Our processes & policies

Learn more about our publishing process such as our initial assessment of submissions, our journal transfer service and the publication of accepted manuscripts.

This page also outlines our editorial policies on prior publication, data and correction and retraction.

Initial assessment of submissions

We are committed to publishing high quality new work that makes a significant contribution within the scope of its journals. In order to meet this aim, submitted manuscripts undergo initial evaluation by an editor to ensure that they meet essential criteria for publication in the journal.

Only those manuscripts that pass this initial review process will be forwarded to reviewers for further consideration.

This process provides a rapid decision to authors of those papers that are unsuccessful and reduces the burden on the reviewers.

A manuscript may be returned to the author(s) without external review if, in the opinion of the editor(s), one or more of the following apply:

• the manuscript clearly falls outside the scope of the journal
• the work is of poor scientific quality such that it is clearly not suitable for publication in a scientific journal
• the manuscript is of insufficient general interest for the journal and would be better suited to a more specialised journal
• the novelty of the work falls below that required for the journal
• the manuscript represents undue fragmentation of the research into multiple papers
• the manuscript contains redundant information or significant amounts of material that has already been published elsewhere or is under consideration by another journal
• the quality of the English in the manuscript is so poor as to render the science presented unclear
• the manuscript has already been reviewed and rejected by a different Royal Society of Chemistry journal, and the author(s) have made little or no attempt to address the advice that the editor and/or referees have provided already
• the conclusions drawn by the manuscript are well known or have been published previously.

Authors are also expected to abide by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s ethical guidelines as described in Author responsibilities.

Authors have the right to appeal against any decision taken on their manuscript at any stage; an appeal would be granted at the discretion of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Through the appeal process further opinion is sought on the manuscript's suitability for publication in the journal. After the appeal process the editor's decision is final.

Appeal procedure

Our appeal procedure provides authors with the opportunity to respond to the editorial decision on their manuscript. Authors have the right to appeal to the editor against any decision taken on their manuscript at any stage; an appeal will be considered at the discretion of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Similarity Check

The Royal Society of Chemistry is a member of Similarity Check – a multi-publisher initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality.

Through Similarity Check, we use the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted or published manuscripts.

By depositing all of our content in the Similarity Check database we allow other Similarity Check members to screen their submissions against our published articles.

Further details on our plagiarism policies can be found in our Author responsibilities section.

Transfer between Royal Society of Chemistry journals

The Royal Society of Chemistry is committed to providing authors with a high level of customer service throughout the publication process. One of the ways we do this is to consider the suitability of a manuscript for another Royal Society of Chemistry journal if the manuscript is unsuitable for publication in the journal to which it was submitted originally.

When a paper is to be rejected from one Royal Society of Chemistry journal, then we would offer the author(s) the option to transfer the paper to one of our other journals for consideration, when this is appropriate. This offer may occur during the initial assessment of a manuscript or after reports on it have been received from reviewers. As part of the peer review process, the reviewers are asked to comment whether the manuscript would be more appropriate for one of our other journals.

An offer by the editorial office to transfer the manuscript to another journal is made in the decision letter to the corresponding author; the author decides whether or not to take up the offer and then selects the appropriate option provided in the letter. On acceptance of the offer the manuscript is transferred automatically to the new journal without the author needing to supply the submission information again.

The transferred manuscript will appear as a 'draft' in the author’s ‘Author Centre’ in the new journal, and the author will receive an email asking them to finalise the submission. The process provides a quick and easy route for these papers to be considered by another journal.

If the manuscript already has reports from reviewers then the author will be asked to upload the revised files. These files should include a summary of any new work added and a point by point response to the reviewers’ comments. Authors should be aware that the reviewers’ comments are transferred to the editor of the receiving journal together with the manuscript files. On submission to the new journal, the manuscript will then be assessed by an editor as to whether further peer review will be necessary.

CrossMark policy

Funding data

Attribution identifiers

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) and ResearcherID are unique persistent digital identifiers that distinguish you from every other researcher and automatically links you and your professional activities – ensuring that your work is recognised.

Correction & retraction policy

It is our policy not to amend, alter or remove the published scientific record, in line with the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers' (STM) guidelines:

Articles that have been published should remain extant, exact and unaltered to the maximum extent possible
(STM Guidelines on Preservation of the Objective Record of Science)

We will respond to any suggestions of scientific misconduct or to convincing evidence that the main substance or conclusions of a published manuscript is erroneous, usually through consultation with the author. This may require the publication of a formal ‘retraction’ or correction. We follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) flowcharts as the basis for our best practice guidelines when investigating allegations of misconduct. An expression of concern may be published by the editor whilst an investigation into alleged misconduct or publication of erroneous data is ongoing.

Authors who wish to enquire about publication of a correction for their article, or who have serious concern that they believe may warrant retraction, should contact the journal editorial office.

We follow the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) guidelines for correcting and retracting articles, outlined below.

Inappropriate or offensive content

Our aim is for all published material to be respectful, accurate and relevant. We have a shared responsibility to guard against all forms of discrimination or exclusion. As an author or reviewer, please consider that words, depictions and imagery have the potential to cause offence. The concept of offence/offensiveness is subjective, and may mean different things to different people, therefore there we need to consider how content might be perceived by others.

