In May 2022, representatives of the 16 chemical societies of Chemistry Europe made a bold statement as they elected ChemElectroChem to be the first title in their portfolio of 19 journals to transition from a reader-pays subscription model to an author-pays open access model.
Chemistry Europe is no stranger to open access publishing. Since launching the first fully open access, societyowned journal, ChemistryOpen, which published its first volume in 2012, Chemistry Europe has expanded theirportfolio to include Analytical Science Advances and Electrochemical Science Advances and launched Chemistry–Methods in 2021. In addition, Chemistry Europe recently announced it is launching a new gold open access journal, aptly called ChemistryEurope. The namesake fully open access journal will launch in 2023 and aims torepresent the core values of the association by publishing high-quality and high-impact articles across all areas of chemistry.
Open access articles receive increased visibility, downloads, and citations with respect to subscription articles, andare more readily available to researchers around the world who can use them to elaborate and build upon the findings. The concept of open access publishing has been around for a long time, but the open access publishing landscape is still evolving and the best way forward to achieve open science is not yet confirmed. Nevertheless, Chemistry Europe remains agile and is adapting to the changing needs of the scientific community. To complement its portfolio of born-gold journals, Chemistry Europe has now taken its first step towards transitioning its existing hybrid portfolio of journals. On 18th October 2022, this transition truly began as the manuscript-handling system of ChemElectroChem (Editorial Manager) was reconfigured, so that all subsequent accepted articles would be published open access under the terms of a Creative Commons license. This means that ChemElectroChem ison track to be fully open access from 1st January 2023. For more information about this transition and the motivation behind the decision, please also read the Editorial by ChemElectroChem’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Kate Lawrence.
Through the affiliation with Wiley, Chemistry Europe authors are often able to benefit from transformative agreements and Wiley Open Access Accounts, which are each individually tailored to the needs of the respective partner. For example, the APCs in a Chemistry Europe journal are fully covered for most authors affiliated with ETHZurich. Please speak to your librarian for more information or visit the Wiley Author Services website to find out if theinstitution of you or your co-workers covers the APC.
David Spichiger, SCS
19.12.2022