The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) will expand its open access program in 2016 with today’s announcement of ACS Omega, a new open access, multidisciplinary chemistry journal publishing peer-reviewed research of broad impact from around the world. The Society made the announcement at the opening of Pacifichem, the international chemistry conference co-organized by the ACS, which is taking place in Hawaii this week.
Authors who publish their research in ACS Omega will benefit from rapid editorial decisions, swift publication and immediate availability to the global scientific community and general public. ACS Omega will publish articles on the basis of rigorous technical review rather than subjective editorial or reviewer opinions of the work’s significance or impact. The journal will satisfy open access mandates from a range of funders and provide an authoritative home for original research articles of scientific value covering all areas of chemistry, chemical engineering and allied scientific fields.
The global reach of ACS Omega is underscored by its editorial structure, which is unique to ACS’ preeminent portfolio of peer-reviewed journals. ACS has collectively published more than 46,000 papers from China, India and Korea over the past five years, with an abundance of new and groundbreaking research coming from these emerging markets. With an eye on achieving a globally diverse journal, four co-editors, who will be based in China, India, Europe and the Americas, will establish and lead the editorial vision for the journal. The editors will draw on a geographically diverse editorial board composed of active scientists with distinct chemical expertise and scientific backgrounds.
ACS Omega will provide an attractive new opportunity for authors to publish with the ACS. The Society currently publishes more than 40,000 peer-reviewed articles annually across all of its journals, but tens of thousands of manuscripts are declined each year by journal editors. ACS Omega will provide an appealing venue for all articles that are deemed scientifically sound, which will spare many authors the tedium of reformatting their manuscripts and undergoing additional rounds of peer review.
Brian Crawford, Ph.D., president of ACS Publications, says, “We are thrilled to announce the launch of ACS Omega. This journal will serve a broad global community of researchers who are seeking swift evaluation and publication of their work, including authors and readers from around the world who are eager to see their work featured by the ACS as a major scientific society publisher.”
Crawford adds, “We are introducing an agile and seamless manuscript transfer system that will enable authors submitting to one ACS journal to be easily referred for review and publication in another suitable ACS journal, should their paper not be accepted by their first-choice forum. ACS Omega will be an important component of that manuscript transfer system.”
ACS Omega will begin accepting research submissions in the spring of 2016 and will publish its first articles online that summer. It will set article publishing charges competitive with other open access journals that feature objective peer review.
The name ACS Omega is an evocative reference to the “megajournal” term that is frequently associated with journals offering objective peer review. It also signals the journal’s open access publishing strategy and is a name that scientists around the world will immediately recognize.
ACS Omega is the latest addition to the Society’s comprehensive and far-reaching open access program. The new journal joins sister publication ACS Central Science, ACS’ first fully open access, highly selective journal, which published its first issue in April 2015. The Society’s open access program also includes ACS Author Rewards, a stimulus program to encourage authors to publish their work as open access; ACS Editors’ Choice, a service whereby ACS editors select and openly feature one new article per day of broad public interest; and ACS AuthorChoice, a program that provides authors flexible open access license options that acknowledge funders’ open access requirements and offers ACS Certified Deposit — deposition by ACS of the final published article to an institutional or funder repository of the authors’ designation.
