Energy Research at ACS in the Age of Open Access

Abstract

W the emergence and implementation of open access mandates such as Plan S, we wish to highlight open access in the energy portfolio of American Chemical Society (ACS) journals via this joint Virtual Issue. Specifically, we showcase exemplar sets of high-quality and impactful open access articles published in ACS Applied Energy Materials, ACS Energy Letters, Energy& Fuels, and ACS Omega. The first three journals are traditional journals with open access options, typically termed “hybrid”, whereas ACS Omega is a fully open access journal. These journals complement the recently launched fully open access journals,ACS Engineering Au (https://pubs.acs.org/ journal/aeacb3), ACS Nanoscience Au (https://pubs.acs.org/ journal/anaccx), ACS Materials Au (https://pubs.acs.org/ journal/amacgu), and ACS Physical Chemistry Au (https:// pubs.acs.org/journal/apcach), which also welcome energy research. Collectively these journals (Figure 1) cover a tremendous breadth of energy research and provide multiple options for authors based upon their topical focus, preference, or funder mandates. In this editorial, we briefly summarize the ACS energy portfolio in the context of the global open access publishing landscape for energy research. We highlight the strengths of our energy portfolio and elaborate why you should publish with us. ACS Applied Energy Materials, ACS Energy Letters, and Energy & Fuels are all indexed under the ENERGY & FUELS category at Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2021). This category has grown continuously between 2015 and 2019. Over this five-year time period, the growth in the number of indexed journals was 27% and in articles published was 52%. Notably, the total citations increased by 128%, with a median impact factor growth of 66% (Table 1).