Shelley D. Minteer to lead ACS Au suite of open access journals

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2020 — The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has appointed Shelley D. Minteer, Ph.D., of the University of Utah as editor-in-chief of a portfolio of nine open access journals, all to be launched in 2021. The ACS Au family of journals will each focus on specific fields relevant to ACS and will be compliant with the requirements of “Plan S” and of funders who require publication in completely open access journals.

The ACS search committee identified and chose Minteer for her strong and compelling vision for the journals, supported by the breadth of her research expertise spanning the topical areas of these new journals. Her familiarity with open access developments, her outstanding editorial experience, and her commitment to diversity, equality and inclusiveness as noted by her current service as chair of the Department of Chemistry’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee at the University of Utah, all support her appointment.

"Open access is clearly the future of scientific publishing,” says Minteer. “I am excited about the opportunity to support ACS Publications’ move in this direction with this new suite of subdiscipline-specific open access journals.”

Minteer is the Dale and Susan Poulter endowed chair of biological chemistry and associate chair of chemistry at the University of Utah. There, she manages a multi-disciplinary research group with a broad range of current projects, including electrocatalysis, batteries, organic electrosynthesis, synthetic biology and electrochemical biosensors. Minteer received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Iowa. She has been an associate editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society since 2016.

“I’m delighted to welcome Professor Minteer as editor-in-chief of this new portfolio of journals, and I am confident she has the vision, experience and drive necessary to develop each title’s reputation and scope,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “This ambitious portfolio is a significant investment in ACS’ belief in an open access future, and a new commitment to our authors. As more of our author community wants or needs to publish in gold open access journals, we are dedicated to providing them with a range of high-quality publications in which to propel their research forward.”

The ACS Au journal family will include ACS Bio & Med Chem Au, ACS Engineering Au, ACS Environmental Au, ACS Materials Au, ACS Measurement Science Au, ACS Nanoscience Au, ACS Organic & Inorganic Au, ACS Physical Chemistry Au and ACS Polymers Au. Each journal will have a deputy editor to oversee the day-to-day handling of manuscripts. The portfolio will be available completely open access without an embargo period, and authors will be able to choose to make their articles available open access via a CC-BY or CC-BY-NC-ND license. ACS will sponsor or substantially discount article publishing charges for authors based in numerous countries classified as lower-middle income economies.

The ACS Au journals will open for submissions in January 2021. For more information on the portfolio, visit https://pubs.acs.org/.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and its people. The Society is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a specialist in scientific information solutions (including SciFinder^® and STN^®), its CAS division powers global research, discovery and innovation. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.