In this interview, Dr. Mendoza-Cruz speaks about how open science helps broaden access to research and shares his hopes for the future of open science.
As part of an ongoing series here on ACS Axial, we’re interviewing authors and librarians from around the world to find out more about their research, their published work, and the impact that open science is having on a changing landscape of research communication. This time, we're speaking with Dr. Rubén Mendoza-Cruz, Assistant Professor at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
...researchers work for the benefit of people and we hope their lives will be enhanced by what we do, so it's great that they can access our work for free.
Hello, Dr. Mendoza-Cruz. In a few sentences, could you tell me about your research group's current focus?
My research currently focuses on the design of nanoalloys: nanoscale alloys which have specific properties that can be used in many different areas, for example biosensors or catalysis. My group is interested in developing ways to control the physical chemical parameters of these materials, in particular the morphology and chemical composition. We focus on studying the crystalline structure of these materials and the atomic ordering through high resolution techniques such as transmission electron microscopy. We aim to study all these parameters to enhance the specific properties of these materials, and to identify correlations between these properties and these physical parameters of nanoparticles.
You published a paper titled "Kinetical Evolution from Icosahedrons to Triangular Nanotripods" a few months ago. How would you summarize that for anyone who isn't familiar with the area?
All the properties—in particular, catalytic properties—that nanoscale particles possess depend strongly on morphology and structural defects. The shape of the particle exposes different environments where a molecule can interact with the surface and carry out a specific reaction. This shows the potential of changing the shapes of nanoparticles to control the reaction.
In this paper, we reported a simple but very effective method of controlling the shape of nanoparticles—forcing its evolution from a regular symmetrical icosahedron to an unusual shape, such as triangular nanotripods. When we studied the factors that affect this morphological evolution, we looked at the growth pathway of nanoparticles through transmission electron microscopy. We also reported the phase transfer of these nanoparticles to be used as decontamination agents for residual pollution in water—this change in morphology of nanoparticles affects their catalytic properties for the conversion of toxic compounds.
The article was published in Chemistry of Materials—how was the experience?
This is my first paper in Chemistry of Materials, but I have published in other ACS journals before. The experience was really good, and the ACS platform is very friendly; it's very simple to submit any paper and the response time is quite fast compared to other chemistry publishers. Everything in the system is really clear.
The article was published open access under your institution's agreement with ACS—how did you discover this option was available?
Our institution—UNAM in Mexico—sent an email to all the faculty members with information on all available open access agreements, including ACS. That's how I first discovered that we have this option, but also when I submitted to ACS and the manuscript was accepted, there was a question within the ACS platform if I wanted to publish open access through my institution's agreement, and I took it. I think it's a really good idea for the platform to ask that, because it makes it clear when the option is available to authors.
What are your thoughts on the concept of open access?
In general, I think open access is great. I think the fact that that our research is available for any person in the world is great, because one of the limitations in disseminating research is the lack of free and simple access to articles. For example, I did my Bachelor's in a smaller university which didn't have much access to the research literature, which made it difficult to read the journals I wanted. Fortunately, thanks to our institution in particular, and these open access agreements between publishers and institutions, we have the option to publish OA without having to find funds ourselves and have a bigger impact with our research. It means that people out of our academic area can find out about what we are doing here. I hope that this concept for open access keeps growing.
I have published three or four other articles as open access in collaboration with other researchers, with other publishers and I think open access means the possibility of reaching more people and increasing our visibility is great, especially for younger or early-career researchers because it can help make our work more widely known - and in the end, researchers work for the benefit of people and we hope their lives will be enhanced by what we do, so it's great that they can access our work for free.
Have you heard from readers who were able to get access to your work because it was open access?
Yes, even in my own country, when I go to a conference and meet people, I'm asked if my articles are available in open access. I also get emails sometimes from people who can't access my older articles that are not open access, asking me to share a copy with them. But I have had people thank me for publishing open access, and I have to say that it's thanks to our institution, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, for signing these agreements with publishers, because it is only possible because of them.
What are your thoughts on open science workflows more generally?
I haven't used preprints, and I don't have too much experience with open science, but I know there are platforms to make preprints available and those are really important. I know that there are many tools to publish in open access now; we have open access agreements with many publishers, and ways to make multimedia content available to help disseminate the research that we are doing. Open access and open science is growing, and that's really good.
What do you think are the biggest recent developments in open science and open access?
Well, I think the platforms are available now and software for open science are a big development—open software for science to help calculate findings and manage large sets of data. The number of platforms that we have today to disclose or to disseminate science have also grown; for example, we have a platform for sharing short videos about techniques, and if we present at a conference, for example, the talk can be record and shared on open access platforms after that. So I think all the open science platforms and software are the biggest recent changes that enable us to share our research more broadly.
Where do you see open access in 10 years' time?
I think that it can continue growing since from now there are more and more journals and platforms to disseminate science. I hope this growth will continue, and maybe in 10 years we can reach an optimal number of journals or publishers using an open access approach.
The idea of open science is exciting. For example, in the case of the pandemic that we recently suffered, I'm sure that many people were looking for information on the disease. If we didn't have open access to research, it'd be impossible for people to know what the research was showing. I hope accessibility to science increases in the future.
What do you think you'd be doing if you weren't a researcher?
This is difficult to answer! I like doing science too much to consider another career, but I am an engineer by training—o maybe if science wasn't my focus, perhaps I could be doing something related to that. I like drawing, so maybe I could combine some artistic part of drawing with design for engineering—something like that.
Check out the other interviews in this series:
Ian Cousins, Stockholm University
Hongxia Duan, TU Eindhoven
Vojtěch Vaněček, Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences
Louise Otting, TU Delft
Kristine Horvat, University of New Haven
David W. McCamant, University of Rochester
Fernando Sartillo Piscil, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
Lillian Chong, University of Pittsburgh
Sue Cardinal, University of Rochester