New ACS Journal Editor Selected

George C. Schatz, chemistry professor at Northwestern University, will assume the role of editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry beginning in January 2005.

Schatz succeeds Mostafa El-Sayed, professor of chemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology, who served as editor for nearly 24 years. “I am delighted that he has accepted the position,” El-Sayed says. “I think George Schatz will make an excellent editor-in-chief.”

Schatz worked as a senior editor at the journal for more than 10 years and has gained the experience necessary to run the journal, El-Sayed says. “He knows where the Journal of Physical Chemistry is at and where it should go, and he is the best person to move the journal to the next level up.”

For the most part, the journal has been running extremely well, Schatz says, but there are a few things he’d like to improve. “The number one priority is to make sure that we are handling papers efficiently,” he notes. He is particularly interested in speeding up the handling time for manuscripts in the Letters section, which is devoted to short, timely papers.

Schatz also would like to form a lasting relationship with the physical chemistry community. “I’ll be sending out a letter to the community, both by e-mail and in the January edition of the journal, asking for suggestions and ideas,” he says. He also wants to attend American Chemical Society meetings regularly. “My plan is to try to be pretty visible in the community so that people will know they can contact me and give me suggestions.”

According to Schatz, quality is extremely important for the journal. “We want to make the Journal of Physical Chemistry the premier journal for the field of physical chemistry,” he says.