JPCL: A Dynamic Journal with a Global Reach
Gregory D. Scholes, George Chappell Schatz, Juan Bisquert, Maria Forsyth, Benedetta Mennucci, Oleg V. Prezhdo, Francisco Zaera, Timothy S. Zwier, Jin Zhang · The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters · 2019
JPCL is widely viewed as the top choice for publishing leading-edge research in physical chemistry.As a consequence, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of submissions, as well as an impressive improvement in the quality of these papers.In view of the enthusiasm for authors to submit to JPCL, and in the face of a need to serve our authors by increasing the journal's impact, we are implementing new plans to build up and improve the journal.Our goal is to take JPCL to new levels of impact by attracting broader research topics, engaging the best researchers globally, and improving the speed and transparency of the publication process.We aim to make JPCL dynamic and responsive to changes in the leading edge of physical chemistry.In 2019 we are working toward implementing a new editorial workflow to evaluate papers rapidly and effectively.At least two editors will provide immediate and substantive evaluation of submitted papers, enabling us to quickly flag papers that either would be a better fit with another journal or are exceptional and thus can be peer reviewed and published with even higher speed.An exciting benefit for authors will be that a fraction of papers (5-10% of published articles) will be carefully reviewed and published within 1-2 weeks from submission.In case that we decide that a manuscript does not fit the goals of our journal, we will offer a fast turnaround so that the authors can quickly proceed with submission to a more appropriate venue.We are looking for papers that report a substantive new insight, discovery, or advance.We strongly recommend that authors explicitly and succinctly describe what they see as the key advance of their submission in the abstract and in the introduction and that they explain to the reader why their finding should matter to the broad physical chemistry community.Clarity and specif icity in defining the main finding and the significance of the research discriminate the best papers from other good, but less urgent, studies.In addition, authors who have had their paper reviewed at another journal (Nature, Science, Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA, and J. Am.Chem.Soc. are common examples) are strongly encouraged to provide those reviews to JPCL editors together with a point-by-point response explaining how the manuscript has been revised.This will expedite our evaluation of the work.Authors may upload that information as "Supporting Information for Review Only" or include it in their cover letter.