Royal Society of Chemistry launches new Open Access journals
We are proud to announce the launch of three exciting new Royal Society of Chemistry Open Access journals. Digital Discovery, Sensors & Diagnostics and Environmental Science: Advances will open for submissions in mid-August 2021.
Digital Discovery, a gold open access journal, will be the first of its kind, meeting the trend towards greater automation and data-driven scientific techniques head-on.
Alán Aspuru-Guzik, from the University of Toronto will be Editor-in-Chief of Digital Discovery. Alán is a professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at the University of Toronto and is also the Canada 150 Research Chair in Theoretical Chemistry and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute.
Alán said: "I am excited to be editor-in-chief of Digital Discovery. In its pages, we aim to capture the top research at the intersection of chemistry, materials science and biotechnology with topics related to machine learning, high-throughput computational and experimental screening in order to accelerate the process of scientific discovery.
"The ‘digital transformation’ of the chemical industry is a huge driver for the twenty-first century and we want Digital Discovery to be the premier venue for papers related to this topic."
Digital Discovery will cover the application of machine learning to solve scientific problems, so will be home to groundbreaking computational research from the areas of chemistry, biology, physics, and materials & biomedical sciences.
The journal will be open access with all article processing charges (APCs) waived until mid-2024, to ensure as many people as possible have the opportunity to publish and read the top papers in this field.
Sensors & Diagnostics
Sensors and screening is a key frontier technique identified in our 2019 Science Horizons report – over 40% of the researchers we surveyed highlighted it as important for the advancement of their own work.
With a broad scope, covering physical, chemical and bio sensors as well as sensor devices and systems, Sensors & Diagnostics will be the Royal Society of Chemistry’s gold open access home for high impact sensors research. The journal will complement our existing journal Lab on a Chip, allowing it to retain its strong focus on microfluidics and miniaturised devices. Article processing charges (APCs) will be waived until mid-2024.
Sensors & Diagnostics will have a broad scope that focuses on high impact, innovative sensing work. We will welcome interdisciplinary research from across the analytical, chemical biology, materials, and nano sectors that highlights conceptual advances in all aspects of sensor research. This includes the design, development, and applications to solve a variety of analytical problems.
Environmental Science: Advances
Our existing environmental science journals all have chemistry at their core. Environmental Science: Advances will span not only chemistry, but also research from any discipline related to the environmental sciences.
We welcome research from any discipline that will contribute to the understanding of the environment, and to the advancement of several UN Sustainable Development Goals – original thinking to take on the world’s biggest challenges.
Environmental Science: Advances will be gold open access, with all article processing charges (APCs) waived until mid-2024.
Our approach to Open Access
We are working to influence the development of open access publishing, using community insight and regular feedback to inform decisions that will have a genuine impact on the OA landscape.
Through consultation with active researchers in our community, we know that you are keen for our journal collection to branch out into rapidly growing areas and offer dedicated, open access homes for high quality, interdisciplinary research in these areas.
Our new journals bring together the chemical sciences, physics, biology, engineering, environmental and information science to harness the incredible advances that can be made when challenges are tackled from a range of perspectives.
Digital Futures
Recent advances in AI, robotics, data analysis, modelling and simulation have allowed scientists to augment their research, advancing discovery more quickly, reducing the time it takes to do some tasks in the labs from weeks or months to just hours and identifying patterns and possibilities that humans alone would not see.
Our Digital Futures report was a follow-up to Science Horizons, which engaged over 700 academic researchers globally to seek views on key trends and emerging research areas in the chemical sciences and its interfaces. Data and digital technology emerged as one of the main themes.
