Celebrating the 10th Year of ACS Energy Letters

Abstract

It is with delight that we embark on the tenth year of ACS Energy Letters. Since the launch of the journal in 2016, we have built an enthusiastic energy community of authors, reviewers and readers. Their continued support has helped us to build a top-tier journal to disseminate new advances in energy research and discuss important scientific issues from the laboratory to the real world. We are pleased to engage with the passionate members of the scientific community who have made impressive progress in recent years to address clean energy challenges. The desire to reduce the carbon footprint has led to many innovative strategies to adopt renewable energy technologies. For example, perovskite solar cells, which showed an increase in efficiency from 14.1% in 2013 to 26.7% in 2024, are now being targeted for large-scale panel production. Si-perovskite-based tandem solar cells have made significant strides, reaching a record efficiency of 34.6%. Similarly, storage batteries have emerged from table-top devices to grid storage, and electrocatalysis is driving CO₂ reduction on a pilot plant scale. The next phase of energy research is likely to be dominated with topics such as device stability of solar cells, display devices and electrolyzers, for long-term operation, fast charging of storage batteries, and recycling strategies for solar cells and storage batteries. Fundamental studies exploring properties of new materials for energy conversion and storage, and a better understanding of interfacial charge transfer processes in various devices (e.g., solar cells, storage batteries and LEDs), will also see a major growth in research. The growth of ACS Energy Letters during its first ten years can be seen from the increase in number of published articles as well as their growing impact (Figure 1). In addition to Letters, Perspectives and Reviews, we regularly publish Viewpoints and Energy Focus articles. These features offer our authors a unique opportunity to engage in scientific discussions. We also regularly feature Collections that compile key papers on an emerging topic. Each year, we also highlight contributions of women scientists along with their inspiring thoughts. Having anchored with these popular features during this early period, we plan to grow in the coming years by attracting new authors and readers. Figure 1. Growth of ACS Energy Letters as seen from the published articles (all types) and citations. (* indicates incomplete data of 2024). Source: Web of Science, Clarivate Analytics, December 10, 2024. The success of the journal stems from our Editorial Advisory Board members, who regularly provide feedback to our editorial team. Special thanks to EAB members Leif Hammarström, Uppsala University, Sweden, Dongling Ma, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Canada, Bryan D. McCloskey, University of California Berkeley, USA, Iván Mora Seró, Universitat Jaume I, Spain, Edward (Ted) Sargent, Northwestern University, USA, and Yi-Jun Xu, Fuzhou University, China, who have completed their terms. We welcome new EAB members, Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, Satish A. Patil, Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, India, Lorenzo Malavasi, Chemistry Department, University of Pavia, Italy, Ji-Hyun Jang, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, UNIST, Republic of Korea, Partha P. Mukherjee, School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, USA, Lakshminarayana Polavarapu, Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Vigo, Spain, Venkataraman Thangadurai, School of Chemistry, University of St Andrews, United Kingdom, and Ranjani Viswanatha, International Centre for Materials Science and New Chemistry Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India. By having a good mix of senior and younger scientists from around the globe on our EAB board, we are able to seek a wide range of views on the journal’s progress. I also take the opportunity to thank Raphaële Clément, University of California Santa Barbara, USA, who has completed her term as a Topic Editor. Her expertise in storage batteries helped us to publish several outstanding papers. Dinesh Kabra, Physics Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, and Ya You, International School of Materials Science and Engineering and School of Materials Science and Microelectronics, Wuhan University of Technology, China, will now join our editorial team as Topic Editors. Filippo De Angelis, University of Perugia, Italy, and Yang-Kook Sun, Hanyang University, Republic of Korea, will now serve as Executive Editors. They will take additional responsibilities to manage the editorial manuscript flow and engage in improving the invited content of the journal. Together our editorial team will continue to work with our authors and reviewers to maintain high-quality topical content in the journal. As part of our 10th year celebration, we will publish several exciting features throughout the year. Two such Energy Focus features published in this issue include, (i) Women Scientists at the Forefront of Energy Research: Part 7 and (ii) A Conversation with Ib Chorkendorff. On behalf of our entire editorial team, I would like to wish everyone a happy new year! This article has not yet been cited by other publications.