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Publishing frequency: 48 issues per year
Indexed in MEDLINE
Chair: Anthony Davis
Scope
Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry (OBC) publishes original and high impact research and reviews in organic chemistry.
We welcome research that shows new or significantly improved protocols or methodologies in total synthesis, synthetic methodology or physical and theoretical organic chemistry as well as research that shows a significant advance in the organic chemistry or molecular design aspects of chemical biology, catalysis, supramolecular and macromolecular chemistry, theoretical chemistry, mechanism-oriented physical organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry or natural products.
Articles published in the journal should report new work which makes a highly-significant impact in the field. Routine and incremental work is generally not suitable for publication in the journal.
More details about key areas of our scope are below. In all cases authors should include in their article clear rationale for why their research has been carried out.
Organic synthesis: We welcome important research in all areas of organic synthesis, including studies on small organic molecules and biomolecules, and studies that report purely synthetic work without biological data. Total or multistep syntheses should report new or improved strategies or methods, or a more efficient route to the target compound. Methodology studies should show a significant improvement on known methods. Research that extends known methodology to a different class of compounds is generally not suitable, unless that class is significantly different in scope to previously reported methodology. Where methods are directed towards a narrow range of structures, the importance of these targets must be clearly justified.
Physical and theoretical organic chemistry: We welcome studies that report new models of reactivity, selectivity, bonding or structure, or new computational methods and have relevance for the design of subsequent experiments. That relevance should be clearly justified in the paper. Relevance is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the description of testable predictions derived from the results of the reported theoretical work; the tests of these predictions could be contained in the same paper in which the predictions are described. Computational research that merely reproduces experimental data is not suitable for OBC.
Chemical biology: We welcome articles that report new or improved methodologies in the chemical aspects of chemical biology, including design, development and use of chemical tools, chemical studies of biomolecules such as carbohydrates, proteins and nucleic acids or biological processes such as protein-protein interactions and epigenetics, and chemical methods such as imaging and labelling techniques.
Supramolecular, macromolecular and organic materials: We welcome studies that report important new work in the molecular design of supramolecular or macromolecular compounds or organic materials either with a strong component in organic synthesis or with novel organic structural features. You may wish to consider our materials journals for articles outside this scope.
Sensors: We publish articles describing sensors for ions and/or molecules provided that: (a) they address targets and situations of practical relevance; and (b) they represent significant and demonstrable improvements on previous methodology. In particular, sensors for species in artificial surroundings (for example, hydrophilic ions in organic solvents) will not typically be acceptable for publication.
Medicinal chemistry: We welcome studies that report significant synthetic or bioorganic research that is directed towards medicinal chemistry applications. Studies that show routine syntheses accompanied by biological testing are generally not suitable for OBC. Our sister journal, RSC Medicinal Chemistry, is more suitable for articles that report significant research in core medicinal chemistry disciplines.
Natural products: We welcome articles that report new and interesting syntheses of natural products (see Organic Synthesis guidelines above) or chemical studies of biosynthetic pathways. Isolation or identification studies are welcome when the compound being reported:
1) Has a novel structural class with unreported carbon skeleton, unusual functional groups or unusual modifications and/or
2) Displays a potent or unexpected biological activity or an unexpected mechanism of action.
Routine isolation studies are not suitable for OBC.
Author benefits
- One of the fastest organic chemistry journals* - with an average receipt to first decision time of just 13.8 days for Communications and 19.8 days for Papers.
- Flexible submission format; submit in any reasonable format, and no template required
- Optional accepted manuscript publication; have the unedited version of your article published shortly after acceptance
- Easy submission and manuscript tracking online
- Choice of submission routes; authors can choose either the Cambridge editorial office or submission to an associate editor
- Unlimited free colour, both online and in print
- High exposure; top papers highlighted in the wider scientific press
- Broadest organic audience; synthetic, physical and biomolecular
- Indexed in MEDLINE and other major databases
*Based on the average time from receipt to first decision for manuscripts submitted in 2020.
Chair
Anthony Davis, University of Bristol, UK
Associate editors
Christian Hackenberger, Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Katrina Jolliffe, University of Sydney, Australia
Motomu Kanai, University of Tokyo, Japan
Elizabeth Krenske, University of Queensland, Australia
Lei Liu, Tsinghua University, China
Xiaohua Liu, Sichuan University, China
Santanu Mukherjee, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Scott Silverman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Editorial board members
Ivan Huc, Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
G Mugesh, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Corinna Schindler, University of Michigan, USA
Judy I-Chia Wu, University of Houston, USA
Kyo Han Ahn, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea
Gonçalo Bernardes, University of Cambridge, UK
David Chen, Seoul National University, Korea
Shunsuke Chiba, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Andre Cobb, Kings College London, UK
Steven Cobb, Durham University, UK
Ratmir Derda, University of Alberta, Canada
Antonio Echavarren, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain
Margaret Faul, Amgen, USA
Ben Feringa, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Amar Flood, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Carmen Galan, University of Bristol, UK
Sam Gellman, University of Wisconsin, USA
Krishna Kaliappan, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
Mahesh Lakshman, The City College of New York, USA
Shih-Yuan Liu, Boston College, USA
Stephen Loeb, University of Windsor, Canada
David Lupton, Monash University, Australia
Ilan Marek, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Keiji Maruoka, Kyoto University, Japan
Geraldine Masson, Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (CNRS), France
Dhevalapally Ramachary, University of Hyderabad, India
Sripada Ramasastry, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali, India
Paolo Scrimin, University of Padova, Italy
Oliver Seitz, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Jay Siegel, University of Zürich, Switzerland
Corey Stephenson, University of Michigan, USA
Keith Stubbs, University of Western Australia, Australia
Dean Tantillo, University of California Davis, USA
Mark Taylor, University of Toronto, Canada
Georgios Vassilikogiannakis, University of Crete, Greece
Helma Wennemers, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Peter Wipf, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Shuli You, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, China
Li He Zhang, Peking University, China
Jian Zhou, East China Normal University, China
Katie Lim, Executive Editor, ORCID 0000-0001-9052-1317
James Anson, Deputy Editor
Catherine Hodges, Development Editor
Sarah Anthony, Editorial Production Manager
Nicola Burton, Publishing Editor
Roxane Owen, Publishing Editor, ORCID 0000-0002-4553-233X
Alex Rowles, Publishing Editor
Donna Smith, Publishing Editor
Amy Cook, Editorial Assistant
Andrea Whiteside, Publishing Assistant
Readership information
Academic and industrial scientists working in organic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, chemical biology and physical organic chemistry.
Subscription information
OBC is part of RSC Gold and Core Chemistry subscription packages.
Online only 2021: ISSN 1477-0539, £4,982 / $8,941
*2019 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2020)
Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry
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