20^th volume of Green Chemistry

Happy New Year! As the world enters 2018, the journal Green Chemistry starts its 20^th volume, which makes this a time of reflection and of looking forward.

Beginning with reflection, let's look back at how we've changed. Back in 1999, the first year of the journal, we published a total of 57 scientific articles over 6 issues. In 2017, we've published more than 10 times as many articles over 24 issues; you can see the most read articles of 2017 in Table 1. With an Impact Factor at a high of 9.125, the journal is delighted with consistently increasing submissions, demonstrating the growth of this important field. To handle this happy situation, we divide the submissions between the Cambridge office and three Associate Editors: Buxing Han, CJ Li, and Alessandra Quadrelli (Fig. 1). The hard work of the Associate Editors and the Cambridge staff, on behalf of the journal, is greatly appreciated. However, our greatest thanks also go to the thousands of referees who have evaluated manuscripts for us in 2017 and to the thousands of authors who have submitted their work to the journal. Without all of you, this journal could not serve the community.

Fig. 1 The Green Chemistry editorial staff, including the Associate Editors Buxing Han, CJ Li, and Alessandra Quadrelli.

Table 1 Top 10 most downloaded 2017 Green Chemistry articles in 2017

DOI	Title	Authors	Pages
c6gc02328b	Transaminase biocatalysis: optimization and application	Fei Guo and Per Berglund	333–360
c6gc02157c	The E factor 25 years on: the rise of green chemistry and sustainability	Roger A. Sheldon	18–43
c6gc01937d	A review of thermochemical conversion of microalgal biomass for biofuels: chemistry and processes	Gopalakrishnan Kumar, Sutha Shobana, Wei-Hsin Chen, Quang-Vu Bach, Sang-Hyoun Kim, A. E. Atabani and Jo-Shu Chang	44–67
c6gc02526a	An optimised synthesis of high performance radiation-grafted anion-exchange membranes	Lianqin Wang, Emanuele Magliocca, Emma L. Cunningham, William E. Mustain, Simon D. Poynton, Ricardo Escudero-Cid, Mohamed M. Nasef, Julia Ponce-González, Rachida Bance-Souahli, Robert C. T. Slade, Daniel K. Whelligan and John R. Varcoe	831–843
c7gc01078h	Metal–organic frameworks meet scalable and sustainable synthesis	Patrick A. Julien, Cristina Mottillo and Tomislav Friščić	2729–2747
c6gc02825j	Phosphorus containing materials for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution	Zhuofeng Hu, Zhurui Shen and Jimmy C. Yu	588–613
c6gc02856j	Metal-free photocatalysts for various applications in energy conversion and environmental purification	Chunmei Li, You Xu, Wenguang Tu, Gang Chen and Rong Xu	882–899
c6gc03206k	Manufacture and application of lignin-based carbon fibers (LCFs) and lignin-based carbon nanofibers (LCNFs)	Wei Fang, Sheng Yang, Xi-Luan Wang, Tong-Qi Yuan and Run-Cang Sun	1794–1827
c7gc00398f	Syngas production from electrochemical reduction of CO2: current status and prospective implementation	Simelys Hernández, M. Amin Farkhondehfal, Francesc Sastre, Michiel Makkee, Guido Saracco and Nunzio Russo	2326–2346
c6gc02386j	Electrochemical synthesis of ammonia directly from N2 and water over iron-based catalysts supported on activated carbon	Baochen Cui, Jianhua Zhang, Shuzhi Liu, Xianjun Liu, Wei Xiang, Longfei Liu, Hongyu Xin, Matthew J. Lefler and Stuart Licht	298–304

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Looking forward, what do we hope to see in the coming year? The focus of our wish list is, as always, to serve the community better and enable progress towards a greener future. How can we do that? We're preparing a special issue to highlight the needs for greener chemistry in various areas or industrial sectors. Also, we can serve the community by helping authors and referees understand what we're looking for in manuscripts.

So what are we looking for? Every paper must have each of the following two characteristics:

• Quality is always paramount. Authors, referees, and editors must ensure that all scientific aspects of papers are of the highest quality, not just the green chemistry. For example, if the manuscript describes the synthesis of new organic compounds, then the evidence of purity and correct identification must be as rigorous as if the paper were being submitted to a high quality journal of organic chemistry. The same consideration applies to aspects related to physical, inorganic, or analytical chemistry, life cycle analysis, engineering, and other major aspects of the manuscript. Authors are encouraged to talk with or collaborate with experts in other fields if that would help to ensure that every aspect of their manuscript meets the expectations of related fields.

• Green chemistry. We sometimes receive scientifically excellent manuscripts that don't mention the advance that is made in green chemistry. It's not necessary for the words “green chemistry” to appear in the paper, but the improvement should be explicitly stated. If a new technology is being described, then what is the old technology that it would replace? How would the new technology improve upon the old technology in terms of environmental impact? Please don't assume that it's sufficient to mention a something like water as a solvent or biomass as a feedstock, without a clear and specific comparison to the incumbent technology. Without this background information, it's difficult for referees and editors to determine whether an advance in green chemistry has been made.

If every manuscript shared these features, then we could accept many more papers!

We also hope to widen the scope of papers that we publish. Green chemistry is relevant to many areas of human activities, but some of those areas receive more coverage in our journal than others. In particular, topics related to larger-scale activities and greater environmental impacts (mining, cement, fertilizers, pesticides, paints, natural gas) were each mentioned in the abstracts of 6 or fewer articles in 2015–2017. In contrast, topics related to small-scale activities and smaller environmental impacts (nanoparticles, ionic liquids) were each mentioned in the abstracts of more than 100 articles. We therefore particularly encourage the submission of articles in the larger-scale and emerging fields of chemistry.

As we celebrate the start of the new year, let us all renew our commitment to helping the environment by discovering, testing, writing, refereeing, editing, and publishing the best green chemistry in 2018.

Best Wishes for the New Year.

Philip Jessop and Anna Simpson

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