Last updated: June 25, 2024 View the latest guidelines online

Manuscript Submission Requirements Checklist

Submit with Fast Format: ACS journals have simplified formatting requirements with a

streamlined and standardized review-ready format for an initial manuscript submission.

Include article titles in references.

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Cover Letter: must include a paragraph explaining why your manuscript is appropriate for

least three different countries who could evaluate the work. These suggested reviewers must

not be former mentors or mentees nor collaborators or co-authors from the past five years.

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Disclosure of previous submissions: If the manuscript was previously rejected by ACS

Physical Chemistry Au, provide the manuscript number and a detailed response to each

reviewer’s comments. If the manuscript was previously declined by any other journal, even

without external peer review, this must be disclosed; however, providing the journal name and

additional information is optional.

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Disclosure of prior publication & ACS Physical Chemistry Au preprint policy: Submitted

entry at submission.

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Manuscript Type: Article, Letter, Review, Perspective, Correspondence/Rebuttal, or Addition

and Correction

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Title and Abstract: Be clear and concise, reflect the emphasis and content of the manuscript.

Titles and abstracts of manuscripts may not contain the words “New”, “Novel”, or “First”;

“Superb”, “Excellent”, “Exceptional”, “Outstanding” or other similar descriptive words

discouraged unless rigorously supported by a thorough comparison with the state-of-the-art in

the manuscript. Acronyms and abbreviations are not permitted in manuscript titles, unless

recommended by ACS Physical Chemistry Au. Figures must be mentioned in the text in

consecutive order and number with Arabic numerals. Avoid inset figures.

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References: Include article titles in references.

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Safety: Authors must emphasize any unexpected, new, and/or significant hazards associated

with the work.

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Table of Contents graphic:

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Supporting Information (if any): must be included at the time of electronic submission.

Include the heading “Supporting Information” followed by the manuscript title, author list, and

affiliations. Tables, Schemes, and Figures should be written as Table S1, Figure S1, Scheme

S1, etc. All pages of the PDF Supporting Information should be numbered consecutively.

Copies of all related works that are “in press”, “accepted”, or “submitted” for publication or in

the late stages of preparation must be uploaded as Supporting Information for Review Only at

the time of submission. References that are only available online should be cited by the Digital

Object Identifier (DOI).

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ACS Physical Chemistry Au is an open access journal, which publishes original, fundamental and

applied research on all aspects of physical chemistry. The journal publishes new and original

experimental, computational and theoretical research of interest to physical chemists, biophysical

chemists, chemical physicists, physicists, material scientists, and engineers. An essential criterion

for acceptance is that the manuscript provides new physical insight or develops new tools and

methods of general interest. Some major topical areas include:

Molecules, Clusters and Aerosols; Biophysics, Biomaterials, Liquids and Soft Matter; Energy,

Materials and Catalysis

Manuscript Types

Articles should report a significant advance in a subfield of chemistry, being characterized by the

routine extensions of previously published related work will be declined or recommended for

Manuscript Transfer to specialized journals.

Use of the template for Articles is strongly encouraged but is not required. If an author chooses not

to use a template to prepare an Article, only Times and Symbol fonts and 1.5 or double line

spacing should be used. Other fonts may cause problems when the PDF files used for review are

created. Also, if the template is not used, the document mode or its equivalent in the word-

processing program should be used; i.e., files should not be saved in “Text Only” (ASCII) mode. If

a non-Western version of word- processing software is used to prepare the manuscript, the file

should be saved in rich-text format (RTF).

Letters are short publications that report results whose immediate availability to the science and

engineering community is deemed important. A Letter must convey the scientific findings concisely

in a brief abstract, main text, and graphical elements as determined by word count not exceeding

2,200 words, including titles/footnotes/captions of approximately five graphics (typically 2 inches

long in a single column). References are not included in word count to allow article titles to be

included at submission. To calculate word count within the word processing application, select all

text from abstract through end of main text (excluding title, authors, affiliations, and content after

main text) and view the word processor’s word count data. Letters exceeding the word count limit

must be shortened before acceptance. Note: ACS Physical Chemistry Au encourages submission

of Letters ranging from approximately 1,200-2,200 words (equivalent to 2-4 formatted journal

can be included as Supporting Information. Letters can be complete publications, but follow-up

publication may be justified when the research is continued and a more complete account of the

work is deemed necessary, especially for the most urgent concise Letters noted above. Special

efforts will be made to expedite the reviewing and the publication of Letters. The time for

proofreading the galley proofs is relatively short. For this reason, authors of Letters should ensure

that manuscripts are in final, error-free form when submitted. A template for Letters is available.

