Opportunities on the CHIMIA Editorial Board

Gillian Harvey and Catherine E. Housecroft

CHIMIA is published by the Swiss Chemical Society and produced by the members of the Editorial Board (EB). Two members, the Chairperson and the Editor-in-Chief, will be leaving the EB in the near future. Here we present themain tasks of the two roles to illustrate the opportunities presented by these tasks.

 

CHIMIA is published by the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS) as one of its central tasks. It has been a platinum(diamond) open access journal since 2020.

The SCS Board of Directors (BoD) appoints the Editorial Board (EB) that deals with all publishing activities. The Edito- rial Board consists of the Chairperson, the Editor-in-Chief, a Web Editor and at least three more members withcomplementary subject-specific skills. The members of the EB work on a voluntary basis and the Chairperson, theEditor-in-Chief, and the Web Edi- tor receive an honorarium. The Technical Editor and an external proofreader areemployed for all production tasks. The SCS Head Office supports the Editorial Board in many tasks.

The current EB is well-established with several long-term members who jointly have a lot of experience inpublishing this journal. However, the time has come for two of the members, the Chairperson and the Editor-in-Chief, toleave the EB and here we would like to give an overview of the tasks of these two roles and invite applications from anyone interested in guiding a society journal into the future.

Editor-in-Chief

The current Editor-in-Chief, Catherine E. Housecroft, joined CHIMIA with a great deal of experience in journal editorial work. She has been instrumental in producing many interesting special topic issues for CHIMIA withparticular relevance to the Swiss chemistry community.

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for planning the special topic issues on an annual basis, inviting and supporting Guest Editors and ensuring the scientific quality of the articles. He/she has the final say in whether to accept a submission. The Editor- in-Chief is also directly responsible for the two issues a year that present the work of the SCS junior and major prizewinners.

The remaining eight issues are organized and supervised by invited Guest Editors. Guest Editors also organize the peer review process.

An editorial program for the coming year is prepared by September of the previous year. This comprises a full list of topics and the Guest Editors who have committed to their respective issue. The topics are proposed and selected bythe Editor-in-Chief according to his/her interests and discretion and also to reflect current interest in the chemical sciences in Switzerland – see recent issues on sustainable development, AI and machine learning, academic/industrial collaborations, atmospheric chemistry and material sciences (the latter two issues are upcoming). The topics are discussed at the EB meetings with input from all EB members. The SCS Divisions are also committed to supply an issue topic and guest editor every one to two years.

The Editor-in-Chief sets up schedules for the guest editors, including intermediate and final deadlines. He/she,together with the Technical Editor, guides the guest editors through the submission and review processes on the OJS system (chimia.ch) and provides help and advice where required. The chimia.ch website, based on the Open Journal Systems (OJS), is used for all CHIMIA tasks from submission to online publication. Once an article is cleared forpublication, the Technical Editor takes over the production process. The Editor-in-Chief also handles a small number ofspontaneous submissions of manuscripts to CHIMIA which may be considered as Notes to the journal.

Catherine’s last year as Editor-in-Chief is 2026 and ideally her replacement would start work during that year tobenefit from her experience and knowledge.

The role of Editor-in-Chief would be ideal for someone with good connections throughout the Swiss chemistry community (both academic and industrial), and an interest in open access publishing, and a commitment tosupporting CHIMIA and the Swiss Chemical Society in the production of a good-quality society journal.

Chairperson

The Chairperson of the CHIMIA Editorial Board has a range of administrative duties and is involved in the strategicdevelopment of the journal.

The Chairperson schedules the EB meetings (3 p.a.) together with the other EB members; he/she calls for agenda items between the meetings, writes the agenda, and chairs the EB meetings.

When a current member of the EB expresses the intention to leave, the Chairperson searches for possible replacement candidates together with the member who is leaving, the other EB members and the SCS.

The Chairperson is an ex officio member of the SCS Board of Directors and Executive Board where he/she represents the interests of CHIMIA on the Boards and is also involved in all other Board business. The annual budget, once agreed with the other EB members, is presented to the SCS BoD for approval. Exceptional expenditure orproposals are also brought before the SCS BoD for approval. He/she maintains close contact with SCS Head Office withrespect to the running of the journal, finances, and other aspects such as future developments.

Further administrative tasks include the preparation of an editorial programme for each issue, checking the monthly invoices from FO-Druck, our print partner, for correctness, and checking the quarterly invoices from CrossRef (digital object identifiers (doi), similarity searches, membership fees).

In addition to these administrative duties, the Chairperson is involved in the strategic development of CHIMIA. The mostsignificant and far-reaching recent change to the journal was the decision to flip CHIMIA to a platinum open access system. This means that neither the author nor the reader is required to pay any fees to access the journal. Platinum (or diamond) OA is gaining in acceptance in academic publishing as a viable alternative to the gold OA system provided by commercial publishers. Although this decision was unquestionably the right one for CHIMIA, it did resultin an increased financial burden for the SCS since subscribers were lost. It is hoped that the Swiss National Foundation and swissuniversities will back up their expressed support for diamond OA in the near future by providing funding.

The Chairperson is involved in the OA discussions currently ongoing in Switzerland and Europe and ensures thatCHIMIA is recognised and acknowledged as a well-run diamond OA journal that has a great deal to contribute to the Swiss publishing eco- system.

Many other strategic considerations such as alternative forms of funding, print/no print, wider recognition, etc. also form part of the Chairperson’s portfolio.

The current Chairperson, Gillian Harvey, will be leaving at the end of 2025. Her replacement would ideally join theEB during 2025 to gain from Gillian’s many years of experience working for CHIMIA.

The role of Chairperson of the CHIMIA Editorial Board would be ideal for someone interested in the day-to-day run- ning of a scientific journal and in particular to someone keen to guide and influence the future of the SwissChemical Society journal.

If you are interested in either of these two important roles and would like to know more, please contact Gillian Harvey (harvey@scg.ch) the current Chairperson of the EB or Catherine Housecroft (catherine.housecroft@unibas.ch)the current Editor- in-Chief. We look forward to hearing from you!