ACS Omega: 2019 in Hindsight with a 2020 Vision.

On behalf of our ACS Omega editorial team, we wish our authors, readers, and reviewers a very Happy New Year. As we enter the year 2020, to celebrate our journal’s fifth anniversary, we reflect on ACS Omega’s progress and achievements in 2019 from a performance viewpoint. We also gratefully acknowledge your contributions to the success of our journal and chart our vision for 2020.

During 2019, ACS Omega published a total of 2,488 primary research Articles, including six Mini-Reviews and 13 Perspectives, representing a growth of 21.7% compared to 2018. Notably, there was an evident surge in authorship from the East Asia and Pacific region, accounting for 43% of published content, up over 10% from 2018[1] (Figure ). The journal published several articles in 2019 that were selected as ACS Editors’ Choice (https://pubs.acs.org/editorschoice/) (Table ), and quite a few gained traction on social media and news outlets (Table , Altmetric attention score of >50). We are delighted that over 100 corresponding authors have submitted five or more articles to ACS Omega since our launch in 2016 and proud to count among our authorship the 2019 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, M. Stanley Whittingham (DOIs: 10.1021/acsomega.8b00763; 10.1021/acsomega.8b03637; 10.1021/acsomega.9b02417). We thank all of our new and returning authors for their submissions and congratulate our authors who had their articles published in ACS Omega in 2019. We continue to stand by our journal mission to judge each manuscript on its quality and technical soundness, rather than perceived impact. Nevertheless, we are pleased to note that our next impact factor is already tracking higher than our inaugural one released in the summer of 2019.[2]

Figure 1

Broad geographic distribution of published articles by region in 2019 is shown based upon the country of the corresponding author.

Table 1

ACS Omega Articles in 2019 Selected as ACS Editors’ Choice

Title	Author List (*corresponding author)	Citation
Hibonite Blue: A New Class of Intense Inorganic Blue Colorants	Brett A. Duell, Jun Li, and M. A. Subramanian*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 26, 22114–22118. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b03255
Synthesis and Spectral Properties of 8-Anilinonaphthalene-1-sulfonic Acid (ANS) Derivatives Prepared by Microwave-Assisted Copper(0)-Catalyzed Ullmann Reaction	Nan Wang, Erik B. Faber, and Gunda I. Georg*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 19, 18472–18477. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b03002
DNA G-Quadruplexes Activate Heme for Robust Catalysis of Carbene Transfer Reactions	Hanadi Ibrahim*, Paul Mulyk, and Dipankar Sen*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 12, 15280–15288. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02305
Glass Chemistry to Analyze Human Cells under Adverse Conditions	Angela N. Marquard, Jonathan C. T. Carlson, and Ralph Weissleder*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 7, 11515–11521. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b01036
Discovery of Furanone-Based Radiopharmaceuticals for Diagnostic Targeting of COX-1 in Ovarian Cancer	Md. Jashim Uddin*, Andrew J. Wilson, Brenda C. Crews, Paola Malerba, Md. Imam Uddin, Philip J. Kingsley, Kebreab Ghebreselasie, Cristina K. Daniel, Michael L. Nickels, Mohammed N. Tantawy, Elma Jashim, H. Charles Manning, Dineo Khabele, and Lawrence J. Marnett*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 5, 9251–9261. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b01093
Direct On-Paper Inkjet Printing of Kinase-to-Kinase Phosphorylation Cascade Reactions	Jungmi Lee, Annie Agnes Suganya Samson, and Joon Myong Song*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 4, 7866–7873. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00697
C1-Galactopyranosyl Heterocycle Structure Guides Selectivity: Triazoles Prefer Galectin-1 and Oxazoles Prefer Galectin-3	Alexander Dahlqvist, Hakon Leffler, and Ulf J. Nilsson*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 4, 7047–7053. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00320
Benchmarking Smartphone Fluorescence-Based Microscopy with DNA Origami Nanobeads: Reducing the Gap toward Single-Molecule Sensitivity	Carolin Vietz, Max L. Schütte, Qingshan Wei, Lars Richter, Birka Lalkens, Aydogan Ozcan*, Philip Tinnefeld*, and Guillermo P. Acuna*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 1, 637–642. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.8b03136

