Bertozzi the Editor

Carolyn Bertozzi:  We work at the interface of chemistry and biology, and our mission is to develop chemical tools that allow us to study biological processes in new ways, and this has given us insight into how various diseases work and how we might treat them.  We're very interested in cancer and being able to detect cancer at early stages and identify pathways that we can interrupt that might stop the growth of cancer cells.

When ACS first approached me with the idea for ACS Central Science, it immediately resonated with some of the issues that I feel are very important in chemistry and in society.  Our challenge is to create a publishing house that basically collects the most exciting high impact work across both chemistry and allied disciplines and bring it together in a way that's accessible, readable, open, welcoming, inclusive.  That's what we can achieve.

Because we have no subscription charges, no author charges, this means people can get into this journal at any time from any place.  The barriers to access have been eliminated, and this is I think a trend that major publishing houses are considering and following.  But, ACS is taking a leadership role.

If we can use this journal as a vehicle to elevate the visibility of chemistry as the central science, not just amongst chemists—I think most of us are already in agreement with that—but amongst scientists outside of chemistry, amongst people in the population outside of the sciences. Aand again, this is what open access allows you to do.

Even 10 to 15 years ago, there was a misconception of open access journals as a place where people just submit the article that could not get accepted anywhere else.  Nowadays, people understand that open access publishing is a social responsibility.

As more scientists start to understand the social responsibility of publishing in open access journals, I think what we'll find is that competition to have one's articles accepted in ACS Central Science becomes quite fierce.

Our goal at ACS Central Science is to publish work at the leading edge of discovery in fundamental chemistry, but at the same time, we hope to publish interdisciplinary science that showcases the centrality of chemistry.  We're hoping to get articles that are of broad interest, that are accessible to a broad