RSC Medicinal Chemistry

RSC Medicinal Chemistry publishes significant research in medicinal chemistry and related drug discovery science.

Scope

Research articles published in this journal 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.

Readership

Researchers in academia and industry studying medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and topics in the wider chemical, biological and materials sciences with application to biological problems.