Terminology and expressed attitudes must show respect for the identity, experience and sensibilities of everyone.

Listed below are some indicators that can be used to help identify what may be concluded as inappropriate content. This list is indicative and not conclusive:

• Insulting, hostile, defamatory
• Discriminates, excludes, undermines
• Harmful, hateful
• Threatening, abusive
• Likely to be upsetting, insulting or objectionable to some or most people
• Perpetuate discriminatory and stereotypical ideas
• Harassment: unwanted [content] that makes others feel intimidated or humiliate
• Bigotry: animosity, hostility, malice, ridicule
• Intolerance
• Aberrations: depiction of ideas, beliefs, symbols or events
• Stereotypes: stereotype threat, assumptions
• Innuendo
• Derogatory demographic descriptors
• Material (images, video, audio, or text) that presents explicit/exploitive, obscene or degrading text, pictures, illustrations*
• Any content that could reasonably offend someone on the basis of their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, marital or parental status, physical features, national origin, social status or disability

* We are aware that some areas of research, such as animal experiments, can be considered controversial or offensive. It is our requirement that such work has been performed according to all relevant legal frameworks of the territory in which they take place, which will be clearly described in the manuscript or supporting information. All data will then be presented in an appropriate manner for the scientific content.

Author name changes after publication

Authors may change their name for many reasons including marriage, divorce, religion, gender identity and other personal reasons. The Royal Society of Chemistry is committed to respecting the rights of our authors to their own identities, fully supporting author inclusion and ensuring that authors receive credit for all their work. It is therefore our policy to facilitate changes to author names, email addresses, biography photos, pronouns, and any other identifiers that may be necessary as a result of a change in author name.

These changes will be made directly to the article pdf and html. We will re-send article metadata to abstracting and indexing services such as Scopus and Web of Science, although we acknowledge that we are not able to enforce replacement of the metadata on their platforms.

The RSC will retain an original version of the paper in its records, but this will not be made publicly available. This is to ensure that changes are made accurately and so that any changes can be reverted in future if requested.

Authors wishing to make such changes should contact namechanges@rsc.org or the editorial office for any RSC journal in which they have published.

Please note that we will not normally facilitate changes to correct spelling errors that were present in the author versions, out-of-date affiliation details, or changes to email addresses that do not result from name changes. We are also unable to correct citations to papers in which a name change has been made.

Collection of gender information

We are committed to improving inclusion and diversity within chemical sciences publishing. As part of our work in this area we are asking authors, reviewers and editors to provide information on their gender. The information we gather will be used to analyse trends within our journals, and to identify where improvements are needed. We ask authors to self-describe their gender, and give the option of “prefer not to say”.

Data on author and reviewer gender will only be visible to RSC staff and Editors, and will not be shared with external parties. Anonymised data may be collated and used in both internal and external reporting. Gender information should not be considered in any way when making editorial decisions on manuscripts, but we encourage our editors to use gender information to improve the diversity of reviewers. For more information about how we use your data, please see the RSC’s Privacy Policy.

We are committed to improving inclusion and diversity in all its forms, and are currently devising the most appropriate methods to collect and monitor further diversity data, including special category data within GDPR.

Journal policy on prior publication

As scientific research is becoming more open and discoverable, the Royal Society of Chemistry supports our community of chemical scientists in sharing new research findings before and after publication through a variety of methods.

Authors publishing in our journals may present their research ahead of publication in the following ways.

• Through the deposition of a preprint version of the article in commercial and non-commercial repositories (e.g. ArXiv, ChemRxiv), institutional repositories or authors’ individual websites. A preprint is defined here as an un-refereed author version of the article; commercial and non-commercial repositories are defined here as any platform or archiving service that makes digital content free to deposit and access. Preprints deposited in ChemRxiv can be revised, but must still be a pre-acceptance version.
• At scientific conferences; this includes recorded presentations, poster presentations and abstracts that are made openly available on-line.
• In commercial or non-commercial databases (data without interpretation, discussion, conclusions or context with a wider experimental project).
• In an open electronic lab notebook.
• In blogs, wikis, tweets, and other informal communication channels.
• As a thesis or dissertation published as part of an academic or professional qualification, in print and on-line.
• In any digital medium which is operated by the Royal Society of Chemistry, excluding journals, books and magazines.

We will not consider for publication work that has been previously published, or is under consideration for publication, in another journal. Full papers as a follow up to a previously published communication will be considered for publication in suitable Royal Society of Chemistry journals, subject to the new work meeting the journal’s criteria.

Please consult the journal’s editor if you have questions about whether or not a particular use constitutes prior publication.

For information about what you can do with your article following acceptance and publication see our guidance on deposition and sharing rights.

Data policy

The Royal Society of Chemistry believes that where possible all data associated with the research in a manuscript should be freely available in an accessible and usable format, enabling other researchers to replicate and build on that research. Please refer to the experimental data guidelines for further information on our data policy.

Patents & intellectual property

Due to our journals’ fast times to publication, authors are advised to resolve any pending intellectual property or patent applications before they submit their article, so they do not contravene the terms of any outstanding applications. Accepted manuscripts are published online less than 24 hours after acceptance; while the version of record is published online within a few days of receiving proof corrections.