Faraday Discussions FAQs

Faraday Discussions cover rapidly evolving science. While the process of abstract writing, paper writing and rigourous review inherent to each meeting takes time, the result – fully reviewed, extensively discussed, carefully edited journal publication – is highly valued by our authors. The flexibility of the Faraday Discussion format also allows speakers, as they write their paper, to trace the evolution of the science as it develops in new and exciting directions.

We welcome proposals for new Faraday Discussion meetings in rapidly evolving areas of the physical sciences. If you have an idea for a topic and would be willing to act as the scientific committee chair, please get in touch with the RSC Office here to discuss the requirements.

Following this initial discussion, we will ask you to complete and submit a Faraday Discussion Proposal Form, to enable the Faraday Standing Committee on Conferences (FSCC) to evaluate your proposal in detail with a view to ensuring a high-quality meeting. As part of this process, it is common for FSCC to request revisions to your proposal.

You may submit your proposal at any time by emailing your completed form to the FSCC Secretary. While there are no official calls or rounds, FSCC meets three times per year (typically in February, May and September) and will evaluate new and revised proposals received by the Secretary no less than two weeks before each committee meeting. Adhering to these deadlines and submitting revised proposals in good time will help ensure that your proposal is evaluated promptly, and the meeting consequently takes place in a timely manner.

There is the opportunity on the form to request a preferered date for the meeting. This should typically be two to three years out, to take account of the time required to revise the proposal, to plan the meeting once approved, and accommodate your meeting in the schedule of upcoming meetings. We typically organise eight Discussions per year, usually scheduled at least 24 months in advance. While we will try to hold your meeting on your preferred dates, we reserve the right to discuss alternative dates with you.

Following approval of the proposal by the FSCC, the RSC will work with the scientific committee to agree the venue and date of the meeting, agree and invite speakers, and develop the scientific programme. The meeting will subsequently be announced and marketed to the scientific community; key milestone dates will appear on the event webpage, including the oral abstract, poster and registration deadlines.

The scientific committee, led by the chair, works with the RSC to develop the scientific programme, based on the scientific themes and potential speakers from the proposal.

A typical programme contains four inter-connected themes around the topic of the meeting. The themes typically span eight sessions over three days.

Faraday Discussions feature both invited and contributed talks/papers. The invited speakers comprise the Introductory Lecturer, the Closing Remarks Lecturer, and two speakers for each theme. Contributed speakers are selected by the scientific committee from the highest quality submitted abstracts that fit with the themes of the meeting.

If you are not an invited speaker and wish to present a paper at the meeting, you should submit an oral abstract via the event webpage. Oral abstract submission typically opens 9 months before the meeting.

All submitted contributing abstracts will be evaluated by the scientific committee and a fixed number will be selected for presentation at the meeting. Only if your abstract is accepted for presentation will you be required to submit a paper.

All speakers in the oral programme at Faraday Discussions, both invited and contributing, must submit a research paper that contains a significant amount of new, unpublished research 4-5 months before the meeting. This is a precondition of presenting. 

The research papers are reviewed and then provided to delegates as 'pre-prints' about a month before the meeting. This gives delegates the opportunity to read each paper and prepare comments and questions for the discussion in advance. Most of the meeting focuses on discussion of the key issues underlying and connecting the presented papers. At the meeting speakers have five minutes to highlight the most important aspects of their paper, which is then followed by 25 minutes' discussion per paper amongst the delegates.

All the papers presented at a Discussion meeting must mainly contain primary research – a certain amount of prior literature can be included to set the context of the paper and the challenges it is trying to solve. Papers presented at Faraday Discussion meetings do sometimes have more open-ended conclusions, to foster discussion and debate at the meetings. This is all recorded in the fully citable General Discussion sections.

The only exceptions to this are the Spiers Memorial Introductory Lecture, previously the Spiers Memorial Award, which starts the meeting, and the Concluding Remarks, which close it – the associated papers for these presentations are more review-like in nature: the Introductory Lecture sets the scene for the topic of the Discussion meeting and the Concluding Remarks summarises the themes and main discussion points from the preceding days.

All delegates at the meeting, not just speakers, can make comments, ask questions, or present complementary or contradictory measurements and calculations during the discussion. These contributions are known as 'discussion remarks’. These remarks are published alongside the papers in the final volume and are fully citable. Rather than a verbatim account, the published record contains what the contributors said, or think they said or wished they had said.

