can best serve the community. The meeting had a very welcoming environment, and it was clear all attendees have a real passion for the field. I look forward to attending the 2023 MASC Meeting which will be held in Birmingham.”

Contact us at chemicalscience-rsc@rsc.org if you are attending a conference and would like to connect with our editors.

Click here to find out more about the editorial office team

ChemSci2023: Leaders in the Field

The ChemSci2023: Leaders in the Field symposium took place at JNCASR, Bangalore, in January and showcased the rapidly growing chemistry community in India. Our Executive Editor, May Copsey, and Associate Editors, Serena DeBeer and Steve Goldup, attended this exciting event which acted as a forum for sharing developments within the Indian chemistry community.

“My greatest impression from the meeting was of the enthusiasm for research and the discussion coming from the younger researchers who were attending the meeting. It really emphasized to me the world-class chemical science research that is being done in India, and I’m excited about what we can expect to see from this next generation of leaders in the future”  May Copsey, Executive Editor

“At Chemical Science, we regularly receive excellent manuscripts from groups based in India, but seeing talk after talk from outstanding Indian scientists during the symposium really hammered home the quality of research being carried out in the country. I was also extremely impressed by the calibre of the students and postdocs during the poster sessions, all of whom explained their results enthusiastically and clearly, and were able to discuss both the details of their experiments and the wider context of their work.” Steve Goldup, Associate Editor

“I was really impressed by all the exciting science, the great talks and the lively discussions. The opportunity to get to know many of India’s rising stars in the chemical sciences, and also to meet so many talented students, was a real highlight. And last but certainly not least, the extremely kind hospitality of our hosts made me feel very welcome and is very much appreciated. I very much look forward to returning to India again soon!” Serena DeBeer, Associate Editor

Many students took part in the ChemSci2023: Leaders in the Field symposium, including Anju A K,  who received a “Best Poster” prize for her research. We wish Anju the best with developing and continuing her research in this exciting area!

“The symposium had an excellent line-up of speakers who talked about their amazing scientific contributions to cutting-edge research.

I was also so fortunate to take part in the poster session and discuss my research problem with eminent scientists. The work I explained in my poster was on ‘a through-space donor-acceptor charge-transfer approach to control between different triplet harvesting pathways’. The fruitful discussions also helped me to get some insights to carry out my project forward.” Anju A K, JNCASR, India

Read the full round-up of this event on our blog post.

Editorial Board Focus

Our 2022 Chemical Science symposium was on sustainable synthesis and catalysis. Catch up on all the excitement below in Andrei and Paolo’s joint round-up of the event.

In early November of 2022, the Royal Society of Chemistry convened an international conference dedicated to sustainability in chemical synthesis. The event was headlined by David MacMillan (2021 Chemistry Nobel Laureate) of Princeton University, who shared his lab’s recent advances in photoredox catalysis. Given Dave’s involvement with Chemical Science as the founding Editor-in-Chief, his talk was particularly meaningful and set the tone for the rest of the conference.

No conference is complete without an engaging poster session and this RSC event was no exception: throughout the two-day conference, the participants had a chance to mingle with each other and enjoy posters. Like the selection of talks, the science described in the poster session represented a broad range of research topics and was a testament to the diversity of contributors.

Overall, the Chemical Science symposium on ‘Sustainable synthesis and catalysis’ offered a unique opportunity for networking and discussing the synthetic chemistry of the future.

Read the full comments from Andrei and Paolo on our blog post.

Newest Associate Editors

In 2022, we welcomed both Zaiping Guo and Malika Jeffries-EL to the Chemical Science Editorial Board. Zaiping’s research focuses on the design and application of electrode materials and electrolytes for energy storage and conversion, including rechargeable batteries, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells. Malika’s research involves the design and synthesis of organic semiconductors for use in OLEDs and OPVs.

Find out more about the scientific interests of Malika and Zaiping in their Editor’s Choice collections:

Editor’s Choice: Zaiping Guo	Editor’s Choice: Malika Jeffries-EL

Find out more about all our editorial board members here

A note from our Executive Editor, May Copsey

I’d like to thank our authors and peer reviewers for all their hard work in supporting the journal throughout 2022, and I’m looking forward to hearing and reading all the inspiring stories and discoveries in 2023. Finally, the 2023 Chemical Science symposium will be held on the 26^th and 27^th of October in London and online. This year’s theme is on the chemistry of polymers and we hope to see you there!

Submit your work from across the chemical sciences here