Royal Society and Royal Society of Chemistry launch journal collaboration

The Royal Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry today jointly announced a new collaboration on the Royal Society’s multidisciplinary open access journal Royal Society Open Science.

The Royal Society of Chemistry will manage the commissioning and peer review processes for the chemistry section of the journal.

Royal Society Open Science, which launched in September 2014, is an open access journal publishing research across the entire range of science, using objective peer review and without any restrictions on scope, length or impact. The journal comprises 12 subject sections, including chemistry. For an introductory period open access article processing charges are being waived.

As well as its appeal as an open access journal, the multidisciplinary nature of Royal Society Open Science means researchers can get more widespread visibility for their work than could be achieved in a subject-based journal.

Royal Society Open Science offers:

• objective peer review: any judgement of potential impact is left to the reader;
• (optional) open peer review: referees sign their reports, and we publish those reports along with author responses;
• open data: authors are required to make available all supporting data through supplementary information or through deposition in a publicly-available repository; and
• article-level metrics and post-publication comments. 

Dr Stuart Taylor, Director of Publishing at the Royal Society, said:

"We are delighted to be working with the RSC on our newest journal which we hope will benefit greatly from our joint brands. Royal Society Open Science is innovative in a number of ways and this collaboration with the RSC illustrates how closely aligned we are in our publishing philosophy."

Dr Robert Parker, CEO of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said:

“Chemical scientists worldwide publish with us because they share our values and trust our reputation. We’ve taken bold steps to lead and support our community in open access – including making our flagship journal Chemical Science Gold open access last year – and so we’re proud to offer even more choice to chemical scientists through this new collaboration with the Royal Society.

“With five hundred years’ combined experience in world-leading science publishing, I’m sure authors will agree that the Royal Society and Royal Society of Chemistry are natural partners to make Royal Society Open Science an influential journal for chemistry and a powerful force in ethical, trustworthy open access publishing.”