ACS launches two journals for applied materials research

Building on the success of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (AMI), the American Chemical Society in September launched two journals: ACS Applied Energy Materials and ACS Applied Nano Materials.

The new journals fall under the purview of AMI and its editor-in-chief, Kirk Schanze, a chemistry professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Each new journal has its own deputy editor and editorial advisory board.

The deputy editor of ACS Applied Energy Materials is Gerald J. Meyer, a chemistry professor and his department’s vice chair of diversity at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “I think there’s a strong likelihood that this journal could be instrumental in advancing energy research and helping solve the world’s energy challenges,” Meyer says, noting that although the journal’s topic is quite narrow, the range of chemistry involved is broad.

Meyer has served as an associate editor of AMI since 2012. His research focuses on excited-state transition-metal compounds that drive electron- or energy-transfer reactions in fluid solution and at semiconductor interfaces.

The deputy editor of ACS Applied Nano Materials is T. Randall Lee, a chemistry professor and associate dean for research in the College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics at the University of Houston. “It’s a great opportunity to provide an avenue for the rapid publication of interesting and new nanoscale materials with an applications purpose,” Lee says, adding that the journal will accept papers from a wide range of disciplines.

Lee has served as an associate editor of AMI since 2010. His research centers on the development of nanoscale materials for applications in energy and medicine.

The impetus for creating the two journals was the exponential growth of AMI since its launch in 2009. The journal now declines to publish a majority of papers it receives, Schanze says. Schanze, Meyer, and Lee anticipate that the new journals will reduce time to publication and allow for publication of papers that would otherwise have been rejected because AMI has reached capacity.

AMI will continue to publish papers of broad and interdisciplinary interest. Energy Materials and Nano Materials will be narrower in scope and likely allow more synthesis and characterization study than AMI, but they will still require a strong emphasis on applications, the editors say.

“Applications in materials science is one of the most vibrant areas of research globally and has broad potential impact in solving critical problems in energy, engineering, and health and medicine,” says James Milne, ACS’s senior vice president for publishing. “We’ve been hearing from researchers on the need for high-quality titles that cater to their specific areas of applied materials science research to enhance the visibility and breadth of this work.” ACS plans to add other titles under AMI but has not disclosed specific topics. ACS also publishes C&EN.—.