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RSC Medicinal Chemistry is a Transformative Journal and Plan S compliant
Impact factor: 3.470* (Partial)
Time to first decision (all decisions): 14.0 days**
Time to first decision (peer reviewed only): 40.0 days***
Editor-in-Chief: Mike Waring
CiteScore: 6.5****
Open access publishing options available
Journal scope
RSC Medicinal Chemistry publishes significant research in medicinal chemistry and related drug discovery science.
Research articles published in RSC Medicinal Chemistry must show a breakthrough or significant advance on previously published work, or bring new thinking or results that will have a strong impact in their field.
Examples of areas within the journal's scope are:
- Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of novel chemical entities or biotherapeutic modalities. To be suitable for publication these must exhibit significant potential as new pharmacological agents, tools, probes or potential drugs.
- Modifications of known chemical entities or biotherapeutic modalities that result in a significantly greater understanding of their structure-activity relationships, an improvement of their properties or provide other information of significant value, for example, the identification of a new target or mode of action for a known agent. Routine modifications with minimal or no improvement are not suitable for RSC Medicinal Chemistry.
- Novel methodologies and technologies in the broader chemical and biological sciences (for example, enabling synthetic chemistry, chemical biology, -omics sciences, nanoscience) with application to drug discovery, target identification or elucidation of the mechanism of action. Biological studies should present sufficient innovation with respect to the chemistry.
- Computational studies are welcome where they significantly advance medicinal chemistry knowledge. Studies that use established computational methods should include an original prediction and be accompanied by new experimental data which validates the prediction made. Studies that report novel computational methodology must demonstrate its use in medicinal chemistry through comparison with experimental data. Computational research that does not clearly relate the results obtained to experimental data or that has no demonstrated utility (or where the utility is unlikely to advance the field significantly) is not suitable for RSC Medicinal Chemistry. Docking studies presented without experimental data are not suitable for publication in the journal.
- Studies that examine the effect of the molecular structure of a compound on pharmacokinetic behaviour and pharmacodynamics.
- Studies that present new insights into drug design based on analysis of existing experimental datasets or new theoretical approaches if supported by experimental evidence.
- Studies presenting new drug delivery systems with novel chemical agents are welcomed, in particular those that involve chemical modification of the delivery system of conjugation with novel delivery vectors. Those that focus solely on formulations of known drugs are not suitable for publication in RSC Medicinal Chemistry.
Note that studies where new or existing compounds are tested as pharmacological agents will only be considered if they are carried out in the presence of clear positive and negative controls. Studies of this type should include a clearly defined and hypothesis-driven compound design rationale. Potential antimicrobial agents should be tested for cytotoxicity and activity against non-related pathogens.
To help editors and referees assess the significance of each submitted manuscript we ask all authors on submission to provide a brief statement of significance. This should contain one sentence to summarise the most important finding(s) in the manuscript and a second sentence to say why this is a significant advance in the field. This significance statement should focus specifically on the importance of the piece of research being submitted, rather than the importance of the field.
RSC Medicinal Chemistry Lectureship award
This Lectureship celebrates outstanding early career researchers who have made significant contributions in the fields of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. The RSC Medicinal Chemistry Lectureship is awarded annually through a process whereby nominations of candidates are invited from our community.
You can read about eligibility, how to nominate, deadlines for nominations and see all of our lectureship winners.
Find out more
Meet the team
Find out who is on the editorial and advisory boards for the RSC Medicinal Chemistry journal.
