About Journal of Systems Chemistry

What is Journal of Systems Chemistry?

Journal of Systems Chemistry is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal encompassing all aspects of systems chemistry including but not limited to:

• experimental and theoretical studies of complex molecular networks
• catalytic and autocatalytic systems
• self-replicating and self-reproducing chemical systems
• dynamic combinatorial chemistry
• emergent phenomena in molecular networks
• information-processing by chemical reactions
• bifurcation and chiral symmetry breaking
• bottom up approaches to synthetic biology and chemical evolution
• research on chemical self-organization inspired by the problems of the origin and synthesis of life
• research from the conjunction of supramolecular, prebiotic and biomimetic chemistry, theoretical biology, complex systems physics, and earth, planetary and space sciences with a center in chemistry

The Journal of Systems Chemistry offers scientists the opportunity to publish their research rapidly in an open access medium that is freely available online to researchers worldwide. All manuscripts submitted to the journal are subject to rigorous peer review. Published material may include electronic supplementary material, such as animations (e.g. graphical chemical structures) or data (e.g. spectra) that can be downloaded for a reader's use.

The Journal of Systems Chemistry aims to work closely with operators of open data repositories such as PubChem. Requests for collaboration are welcome; please contact the Editorial Office.

Content overview

Journal of Systems Chemistry considers the following types of articles:

• Research: primary research from any area of chemistry, or chemistry related/interdisciplinary area.
• Database articles: describing a new database or a substantial improvement of an existing database (for example by an expansion of data to broaden the range of users, or by a major increase in functionality).
• Methodology articles: presenting a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The method needs to have been well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.
• Software articles: describing the source code for software applications, tools or algorithm implementations. Typically, an archive of the source code of the current version of the software should be included with the submitted manuscript as a supplementary file.
• Commentary articles: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board. Editorial Board members may write such articles to highlight hot or emerging areas of research within a given field.
• Book review articles: short articles that are written by specialists and read by the general community. The aim of a Book review article is to give a brief summary of the book's strengths and weaknesses and to evaluate the book's overall usefulness to the audience it is intended for.
• Meeting reports: a short description of a conference that the author has attended. It is usually best for the article to be published as soon after the meeting as possible, and should focus on the key developments presented and discussed at the meeting. These articles are usually commissioned but reports and suggestions may also be submitted for the editors' consideration.
• Perspectives articles: to "focus" attention on important issues - to provoke discussion either by the phrasing of new hypotheses, alternative interpretations of existing work, or by the presentation of new proposals for tackling existing problems.
• Preliminary communication articles: intended for brief reports of findings.
• Review articles: summaries of recent insights in specific research areas within the scope of systems chemistry. They can be submitted either upon specific invitation or editorial acceptance of an author's proposal. To submit a proposal, authors should send a tentative title and abstract to the Editorial Office and justify their expertise in the target area, and also both the scientific relevance and the lack of recent reviews on the topic.

Peer review policies

The Journal of Systems Chemistry is supported by an international Editorial Board.

All articles will be subject to in-house screening, following this the Editor(s)-in-Chief will assign the article to up to 4 referees. We make every effort to reach decisions within 5 weeks of submission. If the referees have requested revisions, in general, only two revised versions will be considered for further peer-review.

All peer review is closed - authors are not given the names of the referees of their article. In the event that the referees do not agree, the final decision will be taken by the Editor(s)-in-Chief with the advice of the Editorial Board.

Editorial Board members and referees are asked to declare any competing interests they may have in reviewing a manuscript.

On occasion, authors of rejected articles will be offered the opportunity to submit their research article to one of the other journals published by Chemistry Central and BioMed Central. Where relevant, the referee reports will be passed on to the second journal, which may expedite the peer review process. Referee reports are not passed on to any journal outside of BioMed Central.

If an author is not satisfied with the decision made on their manuscript, they are welcome to contact the Editorial Office with their appeal. A second opinion on the manuscript will be sought where appropriate.

Edited by Piet Herdewijn, Sijbren Otto and Günter von Kiedrowski, Journal of Systems Chemistry is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Publishing in Journal of Systems Chemistry

Articles in Journal of Systems Chemistry should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

J Syst Chem 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Journal of Systems Chemistry does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Journal of Systems Chemistry, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Journal of Systems Chemistry using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Journal of Systems Chemistry is published by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is open access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Journal of Systems Chemistry however, has taken this further by making all its content open access.

Journal of Systems Chemistry's articles are archived at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

Journal of Systems Chemistry is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.