I am pleased to report on the latest happenings at Catalysts. It is gratifying to me to look back at where we’ve been and what we’ve accomplished, but also inspiring to peer ahead to how we will grow and improve.
Catalysts continues to experience dramatic growth in submissions, published articles, and impact. Our submissions grew in the last year from 241 in 2015 to 439 in 2016. This resulted in 218 publications, up from 135 in 2015. I’d note that we’ve also maintained a high standard for what we publish, as we accept less than 60% of submissions, and that we’ve improved our efficiency in processing manuscripts, with average processing time falling from 67 days in 2015 to 63.5 days in 2016. I hope you are as pleased with these numbers as I am. My goal has been to turn Catalysts into the top choice for practitioners in catalysis to publish their results in an open-source journal, and become a leading journal in the field of catalysis. These numbers suggest we are well on our way to meeting these goals.
To improve visibility of Catalysts, we launched a travel award for post-doctoral researchers in the field of catalysis. This award provides 1000 Swiss Francs for a deserving post-doctoral associate to travel to a conference of their choosing. We were almost overwhelmed with the number of applications: 181. I am pleased to announce that Michiel Dusselier of KU-Leuven has been selected as the 2017 winner. Michiel will be attending the 7th FEZA (Federation of European Zeolite Associations) Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria to present his work on zeolite synthesis. We hope that the Catalysts Travel Award will be helpful as Michiel embarks on a career in research.
Later this year, we will be announcing a second travel award: this one targeted at PhD students. Please watch for the details on this award on our website:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/catalysts.
Thank you for your continued interest in Catalysts. We welcome your contributions in the years ahead.
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Prof. Dr. Keith L. HohnEditor-in-Chief