Editor-in-chief
Mike Waring, Newcastle University, UK
Associate editors
Cynthia Dowd, George Washington University, USA
Maria Duca, Université Côte d’Azur - CNRS, France
Sally-Ann Poulsen, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
Jian Zhang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, China
Editorial board members
Hayley Binch, Hoffman-La Roche, Switzerland
Paola Castaldi, LifeMine Therapeutics, USA
Matthew Fuchter, Imperial College London, UK
Jayanta Haldar, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India
Lyn Jones, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, USA
Jean-Louis Reymond, University of Bern, Switzerland
Timor Baasov, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Andreas Bender, University of Cambridge, UK
Julian Blagg, Institute of Cancer Research, UK
Margaret Brimble, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Mark Bunnage, Vertex, USA
Christopher Burns, Certa Therapeutics, Australia
Andrea Cavalli, University of Bologna, Italy
Young-Tae Chang, POSTECH, South Korea
James Crawford, Genentech Inc, USA
Matthew Duncton, Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc
Stephen Frye, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova, University of Kentucky, USA
Barry Gold, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Gyoonhee Han, Yonsei University, Korea
Mike Hann, GSK Medicines Research Centre, Stevenage, UK
Christian Heinis, EPFL, Switzerland
Laura H. Heitman, Leiden University, Netherlands
Yoshinori Ikeura, Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners, Japan
Ahmed Kamal, NIPER, Hyderabad, India
Robert Langer, MIT, USA
Steven V Ley, University of Cambridge, UK
María Luz López Rodríguez, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Christa Muller, University of Bonn, Germany
Roberto Pellicciari, University of Perugia, Italy
David Rees, Astex Therapeutics, Cambridge, UK
Motonari Uesugi, Kyoto University, Japan
John C Vederas, University of Alberta, Canada
Paul Wender, Stanford University, USA
Zhen Yang, Peking University, China
Jian Zhang, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China
Ming-Qiang Zhang, Amgen, Shanghai, China
Rebecca Garton, Executive Editor
Jack Washington, Deputy Editor
Emily Cuffin-Munday, Development Editor
Sarah Whitehouse, Editorial Production Manager
Nicola Burton, Publishing Editor
Tom Cozens, Publishing Editor
Katie Fernandez, Publishing Editor
Ryan Kean, Publishing Editor
Roxane Owen, Publishing Editor, ORCID 0000-0002-4553-233X
Alex Rowles, Publishing Editor
Andrea Whiteside, Publishing Assistant
Open access publishing options
RSC Medicinal Chemistry is a hybrid (transformative) journal and gives authors the choice of publishing their research either via the traditional subscription-based model or instead by choosing our gold open access option. Find out more about our Transformative Journals. which are Plan S compliant.
Gold open access
For authors who want to publish their article gold open access, RSC Medicinal Chemistry charges an article processing charge (APC) of £2,500 (+ any applicable tax). Our APC is all-inclusive and makes your article freely available online immediately, permanently, and includes your choice of Creative Commons licence (CC BY or CC BY-NC) at no extra cost. It is not a submission charge, so you only pay if your article is accepted for publication.
Learn more about publishing open access.
Read & Publish
If your institution has a Read & Publish agreement in place with the Royal Society of Chemistry, APCs for gold open access publishing in RSC Medicinal Chemistry may already be covered.
Check if your institution is already part of our Read & Publish community.
Please use your official institutional email address to submit your manuscript; this helps us to identify if you are eligible for Read & Publish or other APC discounts.
Traditional subscription model
Authors can also publish in RSC Medicinal Chemistry via the traditional subscription model without needing to pay an APC. Articles published via this route are available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to the journal. Our standard licence allows you to make the accepted manuscript of your article freely available after a 12-month embargo period. This is known as the green route to open access.
Readership information
Researchers in academia and industry studying medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and topics in the wider chemical, biological and materials sciences with application to biological problems.
Subscription information
RSC Medicinal Chemistry is part of the RSC Gold subscription package.
Online only 2023: ISSN 2632-8682, £1,643 / $2,435
*2021 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2022)
**The median time from submission to first decision including manuscripts rejected without peer review from the previous calendar year
***The median time from submission to first decision for peer-reviewed manuscripts rejected from the previous calendar year
****CiteScore™ 2021 available at www.scopus.com/sources
RSC Medicinal Chemistry
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