ACS To Launch Sustainable Science Journal

The American Chemical Society plans to begin publishing ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering in January 2013. The online-only journal will cover life cycle assessment, green chemistry, alternative energy, green innovative manufacturing, and harnessing waste as a resource.

At the journal’s helm will be Editor-in-chief David T. Allen, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Texas, Austin, known for his work on urban air quality and reducing pollution. Allen, who is 54, also serves as director of the university’s Center for Energy & Environmental Resources and has a long-standing interest in green engineering education. He earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1983. He moved to UT Austin in 1995.

Allen hopes the journal—which will complement the work of ACS’s Green Chemistry Institute—will be a single, centralized resource for those working on all aspects of green chemistry and sustainability. “This is a field that used to have a small number of practitioners,” he says. “Now it’s far more pervasive.”

“The chemical sciences will play a central role in addressing one of most important technological challenges of the 21st century: the development of new technologies which address societal needs and wants, within the constraints imposed by natural resources and environmental systems,” says Susan King, senior vice president of the ACS Journals Publishing Group. “That is a vision and conviction strongly held by professor Allen.” She adds that the new journal will provide rapid publication, free of mandated author fees, on online and mobile delivery platforms.