Today we are pleased to announce five new PeerJ journals covering distinct disciplines within chemistry: PeerJ Physical Chemistry; PeerJ Organic Chemistry; PeerJ Inorganic Chemistry; PeerJ Analytical Chemistry; and PeerJ Materials Science.
Sign up at peerj.com/chemistry to become an Academic Editor or to be notified when chemistry submissions are open
Ever since the formation of PeerJ in 2012, we have been receiving requests to launch PeerJ journals in additional areas. One of the most frequently mentioned candidates is chemistry, a field that has been slower than biology in adopting Open Access publishing.
At the same time, we now have several years of experience launching and running new and innovative publications in broad fields. For example, PeerJ – the Journal of Life & Environmental Sciences covers all of biology, the life sciences, and the environmental sciences in a single title; whilst PeerJ Computer Science is targeted towards a more well-defined community. In 2013 we also launched a preprint server (PeerJ Preprints) which covers all the areas in which we publish; and we have developed a comprehensive suite of journal and peer-review functionalities.
Thanks to this experience, we have a good idea of what a research community needs and why it might be interested in the ‘PeerJ experience’. For example, we have learned that if a journal is ‘too large’ it can be hard to provide a consistent experience for the disparate communities it contains, or for each sub-community to find its home; we have learned that some communities have different expectations of speed; that some communities have different standards for certain types of data deposition and so on.
We have also learned that once a new journal is announced, the community will react to ‘make the journal its own’, and so we should be asking for more of your feedback before setting anything in stone. Therefore, at the moment this is simply an announcement of the fact that we will soon be launching several new chemistry journals.
We open for submissions in January 2019, and so we are inviting members of the chemistry community to
- volunteer their services for the Editorial Board;
- register interest for future announcements;
- provide us with any feedback on the subjects each journal should be divided into – just email us at chemistry@peerj.com;
- and help us form these new journals into the most appropriate publications for their individual communities.
The new journals will launch with an extended period of ‘free APC fees’, so we also invite you to start preparing your articles for possible submission to us in January!