Reviews are topical, forward looking, and of general interest to the readership. Length is flexible

(6–20 or more pages). A good review critically evaluates existing work of multiple groups in a field

or across disciplines, provides a logical organization, and makes the material more easily available

Perspectives are personal reviews of a field or area by one or a small team of authors, and they

are focused rather than comprehensive. Perspective authors are asked to assess the current

status of the field with an emphasis toward identifying key advances being made or those

advances that are needed, and with an eye to the future. An ACS Physical Chemistry Au

Perspective should touch base with the current literature, including key contributors and

references, but will primarily serve to inspire and help direct future research efforts. Authors may

be invited by the Editor to submit Perspectives. Perspectives may not exceed 10,000 words in

abstract, main text, and graphical elements.

Authors interested in contributing a Review or Perspective should email the Editor, Gemma

Solomon ([email protected]), providing a single document that includes the

Author List. Bylines should include all those who have made substantial contributions to the work.

To facilitate indexing and retrieval and for unique identification of an author, use first names,

initials, and surnames or first initials (e.g., Jody R. Smith), second names, and last names (e.g., J.

Riley Smith). Do not use only initials with surnames (e.g., J. R. Smith). Deceased persons who

meet the criteria for inclusion as coauthors should be included, with an Author Information note

indicating the date of death. Do not include professional or official titles or academic degrees. At

least one, or optionally more than one but fewer than four authors must be designated with an

asterisk as the author(s) to whom reader correspondence regarding the published manuscript may

be addressed.

The full names and e-mail addresses of all co-authors must be provided on the Authors &

Institutes page upon submission of the manuscript in ACS Paragon Plus. Use of ORCID identifiers

Addition or deletion of an author or authors after submission of the manuscript requires justification

from the corresponding author and is subject to approval by the Editor.

Institution Address. The author affiliation(s) listed should be the institution(s) where the work was

conducted. If the present address of an author differs from that at which the work was done, that

address should be given in an Author Information note.

an Abstract (TOC) graphic, which should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal

results, and major conclusions. Abstracts of manuscripts may not contain the words “superb”,

“excellent”, “exceptional”, “outstanding”, or other similar descriptive words unless rigorously

supported by a thorough comparison with the state-of-the-art in the manuscript. Like manuscript

titles, the words “New”, “First”, or “Novel” are also generally disallowed in the abstract. The

abstract should not generally exceed 200/300 (Letter/Article) words. Pasting the abstract in the

text box on the Web submission page does not replace the need for including an abstract in the

manuscript document.

Keywords. All Articles, Letters, and Perspectives must be accompanied by 5–8 keywords. These

increasing the length of the Article. Extensive reviews of the literature cannot be accepted.

Thoughtful use of schemes and figures (with well-composed captions) is recommended, so that

even casual browsers can discern the nature of the work. Well-known procedures should be

headings and a proper Introduction, a complete Experimental Section (unless placed in the

Supporting Information), Results, and Discussion. The addition of a Conclusion section at the end

of the manuscript, which briefly summarizes the principal conclusions of the work, is

recommended. If desired for clarification, section headings may be given Arabic numbers and

subsections numbered in decimals (e.g., subsection 2.1 and subsection 2.2).

Text (Letters). Section headings (Introduction, Experimental Section, Conclusion, etc.) should not

be used in a Letter.

authors must include an affirmative statement about safety in the Experimental Section of the full

article or the main text of a Letter. Further information may be included or re-introduced in the

Appendices. Appendix sections must be placed in the Supporting Information.

approval by the Editor.

disciplines of chemistry should be introduced in parentheses following the full term on its first

Acknowledgment. Dedications and notes acknowledging financial or professional assistance to

the conduct of research or indicating presentation at a meeting should be brief and placed in the

Acknowledgment section.

Author Information Notes. The e-mail address(es) of the corresponding author or authors must

be provided as a Corresponding Author note. Present addresses for individual authors that differ

from the address(es) at which the work was done should be given in a Present Address(es) note.

American Chemical Society journals. Because of this electronic linking, and to aid scientific

research, it is crucial that authors verify the accuracy of all references.

Unnecessarily long lists of references should be avoided, and excessive self-citation is not

permitted. However, authors must reference all previous publications in which portions of the

present work have appeared. Each literature reference should be assigned one number and

placed in the text as a superscript Arabic numeral. Footnotes to the text should be combined with

references and numbered in ordinal sequence. Long footnotes should be avoided in Articles and

are not permitted in Communications; additional data and peripheral discussion should be placed

materials that are not generally available to the scientific public should not be used. Authors must

obtain written permission from any person whose work is cited as a personal communication,

unpublished work, or work in press. Copies of letters of permission and documentation should be

appended to the cover letter file. If the manuscript is accepted but the necessary permissions have

not been received, the Editor will ask the author to remove the reference(s) and dependent text.

