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!

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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By: Mary Yess, ECS Deputy Executive Director & Chief Content Officer

Richard Poynder (@RickyPo) is well-known and well-respected in the open access community, especially for his “Open and Shut?” blog. Poynder has written an excellent post, which is part interview with Philip Cohen, founder of the SocArXiv preprint server, and part synopsis of the resurgent preprint server movement. The precursor of them all is arXiv, which was founded way back in 1991. Poynder asks, can preprint servers “gain sufficient traction, impetus, and focus to push the revolution the open access movement began in a more desirable direction?”

The post also talks a good bit about the preprint server framework created by the Center for Open Science (COS). ECS, who is working with COS on launching our own preprint server, gets several mentions in the article as well. In this age of 8-second attention spans, it’s a long article, but it’s well worth the read.

Think.Check.Submit.

ECS wants you to learn how to publish with a trusted journal.  A cross-industry initiative called Think.Check.Submit. is led by representatives from various organizations and publishers that encourages authors to find trusted journals for their research. It provides easy steps to follow about safe publishing as well as questions authors should be asking themselves.

ECS and our friends at Think.Check.Submit. are encouraging authors to:

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There’s a lot of noise in our world today about separating fact from fiction. We are constantly bombarded with volumes of information and data—and we are challenged with what and who to believe?

But when it comes to electrochemistry and solid state sciences, and related fields, be assured that the ECS journals are a source that you can trust. For 115 years, ECS has been publishing high quality, peer-reviewed journals that contain work from YOU—renowned scientists, engineers, inventors, and Nobel Laureates. YOU also provide the high quality and knowledgeable peer review of manuscripts submitted for ECS journal consideration. From our meetings proceedings, ECS Transactions, to our journals, the Journal of the Electrochemical Society and the Journal of Solid State Science and Technology, we maintain rigorous standards that land our publications in the top ranked, most cited in the world.

ECS is also one of the only remaining independent, nonprofit society publisher of electrochemistry and solid state science and technology. With over 3.2 million full-text article downloads in 2016, we are seeing an increase in use of the ECS Digital Library since we have transitioned to hybrid open access, with the future goal to completely Free the Science, ensuring complete access to our entire body of knowledge.

We’re proud of this legacy and we thank you for the contributions that you’ve made to ECS publications through the years.

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On March 4, 2017, ECS will be celebrating Open Data Day! For 2017, this global initiative focuses on four key areas that open data can contribute to: open research data, tracking public money flows, open data for the environment, and open data for human rights.

What is open data? Open data is the revolutionary concept that some data should be available for public use without legal or fiscal restrictions. ECS’s Free the Science initiative aligns categorically with open research data and open data for the environment. This ECS initiative is fighting to bring science and technology into the information sharing era; as technology makes information rapidly more available, the way in which data is accessible and presented becomes evidently more important for scientific advancement. In light of this, ECS is actively seeking ways to make our research open to expedite innovation and find solutions for environmental issues and other technically relevant areas. In addition to this, we are seeking to change the way that scholarly communication among scientists is exchanged and socialized. In the coming months, keep your eye out for big announcements in these areas which are expected to help us accomplish those goals!

Do you want to participate in Open Data Day but don’t know how? On Thursday, March 2 through Saturday, March 4, ECS will be circulating a survey to determine our field’s specific needs in the realm of accessibility to data and research. The best way to contribute to open data is by sharing your knowledge and helping us to understand the accessibility needs of our researchers.

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