Table 2

Top Ten Altmetric Score Manuscripts Published in ACS Omega in 2019

Altmetric Attention Score	Title and Author List (*corresponding author)	Citation
368	Rheology of Swiss Cheese Fondue. Pascal Bertsch*, Laura Savorani, and Peter Fischer*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 1, 1103–1109. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.8b02424
322	Smartphone-Based Paper Microfluidic Particulometry of Norovirus from Environmental Water Samples at the Single Copy Level. Soo Chung, Lane E. Breshears, Sean Perea, Christina M. Morrison, Walter Q. Betancourt, Kelly A. Reynolds, and Jeong-Yeol Yoon*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 6, 11180–11188. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00772
114	Charge-Free Mixing Entropy Battery Enabled by Low-Cost Electrode Materials. Meng Ye, Mauro Pasta, Xing Xie, Kristian L. Dubrawski, Jianqaio Xu, Chong Liu, Yi Cui*, and Craig S. Criddle*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 7, 11785–11790. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00863
109	Radiotheranostics Coupled between an At-211-Labeled RGD Peptide and the Corresponding Radioiodine-Labeled RGD Peptide. Kazuma Ogawa*, Takuya Takeda, Kenji Mishiro, Atsushi Toyoshima, Kazuhiro Shiba, Takashi Yoshimura, Atsushi Shinohara, Seigo Kinuya, and Akira Odani	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 3, 4584–4591. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.8b03679
81	Aerosol Gas-Phase Components from Cannabis E-Cigarettes and Dabbing: Mechanistic Insight and Quantitative Risk Analysis. Jiries Meehan-Atrash, Wentai Luo, Kevin J. McWhirter, and Robert M. Strongin*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 14, 16111–16120. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02301
69	Adverse Effect of PTFE Stir Bars on the Covalent Functionalization of Carbon and Boron Nitride Nanotubes Using Billups-Birch Reduction Conditions. Carlos A. de los Reyes, Ashleigh D. Smith McWilliams, Katharyn Hernández, Kendahl L. Walz-Mitra, Selin Ergülen, Matteo Pasquali, and Angel A. Martí*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 3, 5098–5106. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.8b03677
63	Chemical Genomic Profiling Unveils the in Vitro and in Vivo Antiplasmodial Mechanism of Açaí (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) Polyphenols. Letícia T. Ferreira, Vinícius P. Venancio, Taila Kawano, Lailah C. C. Abrão, Tatyana A. Tavella, Ludimila D. Almeida, Gabriel S. Pires, Elizabeth Bilsland, Per Sunnerhagen, Luciana Azevedo, Stephen T. Talcott, Susanne U. Mertens-Talcott*, and Fabio T. M. Costa*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 13, 15628–15635. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02127
62	Small-Intestine-Specific Delivery of Antidiabetic Extracts from Withania coagulans Using Polysaccharide-Based Enteric-Coated Nanoparticles. Kaarunya Sampathkumar, Siriporn Riyajan, Chiew Kei Tan, Philip Demokritou, Nuannoi Chudapongse, Say Chye, and Joachim Loo*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 7, 12049–12057. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00823
58	Rapid and Noninvasive Typing and Assessment of Nutrient Content of Maize Kernels Using a Hand-held Raman Spectrometer. Mark Krimmer, Charles Farber, and Dmitry Kurouski*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 15, 16330–16335. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b01661
50	Hibonite Blue: A New Class of Intense Inorganic Blue Colorants. Brett A. Duell, Jun Li, and M. A. Subramanian*	ACS Omega 2019, 4, 26, 22114–22118. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.9b03255

In 2019, the downloads of published articles crossed 2.4 million, a growth of 65% over 2018 (Figure ). Our global readership is apparent in Figure (right panel), with the highest percentage of article accesses originating from the United States (27%), followed by China (23%). Accomplishing our mission as a fully open access journal, in 2019, 54% of our readership profile was made up of nonsubscribers, versus 46% ACS institutional subscribers. The honor for an article published in 2019 with the highest number of accesses was “Rheology of Swiss Cheese Fondue” (DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.8b02424) with 16,181 views.

