FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | March 15, 2016

American Chemical Society announces global team of experts to lead ACS Omega — a new rapid and open access publication in multidisciplinary chemistry

SAN DIEGO, March 15, 2016 — Set to provide the global scientific community with a major new open access forum for multidisciplinary chemistry, the Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) today announced the appointment of a team of geographically dispersed chief editors to lead ACS Omega, which will begin publication in mid-2016. With an emphasis on rapid editorial decisions, ACS Omega will select articles after rigorous peer review for technical quality, and will swiftly publish them open access to enable the scientific community to determine the significance and perceived impact of the underlying research.

The ACS Omega editors are based across several key regions of active R&D — the Americas, Europe, India and China — and bring expertise from four distinct scientific areas of interest, in which they are acknowledged leaders worldwide.

ACS Omega’s four principal editors are:

Cornelia Bohne, Ph.D., is a professor of Chemistry at the University of Victoria, Canada, and a fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada. Bohne’s research focuses on developing the fundamental understanding of the dynamics of supramolecular systems and on the application of this knowledge to functional supramolecular materials. Bohne hails from Brazil, having received her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Sao Paulo. She actively participates in the chemistry community in South America and thus brings a unique understanding of scientific pursuits that span both continents of the Americas.

Krishna Ganesh, Ph.D., is the director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India, and a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in Bangalore, the Indian National Science Academy in New Delhi and The World Academy of Sciences. Ganesh is an expert in modified DNA and peptide-nucleic acids as novel cell-penetrating agents. As the first (founding and serving) director of IISER, Ganesh has built a unique, interdisciplinary infrastructure in which teaching and education are wholly integrated into state-of-the-art research.

Luis Liz-Marzán, Ph.D., is Ikerbasque research professor and scientific director at Centro de Investigación Cooperativa en Biomateriales in Spain and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Optical Society of America. Liz-Marzán’s research focuses on nanoparticle synthesis and assembly, nanoplasmonics, and the development of nanoparticle-based sensing and diagnostic tools. He most recently served as a senior editor of the ACS journal Langmuir.

Deqing Zhang, Ph.D., is the director of the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. Trained as an organic chemist, Zhang’s research focuses on organic functional materials involving synthesis of organic functional molecules, spectroscopic studies, characterizations of self-assembly structures and optoelectronic properties, as well as applications for chemo/biosensing and imaging.

“The nature of my work has afforded me the opportunity to build successful collaborations with physicists and materials scientists,” says Zhang. “As such, my interdisciplinary research experiences position me well to serve authors whose work ranges across broad scientific areas of interest and importance.”

The ACS Omega editors have themselves authored in aggregate more than 850 peer-reviewed research articles, book chapters and patents. Their prolific publishing records and academic and professional achievements set the foundation for a team that will define and lead the editorial vision for the journal, drawing on a geographically diverse Editorial Board they will soon enlist — to be composed of active researchers with wide-ranging expertise and scientific backgrounds across chemistry, chemical engineering and allied interdisciplinary scientific fields.

“I am eager to establish a strong Editorial Board for ACS Omega,” says Bohne. “Key to this strength is building a Board that is made up of scientists from academe, government and industry, whose members have international stature, come from all regions of the world, and are representative of chemistry’s rich cultural and social diversity.”

Authors who publish their research in ACS Omega will benefit from rapid editorial decisions, swift publication, and immediate open availability to the global scientific community and general public.

“It is of utmost importance that the ACS Omega editorial team works on the premise of quick editorial decision-making,” says Liz-Marzán. “The journal will make a significant impact in the research community by providing service to the authors, rapid review and publication and rigorous scientific standards.”

ACS Omega will provide an attractive new opportunity for authors to publish open access with the ACS. The Society currently publishes more than 40,000 peer-reviewed articles annually across its subscription-based journals portfolio of 50 preeminent journals, but tens of thousands of manuscripts reporting research advances are declined each year for lack of topical fit with editorial scope or perceived impact for the reader audience. ACS Omega offers a new venue for such research advances to be widely disseminated under the Society’s auspices. ACS journal editors who determine that an author’s research would fit better within another ACS journal can now facilitate direct transfer of the author’s submission via an opt-in service that simplifies submission to and consideration by a subsequent ACS journal, now including transfer to ACS Omega. Whether via such manuscript transfer or direct submission to ACS Omega, ACS authors now have a high-visibility venue for rapid publication of global research without the tedium of reformatting their manuscripts and undergoing additional rounds of peer review.

“There is a great need for the creation of a suitable publication platform that documents the data-rich research that all too often goes undocumented in a form that is accessible to the larger research community,” says Ganesh. “I am happy to be a part of a journal created by the premier chemical society of the world that will capture such data and will no doubt contribute to advancing research on a global scale.”

ACS Omega will begin accepting research submissions in April 2016 and will publish its first articles online early this summer,” says Penelope Lewis, Ph.D., director, Editorial and New Product Development in ACS Publications. “As a solely open access journal, ACS Omega will offer article publishing charges competitive with other open access journals that feature objective peer review. Authors will enjoy broad digital dissemination to readers worldwide, and benefit from the penetration and impact of ACS Publications’ award-winning Web and mobile delivery platforms that currently provide nearly 100 million articles each year to readers across the global scientific community.”

About ACS Publications

ACS Publications, a division of the American Chemical Society, is a nonprofit scholarly publisher of nearly 50 peer-reviewed journals and a range of eBooks at the interface of chemistry and allied sciences, including physics and biology. ACS Publications journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature. Respected for their editorial rigor, ACS journals offer high-quality service to authors and readers, including rapid time to publication, a range of channels for researchers to access the Society’s cutting-edge Web and mobile delivery platforms and a comprehensive program of open access options for authors and their funders. ACS Publications also publishes Chemical & Engineering News — the Society’s newsmagazine covering science and technology, business and industry, government and policy, education and employment aspects of the chemistry field.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 158,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

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