Example of a journal reference:

Yue, Q.; Liu, W.; Zhu, X. n-Type Molecular Photovoltaic Materials: Design Strategies and Device

Applications. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020, 142, 11613–11628.

Example of an in-press journal reference:

Ham, J. S.; Park, B.; Son, M.; Roque, J. B.; Jurczyk, J.; Yeung, C. S.; Baik, M.-H. ; Sarpong, R.

C–H/C–C Functionalization Approach to N-Fused Heterocycles from Saturated Azacycles. J. Am.

Chem. Soc. 2020, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.0c04278.

Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients; Berry, I.R., Harpaz, D., Eds.; CRC Press: Boca Raton, 2001;

pp 271–292.

Authors should consult the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication for the appropriate style to use

in citations of journal articles, books, and other publications. In literature references, article titles

must be included and journal abbreviations should be those used in the Chemical Abstracts

Service Source Index (CASSI).

This information is provided to the reviewers during the peer-review process (for Review Only) and

is available to readers of the published work (for Publication). Supporting Information must be

labeled Supporting Information and should appear before the Acknowledgement and Reference

(PDF)” or “Additional experimental details, materials, and methods, including photographs of

experimental setup (DOC)”.

Examples of insufficient descriptions: “Supporting Information: Figures S1-S3” or “Additional

figures as mentioned in the text”.

When including supporting information for review only, include copies of references that are

unpublished or in-press. These files are available only to editors and reviewers.

article’s conclusions. Publicly available data sets should be cited appropriately.

The ACS Research Data Policy provides additional information on Data Availability Statements,

Data Citation, and Data Repositories.

Research data is defined as materials and information used in the experiments that enable the

validation of the conclusions drawn in the article, including primary data produced by the authors

for the study being reported, secondary data reused or analyzed by the authors for the study, and

any other materials necessary to reproduce or replicate the results.

It is essential that papers provide enough information so that calculations and experiments can be

structure calculations, force field parameters, and other potential energy surface information.

Further details are listed in the guidelines authored by J. E. Boggs (Pure Appl. Chem. 1998, 70,

No. 4, 1015–1018 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1351/pac199870041015). Both sets of guidelines can be

viewed online at http://iupac.org/publications/pac/reports/year/1998/. While these papers refer to

electronic structure and molecular dynamics calculations, the concepts stated below apply to all

calculations.

If a paper mentions any calculations that are integral to the study (i.e., the precise quantitative

results are central to the conclusions drawn) computational details must be described.

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will be published in the final article: “The authors declare no competing financial interest.”

Plagiarism

In publishing only original research, ACS is committed to deterring plagiarism, including self-

plagiarism. ACS Publications uses CrossCheck's iThenticate software to screen submitted

manuscripts for similarity to published material. Note that your manuscript may be screened during

the submission process.

Further information about plagiarism can be found in Part B of the Ethical Guidelines to Publication

During manuscript submission, the submitting author must provide contact information (full name,

email address, institutional affiliation, and mailing address) for all of the coauthors. Because all of

the author names are automatically imported into the electronic Journal Publishing Agreement, the

names must be entered into ACS Paragon Plus. (Note that coauthors are not required to register

in ACS Paragon Plus.) Author affiliation should reflect where the work was completed, even if the

author has since left that institution. Authors may include a note with a current address if their

institution has changed since the work was completed.

To expedite the processing of your manuscript, please format your author and affiliation

with a description of when and how the tools were used. For more substantial use cases or

descriptions of AI tool use, authors should provide full details within the Methods or other

appropriate section of the manuscript.

If any change in authorship is necessary after a manuscript has been submitted, confirmation is

required that all of the authors (including those being added or removed) have been notified and

have agreed to the change. To provide this confirmation, authors are asked to complete and sign

an authorship change form and provide the completed form to the appropriate editorial office.

Authors with a single name: If you, or any of your coauthors, have only one name, please follow

you are eligible to publish under a read and publish agreement between ACS and your institution.

You can also find out more about Open Access Compliance and ACS Open Science initiatives.

Cover Art

ACS Physical Chemistry Au authors are encouraged to submit images to be considered for use on

the journal’s front cover or Supplementary Covers at the time of the submission of their revised

manuscript. If your article is accepted for publication, your suggestion may also be selected for

Cover image submissions should be colorful and visually engaging, with minimal text. The cover

image should not resemble a graphical abstract or data figure, but rather should be an artistic and

scientifically accurate representation of the manuscript.

Image files should be submitted as TIF, JPG, PNG or EPS files (not PDF or PPT) with a resolution

If you wish to be considered only for the front cover, and not a paid supplementary cover, please

respond NO accordingly to the Supplementary Cover Art question in ACS Paragon Plus. For more

information on the Supplementary Covers program, please see this webpage. All art submitted for

consideration for a supplementary cover will also be considered for a front cover.