Figure 2

Shown on the left is the growth in the annual usage of published content in ACS Omega. The right-hand image highlights the geographic distribution of readership in 2019.

Our reviewer pool grew substantially in 2019 to 8,078 unique reviewers from 91 countries, an increase in reviewer number of 35.2% compared with 2018.[1] We sincerely thank each reviewer (Supplementary Table S1), including those who have reviewed more than once, for their assistance in our editorial decision making and for the role they have played in maintaining the quality of ACS Omega. We are greatly indebted to our eminent pool of prolific reviewers who have returned multiple reviews to the journal (Supplementary Table S2). To recognize the contributions of, and foster engagement with our new reviewers, those who complete two or more reviews (for any ACS journal) over 12 months will be gifted an annual membership to the American Chemical Society. We also thank the editors from our sister ACS journals for their continued assistance in the manuscript transfer process and suggesting high-quality articles for consideration to ACS Omega. We must mention that via the newly launched ACS Reviewer Credit program (https://publish.acs.org/publish/peer_reviews/reviewer_credit/) those referees who originally review a manuscript at another ACS journal, and again return reviews for the same manuscript transferred to ACS Omega, gain review credits for both the original journal and ACS Omega.

Last year, we increased editorial capacity in a bid to manage the growing number of submissions and to provide a good publishing experience for our authors by maintaining fast processing times for decision making. The journal added three new Associate Editors to the team in 2019: Professors Swagata Dasgupta (IIT Kharagpur, India), Sarbajit Banerjee (Texas A&M University, USA), and Jeehiun Lee (Rutgers University, USA). Additionally, a new Development Editor, Dr. Ajay Jha, and two Publishing Editors, Dr. Paul Goring and Dr. Silvia Imberti, were recruited to assist us in processing manuscripts. Our average processing time to first decision remains at a highly competitive 24 days.

In August 2019, ACS Omega moved to a weekly publication schedule, featuring regular issues and ASAP article publications. By popular demand, since issue 8 in 2019, the journal introduced front covers and supplementary covers. We encourage you to submit your artwork to compete for these covers, as it serves as a great way to promote your work (Figure ). In addition to our high-quality, weekly journal issues, in 2020, we will work with our editorial team to create online collections of previously published research on areas of current scientific interest. These Virtual Collections will include both Virtual Issues and Thematic Collections and will be designed not only for experienced researchers but will also serve as a tool to teach students about the diverse areas of the chemical sciences. Since our launch, ACS Omega has published articles in every area of chemistry, both pure and applied, as well as interfacing areas (Figure ), and we expect these Virtual Collections to be popular among our readership.

Figure 3

Examples of the recently introduced Front and Supplementary Cover program. Artwork corresponds to DOIs: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02126 (left); 10.1021/acsomega.9b00991 (middle); and 10.1021/acsomega.9b01920 (right). Copyright 2019 American Chemical Society; used with permission.

Figure 4

Taxonomy breakdown of research areas for articles published in ACS Omega (accessed 8th January 2020). The “Others” category includes Chemical biology; Earth, space, and environmental chemistry; Organometallic chemistry; Supramolecular chemistry; Agriculture and food chemistry; Nuclear chemistry; and Chemistry education.

To go along with the global celebrations of the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements in 2019, ACS Omega substantially increased support and sponsorship to conferences, symposia, and meetings, including oral and poster prizes. In total, the journal provided 65 sponsorships, an increase of over 90% compared to 2018. In 2020, we will endeavor to continue to support and engage our global community of scientists. We once again thank our authors, readers, and reviewers for their contributions in making our broad-scope journal a successful “community of communities” journal and encourage you to stay actively involved with the journal. We look forward to celebrating our continued collaboration throughout our fifth anniversary, and beyond.