If it is relevant to the topic, you may give a 5-minute presentation of your own work during the discussion. If you would like to present slides during the discussion, please let the session chair know.

We encourage delegates to display posters at the meeting. Posters can be submitted via the event webpage. The closing date for poster abstracts is around 10 weeks before the meeting date.

The scientific committee selects the posters based on the poster abstracts. Accepted poster presenters are sent full instructions on how to present their poster in-person and also upload them to our online poster platform. At the meeting there is usually the opportunity for selected poster presenters to give 60-second lightning talks at the invitation of the committee. Posters are judged and a prize awarded to the best poster.

You can attend a meeting in person and network face-to-face or use our online platform to network with delegates online by opening a networking room. You can open a public room to discuss your poster for example or open a private room to discuss a career opportunity. Full instructions on how to use the online platform to network are given in the joining instructions for each meeting.

At the meeting it is assumed that the papers have already been read, so the presenting authors have only five minutes to summarise the main points. The chair of each session will then open the discussion. Participants are free to question the authors, to present results that confirm or raise doubts about the work presented, and to make links with other relevant work. Authors can respond to the comments. Each person that asks a question or makes a comment (a 'discussion remark') has a maximum of five minutes and, at the end of the discussion session, the author is given the final five minutes if required. Edited discussion remarks will be published in the final Faraday Discussions volume for the meeting. Delegates should submit their comments and questions using the web forum as described at the meeting.

To find out about upcoming events and Faraday Discussions publications, visit our Faraday Discussions main page and/or register for our newsletter.

Yes. Join a meeting in person, with all the benefits of meeting and discussing face to face, or remotely from wherever you are in the world, without leaving your home, office or lab. To learn more about how our hybrid meetings work, see our hybrid meeting FAQs.

With our Research Development Grants you can apply for a grant of up to £500 towards any activity that develops your skills and experience as a researcher, including conference registration fees. These bursaries are available to RSC members who are PhD students or postdoctoral researchers.

The only difference from a typical research paper is that some remarks that may be open to interpretation can be included, stimulating discussion at the meeting.

The deadline for submission is normally 4-5 months before the meeting. Faraday Discussions adhere to a strict timetable so preprints can be generated and circulated to participants before the meeting.

As a guide, Faraday Discussion papers can be 5,000–8,000 words. Papers that are accepted must not be published elsewhere except by permission of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Yes. Faraday Discussion papers are peer reviewed before the meeting. The scientific committee reviews the research papers; revisions may be requested prior to acceptance – in a sense, the 'real' refereeing takes place at the Faraday Discussion meeting, and discussion comments could be considered referee comments.  

Yes. Faraday Discussions is a published and citable record of the entire meeting. The papers presented at a Faraday Discussion appear alongside the general discussion remarks (those that the speakers and delegates said). Every delegate can make a major contribution and to be published.

The discussion is not published verbatim. If you ask any questions or make any comments during the Faraday Discussion meeting, you will be able to edit your contribution on the web forum, available after the meeting.

The editor reserves the right to decide whether a contribution is appropriate. The final Faraday Discussions volume is usually published approximately five months after the meeting.

The Just Accepted Manuscript (author supplied, unedited) version of the article will be published online following acceptance, unless you opt-out of this service. More information can be found at the RSC’s Accepted Manuscripts and associated policies webpage.

A proof of the typeset files will be sent to the corresponding author after the meeting takes place. The “Advance Article”, the final scientific version of record, will be published online as soon as proof corrections are received.

The complete volume, including both the articles and the general discussion from the meeting, is published online approximately four months after the event, and in print a further one month after that. 

Faraday Discussions allows the deposition of a preprint version (defined as an un-refereed author version) of the article in non-commercial repositories (e.g. ArXiv, ChemRxiv), institutional repositories or authors’ individual websites.

Full details can be found at the RSC’s “Journal policy on prior publication” page.

Content of the online journal can be found at the journal publication website. Subscribers can access all content back to 1906!

If you do not have an institutional subscription, then articles are “pay per view” and a significant number are Open Access – meaning anyone, anywhere can read them. Faraday Discussions are also published individually in book form with their own ISBN. Copies of past volumes can be purchased from the RSC book shop.