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RSC Medicinal Chemistry is a Transformative Journal and Plan S compliant
Impact factor: 4.1*
Time to first decision (all decisions): 10.0 days**
Time to first decision (peer reviewed only): 30.0 days***
Editor-in-Chief: Mike Waring
CiteScore: 5.8****
Open access publishing options available
Journal scope
RSC Medicinal Chemistry publishes significant research in medicinal chemistry and related drug discovery science.
Research articles published in this journal must show a breakthrough or significant advance on previously published work, or bring new thinking or results that will have a strong impact in their field.
Examples of areas within the journal's scope are:
- Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of novel chemical entities or biotherapeutic modalities. To be suitable for publication these must exhibit significant potential as new pharmacological agents, tools, probes or potential drugs.
- Modifications of known chemical entities or biotherapeutic modalities that result in a significantly greater understanding of their structure-activity relationships, an improvement of their properties or provide other information of significant value, for example, the identification of a new target or mode of action for a known agent. Routine modifications with minimal or no improvement are not suitable for RSC Medicinal Chemistry.
RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship
This Lectureship celebrates outstanding early career researchers who have made significant contributions in the fields of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. The RSC Medicinal Chemistry Lectureship is awarded annually through a process whereby nominations of candidates are invited from our community.
You can read about eligibility, how to nominate, deadlines for nominations and see all of our lectureship winners.
Find out more
Meet the team
Find out who is on the editorial and advisory boards for the RSC Medicinal Chemistry journal.
Editor-in-chief
Mike Waring, Newcastle University, UK
Associate editors
Cynthia Dowd, George Washington University, USA
Maria Duca, Université Côte d’Azur - CNRS, France
Sankar K. Guchhait, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), India
Susanne Müller-Knapp, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Sally-Ann Poulsen, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
Jian Zhang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, China
Editorial board members
Hayley Binch, Hoffman-La Roche, Switzerland
Paola Castaldi, MatchPoint Therapeutics, USA
Lyn Jones, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, USA
Jean-Louis Reymond, University of Bern, Switzerland
Timor Baasov, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Andreas Bender, University of Cambridge, UK
Julian Blagg, Institute of Cancer Research, UK
Margaret Brimble, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Mark Bunnage, Vertex, USA
Christopher Burns, Amplia Therapeutics Limited, Australia
Andrea Cavalli, University of Bologna, Italy
Young-Tae Chang, POSTECH, South Korea
James Crawford, Altos Labs, USA
Matthew Duncton, Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc
Stephen Frye, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Matthew Fuchter, University of Oxford, UK
Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova, University of Kentucky, USA
Jayanta Haldar, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India
Gyoonhee Han, Yonsei University, Korea
Mike Hann, GSK Medicines Research Centre, Stevenage, UK
Christian Heinis, EPFL, Switzerland
Laura H. Heitman, Leiden University, Netherlands
Yoshinori Ikeura, Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners, Japan
Ahmed Kamal, NIPER, Hyderabad, India
Robert Langer, MIT, USA
Steven V Ley, University of Cambridge, UK
María Luz López Rodríguez, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Christa Muller, University of Bonn, Germany
Roberto Pellicciari, University of Perugia, Italy
David Rees, Astex Therapeutics, Cambridge, UK
Motonari Uesugi, Kyoto University, Japan
John C Vederas, University of Alberta, Canada
Paul Wender, Stanford University, USA
Zhen Yang, Peking University, China
Ming-Qiang Zhang, Amgen, Shanghai, China
Katie Lim, Executive Editor
Hannah Fowler, Deputy Editor
Emily Cuffin-Munday, Development Editor
Sarah Anthony, Editorial Production Manager
Nicola Burton, Publishing Editor
Tom Cozens, Publishing Editor
Ryan Kean, Publishing Editor
Roxane Owen, Publishing Editor, ORCID 0000-0002-4553-233X
Andrea Whiteside, Publishing Assistant
Sam Keltie, Publisher, Journals, ORCID 0000-0002-9369-8414
Transparent peer review
As part of our commitment to transparency and open science, RSC Medicinal Chemistry is now offering authors the option of transparent peer review, where the editor’s decision letter, reviewers’ comments and authors’ response for all versions of the manuscript will be published alongside the article under an Open Access Creative Commons licence (CC-BY).
Reviewers will remain anonymous unless they choose to sign their report.
Open access publishing options
RSC Medicinal Chemistry is a hybrid (transformative) journal and gives authors the choice of publishing their research either via the traditional subscription-based model or instead by choosing our gold open access option. Find out more about our Transformative Journals. which are Plan S compliant.
Gold open access
For authors who want to publish their article gold open access, RSC Medicinal Chemistry charges an article processing charge (APC) of £2,750 (+ any applicable tax). Our APC is all-inclusive and makes your article freely available online immediately, permanently, and includes your choice of Creative Commons licence (CC BY or CC BY-NC) at no extra cost. It is not a submission charge, so you only pay if your article is accepted for publication.
Learn more about publishing open access.
Read & Publish
If your institution has a Read & Publish agreement in place with the Royal Society of Chemistry, APCs for gold open access publishing in RSC Medicinal Chemistry may already be covered.
Use our journal finder to check if your institution has an open access agreement with us.
Please use your official institutional email address to submit your manuscript and check you are assigned as the corresponding author; this helps us to identify if you are eligible for Read & Publish or other APC discounts.
Traditional subscription model
Authors can also publish in RSC Medicinal Chemistry via the traditional subscription model without needing to pay an APC. Articles published via this route are available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to the journal. Our standard licence allows you to make the accepted manuscript of your article freely available after a 12-month embargo period. This is known as the green route to open access.
Readership information
Researchers in academia and industry studying medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and topics in the wider chemical, biological and materials sciences with application to biological problems.
Subscription information
RSC Medicinal Chemistry is part of the RSC Gold subscription package.
Online only 2025: ISSN 2632-8682, £1,803 / $2,672
*2023 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2024)
**The median time from submission to first decision including manuscripts rejected without peer review from the previous calendar year
***The median time from submission to first decision for peer-reviewed manuscripts from the previous calendar year
****CiteScore™ 2023 available at www.scopus.com/sources
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