Newly Launched Open Access Journals Seek to Address Global Environmental Problems Through Fundamental Research

Open Access journal publishing appears to be a good match for rapidly developing, cutting edge and interdisciplinary scientific fields, such as climate and energy research, especially due to their potential to address cross-border issues, such as the environmental effects of fuel production.
A Blog Article by Pablo Markin.
On November 20, 2018, John Irvine, who specializes in materials and energy science the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK, gave an interview on the occasion of his recent launch of the Gold Open Access, peer-reviewed Journal of Physics: Energy in the capacity of its editor-in-chief. Among the rationales for founding this journal is the pressing need to tackle climate change-related challenges, such as emissions that the fossil fuel production and use cause. Additionally, innovations in this field draw on interdisciplinary knowledge and expertise, e.g., in the domains of energy materials, fuel cell technology, and energy conversion processes, which go beyond the boundaries of engineering, bioenergy and physics alone.
Open Access journals positioned on the frontiers of scientific research are also likely to facilitate collaborations between industry and academia, as they can allow scientific research networks to translate their findings into applications more efficiently, while removing paywall-related barriers to technology transfer and bringing public funding for fundamental science more effectively to bear on developing solutions to global problems, such as by means of renewable energy technologies. In other words, new Open Access scientific journals can act as catalysts for path-breaking research in their respective fields, while breaking the walls between basic science, governmental policy, and industrial applications.
For instance, in their recent article, published on November 29, 2018, in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens, Kuznetsova, Cullingham, McKenzie and Aiken have explored the environmental transmission mechanisms of the contagious chronic wasting disease that affects free-range animal species, e.g., rain deer and elk, in North America, East Asia and Europe. Another topic of vital global importance is addressed in the article published on August 14, 2018, in the Open Access journal Scientific Reports, in which Saleh Zaky, Greetham, Tucker and Du present their findings on the production of bioethanol on the basis of seawater, which is likely to lead to significant freshwater savings in the course of making biofuels.
Similarly, published since 2000, with an Impact Factor of 2.172, and re-launched by De Gruyter in June 2018, Reviews on Advanced Materials Science (RAMS) is a peer-reviewed Open Access journal that has appointed Eulogio Castro, a Full Professor of Chemical Engineering at the of the University of Jaén, Spain, and extensive international research and teaching experience, e.g., at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Toulouse, France, and the University of Florida, USA, as its editor-in-chief, due to his expertise in the fields of biomass conversion, biomaterials production and translating biofuel research into value-added renewable energy products.
This journal, thus, aims to contribute to the resolution of global ecological problems, such as climate change, by publishing latest theoretical and experimental studies in the domain of advanced materials that are critical for the development of environmentally friendly biofuels.
By Pablo Markin
Featured Image Credits: AgriLife, Algae TestTube, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, May 18, 2010 | © Courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife/Flickr.
This post is based on an article that originally appeared in OpenScience, 21/12/2018, https://openscience.com/newly-launched-open-access-journals-seek-to-address-global-environmental-problems-through-fundamental-research/.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Pablo Markin (December 22, 2018). Newly Launched Open Access Journals Seek to Address Global Environmental Problems Through Fundamental Research. The DGO Blog. Retrieved March 16, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/nkca