Looking Back on 20 Years of Crystal Growth & Design

After 20 years as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Crystal Growth & Design (CGD), Professor Robin Rogers announced this month that he would be ending his service to the journal at the end of 2019. ACS Publications is celebrating Professor Rogers’ contributions to CGD and highlighting how the journal has grown and matured during his 20 years as Editor-in-Chief.

Some of CGD’s most notable milestones include:

1. In 2001, CGD was the first ACS journal to have web-enhanced objects (WEOs) that allowed for the addition of clickable links and animation to the electronic publication. This innovation led the way for other journals to incorporate now-familiar multimedia enhancements.
2. CGD received the 2001 award for Best New PSP Journal in any category, presented by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.
3. Professor Maochun Hong (Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences) became the first ACS Associate Editor from mainland China in 2006. With this appointment, CGD served as a leader among ACS journals, which now count almost 75 editors from China.
4. Professor Ashwini Nangia (then from the University of Hyderabad, now Director of the CSIR National Chemical Laboratory, Pune) became the first ACS Associate Editor from India in 2008. China and India remain two countries contributing some of the highest percentages of papers to the Journal.
5. CGD implemented a collaboration with the Cambridge Structural Database to enhance the integrity of crystal structure data and to streamline the CIF submission process for authors.

The breadth of CGD’s scope and topical coverage is highlighted in this periodic table graphic, showing the elements that have been mentioned in the journal since its first issue in January 2001. In this graphic, you will notice that the journal has published articles on all but 33 elements, four of which — nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og) — had not yet been discovered at the time of the journal’s launch.

In celebration of the International Year of the Periodic Table in 2019, Editor-in-Chief Robin Rogers is encouraging researchers to submit manuscripts to CGD, to help the journal publish every element in the periodic table.

Throughout his time as CGD’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Rogers has held the interests of the research community the journal serves at the forefront of his efforts.