Tech Highlights was prepared by Colm Glynn and David McNulty of University College Cork, Ireland, David Enos of Sandia National Laboratories, Zenghe Liu of Verily Life Science, and Donald Pile of Rolled-Ribbon Battery Company. Each article highlighted here is available free online.

A new issue of ECS Transactions (ECST) has just been published from the XXXI National Congress of the Mexican Society of Electrochemistry/9th Meeting of the ECS Mexican Section.

The papers in this issue of ECST were presented in Monterrey, Mexico on May 30, 2016 – June 3, 2016. ECST Volume 76, Issue 1 can be found here.

Full text PDF issues of ECST can also be purchased in the ECS ONLINE STORE as full-text digital downloads.

Ajit Khosla is a professor at Yamagata University in Yonezawa, Japan and a visiting professor at San Diego State University’s College of Engineering. Khosla’s work in the area of nano-microsystems has resulted in more than 100 scientific and academic contributions. Khosla has recently been named associate editor for the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES).

The Electrochemical Society: What do you hope to accomplish in your role as associate editor?

Ajit Khosla: As an associate editor, I hope to accomplish quick and fair peer review process, as little as three weeks from submission. I would like to encourage and convince scientists and scholars from all over the world, including ones who are presenting their work at ECS meetings, to strongly consider submitting full-length journal papers to the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. I will also be focusing on to soliciting high-quality papers in the sensor topical interest area in biosensors, micro-nano fabricated sensors, systems & devices for healthcare, and environmental monitoring.

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In 2014, ECS became a member of the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) registry. ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort founded by academic institutions, professional bodies, funding agencies, and publishers to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers intended to remedy the systemic name ambiguity problem seen in scholarly research. ORCID resolves the confusion brought about by name changes, the cultural differences in name order presentation, and the inconsistent use of first-name and middle-name abbreviations on published research papers.

ECS wants to learn more about your perspective on ORCID iD. Take our survey below!

Create your own user feedback survey

ORCID iDs are free to obtain and use. The registration process is integrated into the ECS journals submission site, ECSxPress (ExP) for convenience.

Don’t have an ORCID iD? Learn more and register today!

The ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology is now featuring a focus issue on Thermoelectric Materials & Devices: Phonon Engineering, Advanced Materials and Thermal Transport. The issue reflects the symposia from the 228th ECS Meeting on Thermoelectric and Thermal Interface Materials in Phoenix, AZ.

In the issue’s preface, the authors tell us that advances in this field, “. . . can inspire developments in thermoelectrics that may underpin the next major advance in energy harvesting and cooling and ultimately improve the quality of our devices, and help drive energy efficiency and a greener society.”

The focus issue discusses advances, challenges, and applications in thermoelectrics and its various sub-fields such as phonon transport physics, materials science, electronics, condensed matter physics, engineering, the chemistry of materials, and processing technology.

The Society would like to thank the authors, reviewers, and editors who contributed to this focus issue. Special thank you to Colm O’Dwyer from University College Cork, Renkun Chen from the University of California, San Diego, Jr-Hau He from King Abdulla University of Science and Technology, Jaeho Lee from the University of California Irvine, and Kafil M. Razeeb from University College Cork.

Read the focus issue in the ECS Digital Library.

Since 1902, ECS has been at the forefront of publishing electrochemical and solid state science and technology research. For the past 115 years, the Society has been publishing high quality, peer-reviewed journals that contain the work of renowned scientists, engineers, investors, and Nobel laureates. Now, ECS is providing researchers a new avenue to offer insights into emerging or established fields: Perspective articles.

“The Perspective article was established to facilitate new research and research directions by bringing new interpretations or thoughts of experts on a specific topic within the fields of interest of the ECS community,” says Robert Savinell, editor of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES).

Perspective articles differ from traditional research articles published in ECS journals. Instead of focusing on presenting new findings and data, Perspective articles aim to tap into the expertise of researchers, giving them a platform to present thoughts on their respective field and offer new insight or trends. The new article type will allow authors to reach a broader audience and spark discussion in the scientific community.

ECS recently published its first Perspective article in JES, “Localized Corrosion: Passive Film Breakdown vs Pit Growth,” where corrosion experts Gerald Frankel, Tianshu Li, and John Scully discuss the modern debates in localized corrosion and share their outlook on the field.

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Now is a very important time for institutions to have uninterrupted access to ECS content. A recent evaluation suggests that more than half of ECS published content involves the sustainability of our planet!

Important work in batteries, energy conversion, fuel cells, nanostructures, and more is being released every day from researchers and contributors in ECS peer-reviewed and rapid publication journals, and other ECS titles.

The Society offers various subscription packages:

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The open access movement has bolstered content dissemination worldwide, but it has also led to the rise of “predatory publishers.” Instead of prioritizing the quality of the content, predatory journals exist to take advantage of the pay-to-publish open access system, enforcing a lax or non-existent peer review system while charging authors processing fees to publish their work.

Researchers who are eager to publish – specifically early-career researchers – often get caught up in the predatory publisher cycle because they’re either unaware of the practices or have not verified a journal’s reputation.

A new investigation, spearheaded by Nature, found that dozens of academic journals have been recruiting fake editors and offering them a place on their editorial board.

To begin the investigation, Nature submitted a fake application for an editor position to 360 journals, ranging from legitimate titles to suspected predatory journals. Of the 360 journals, all of which were listed in either Journal Citation Reports (JRC), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), or Beall’s list (possible predatory journals), 48 accepted the faux editor application.

The fictitious CV sent to publishers was that of Anna O. Szust (ozust being the polish word for fraud), featuring a slew of fake scientific degrees, credits on books that don’t exist, and not one legitimate citation to her name or any work indexed in the Web of Science or Scopus.

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This focus issue of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society is devoted to the mathematical modeling of electrochemical systems across multiple scales. Future advances in electrochemical systems will be greatly influenced by the need to design and control materials and processes using advanced simulation tools. Length scales in electrochemical applications can range from electronic to atomic to molecular to nanoscale to microscale to macroscale.

This issue, as well as regular symposia on multiscale modeling for electrochemical systems at ECS meetings, was majorly inspired by the work of Professor John Newman from the University of California-Berkeley. He dedicated his career to this topic, and he trained and influenced countless researchers on this topic over the years.

The deadline for submissions is April 2, 2017. Submit today!

All papers accepted for this focus issue will be published as open access at no cost to authors; the article processing charge (APC) will be waived.

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