Editorial pubs.acs.org/JPCL
The Increasing Impact of Multimedia and Social Media in Scientific Publications
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(http://pubs.acs.org/page/jpclcd/acsliveslides.html). The author’s audio narration is integrated into PowerPoint slides using a web-based platform. All authors are invited to contribute a slide presentation upon acceptance of their peer-reviewed papers. ACS LiveSlides presentations are also archived as Supporting Information of the corresponding paper. These short presentations, which can also be accessed through mobile devices, offer authors a simple opportunity to showcase their work, which is a lot like giving a short talk at a meeting. We already have posted about 70 new ACS LiveSlides presentations this year. These presentations join the more than 60 presentations that we transferred from SlideShare (an earlier format that we used). Further enhancements in the search features and other accessibility features are in the works. We would like to thank the ACS Publication team and the ACS Web team who have worked tirelessly to enable these multimedia features for JPCL contributors and readers. Social Media. Scientific journals are finding new ways to communicate in an informal way as a result of the increasing number of readers who engage in social media on a regular basis. The Journal of Physical Chemistry’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JournalofPhysicalChemistry) continues to highlight scientific advances, new issue highlights, historical milestones, and post Perspectives videos and ACS LiveSlides presentations. The JPC Facebook fan club is now about 6000 strong and continues growing daily. We have recently introduced Twitter for the journal to further enhance outreach activities. Please follow us at https://twitter.com/ JPhysChem. ChemWorx. ACS ChemWorx is a new research management and storage system that is available free to all users. It combines reference discovery and management, professional networking, group and task management, and manuscript preparation in a single interface, with accessibility from anywhere, allowing researchers to improve their research productivity. The ACS ChemWorx Publishing Center also allows you to view the numbers of downloads of your papers across the globe and judge the international impact of your published work. For more information see http://acschemworx.acs.org. Impact. We often encounter questions like, “Why does a scientif ic journal need to be part of social media and/or multimedia?” The answer is simple. The way that we communicate scientific research is changing, and these additional platforms allow authors to showcase their work and engage readers in informal discussions. The visibility of a scientific paper in the news and social and multimedia is being tracked by Altmetric (Altmetric.com) using the DOI system. It summarizes the impact in terms of a colored donut score and provides statistics on the nature of downloads. Many journals, such as Nature group publications, have already introduced these scores as part of the citation matrix. Other journals will
s we celebrate the New Year, it seems appropriate to highlight new developments in publication technology available in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters based on multimedia and social media. These developments underscore the rapid changes in the way that we communicate scientific research that have taken place over the past few years. In view of these developments, the goal of the author and journal is not just to see scientific work get peer-reviewed and published. It is also important to find and use creative ways to reach out to the readership and make the research effort widely recognized. The new electronic era has opened up new opportunities for scientific journals to offer their contributors a number of platforms for disseminating and showcasing their research. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (JPCL) is one of the few leading journals to initiate ways of utilizing multimedia and social media in the dissemination of scientific research (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Multimedia and social media platforms available for authors to disseminate their published research.
Multimedia. During the 2010 launch of JPCL, we introduced Perspective Videos. These videos, accompanied by authors’ short narrations, provide unique perspectives on emerging topics (see the Perspectives video catalog http://pubs.acs.org/page/ jpclcd/video/perspectives.html). Today, we have more than 75 Perspectives videos that are being widely viewed by our readership. By making use of the flexible narration style and content, the authors can explore different formats to present their work in the most effective way. Whether it is a synthetic experiment, characterization of materials, or a computer simulation, the visual demonstration adds a new dimension to the research activities. These videos often serve as an educational tool to introduce specialized research themes to the students. Thank you to all of our authors who have contributed perspective videos, and thank you to our readership who have made this effort a successful venture. A newer multimedia feature that we introduced in mid-2013 is ACS LiveSlides. This unique platform allows authors to design a scientific presentation based on the results published in JPCL © 2014 American Chemical Society
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The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Editorial
grateful to our authors, reviewers, and readers for making JPCL the premier scientific journal of physical chemistry and chemical physics. Perspectives. JPCL continues to publish Perspectives in which leading researchers discuss emerging topics. Each issue focuses on selected themes, which are highlighted by an editorial or guest commentary. The collection of themes for 2013 issues is included in the Supporting Information. In this first issue of the new year, we bring you the following three newest perspectives highlighting hot topics in physical chemistry. Chen, J.; Rentzepis, P. M. Sub-picosecond and SubAngstrom Time and Space Studies by Means of Light, X-ray, and Electron Interaction with Matter. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2014, 5, 225−232. DOI 10.1021/jz4024089. Jissy, A.; Datta, A.; Design and Applications of Noncanonical DNA Base Pairs. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2014, 5, 154−166. DOI 10.1021/jz402352d. Wang, H.; Thia, L.; Fisher, A. C.; Wang, X. The Strategies on the Synthesis of Nitrogen-Doped and Co-Doped Graphene. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2014, 5, 119−125. DOI 10.1021/jz402416a.
likely follow suit, stamping each paper with an Altmetric score. Authors can then take into account their own paper’s impact more broadly than the journal impact factor. The new webbased platforms created by The Journal of Physical Chemistry journals provide an opportunity for authors to increase the impact of their scientific work and reach out to readership in an informal setting. A quick gauge of a scientific paper’s impact is its immediate visibility. Each ACS journal provides a list of “Most Read” papers based on the number of downloads. This information is available on each journal’s Web site as well as ACS ChemWorx (https://acschemworx.acs.org). The number of downloads allow authors and readers to preview the potential impact of their scientific work. Figure 2 shows the relationship between
Prashant V. Kamat, Deputy Editor
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, United States
George C. Schatz, Editor-in-Chief
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Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, United States
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information *
Data for Figure 1. Perspective themes in the 2013 issues. This material is available free of charge via the Internet at http:// pubs.acs.org.
Figure 2. Are downloads early predictors of the impact of published work? The citations of the 15 most cited papers in JPCL published in 2010 and 2011 (extracted from Web of Science) are plotted against the manuscript downloads extracted from ChemWorx (as of Nov 18, 2013). See the Supporting Information for the data.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
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the number of citations and number of downloads for the 15 most cited papers in JPCL. While it is difficult to establish a direct correlation, one can visualize a general trend between these two parameters. On average, about 50 downloads correlate with one citation for these highly cited papers! JPCL’s Increasing Impact. The new features introduced by JPCL have helped earn it the reputation of being a new vibrant journal. The streamlined editorial process allows significant or major scientific advances be published within about one month of submission. To help facilitate the editorial process, please keep JPCL’s submission criterion in mind while preparing your manuscript. A well-composed paper highlighting significant scientific advance with a physical chemistry focus clearly stands out (Kamat, P.; Schatz, G. C. How to Make your Next Paper Scientifically Effective. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2013, 4, 1578− 1581). The availability of page numbers at the ASAP stage provides the ability to cite at f irst sight. JPCL’s success can be seen in the numbers of its submissions, published papers, and citations. We have now surpassed 25000 citations (10000+ in 2013) for papers published since the launch of the journal in 2010. According to Web of Science (JCR), 1164 papers published in 2010 and 2011 have garnered 7665 citations, resulting in an impact factor of 6.585. (Note: This value is lower than what one sees in a Web of Science citation search. If one uses the updated citations (7878) appearing in a Web of Science Citation Search, the actual impact factor would be 6.768.) We expect to see an even larger impact of papers published in JPCL in 2013. As always, we are
Views expressed in this Editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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