Your article’s content

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Section details & bibliography

Title

The title should be short and straightforward enough to appeal to a general reader, but detailed enough to properly reflect the contents of the article.

• Keep it as short as possible
• Use easily recognisable words and phrases that can be read quickly
• Use keywords and familiar, searchable terms – these can increase the chances of your article appearing in search results. Around 70% of our readers find articles through search engines
• Use general terms for compounds and procedures rather than specific nomenclature or very specialised terms
• Avoid using non-standard abbreviations and symbols

An example of an effective title:

‘Alkylation of active methylene compounds with alcohols catalysed by an iridium complex’.

An example of an ineffective title:

‘Active methylene compounds are alkylated with ROH under catalysis of [IrCl(cod)]2’.

Authorship

Include full names and affiliations for all authors. Everyone who made a significant contribution to the conception, design or implementation of the work should be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author has the responsibility to include all (and only) co-authors. The corresponding author also signs a copyright licence on behalf of all the authors.

If there are more than 10 co-authors on the manuscript, the corresponding author should provide a statement to specify the contribution of each co-author. It is possible to have two corresponding authors. Please identify co-corresponding authors on your manuscript's first page and also mention this in your comments to the editor and/or cover letter. 

The author affiliation(s) listed should be the institution(s) where the majority of the research was conducted. If an author has multiple affiliations all the relevant institutions should be listed. If the present address of an author is different from that at which the work was conducted, that address should be stated in a footnote and not as an affiliation.

Abstract

The abstract is the first part of your manuscript that editors, reviewers and potential readers will see. It will help readers to decide whether your article is of interest to them.

Therefore, it’s important that it clearly and concisely summarises the main findings of your research and why they are important.

The abstract is a single paragraph which should:

• be around 50 to 250 words
• be concise and easy to read with recognisable words and phrases
• use familiar, searchable terms and keywords
• set out the main objectives and results of the work; it should give the reader a clear idea of what has been achieved
• emphasise (but not overstate) the potential impact of the research and why it is important (compared to other research in its field)
• avoid including detailed information on how the research was carried out – this should be described in the main part of the manuscript

Introduction

An introduction should 'set the scene' of the work. It should clearly explain both the nature of the problem under investigation and its background. It should start off general and then focus in to the specific research question you are investigating.

Ensure you include all relevant references.

Experimental

Provide descriptions of the experiments in enough detail so that a skilled researcher is able to repeat them. Standard techniques and methods used throughout the work should just be stated at the beginning of the section; descriptions of these are not needed. Any unusual hazards about the chemicals, procedures or equipment should be clearly identified.

Authors are encouraged to make use of Supplementary Information for lengthy synthetic sections. In general, there is no need to report unsuccessful experiments.

Only non-standard apparatus should be described. Commercially available instruments are referred to by their stock numbers (for example, Perkin-Elmer 457 or Varian HA-100 spectrometers). The accuracy of primary measurements should be stated.

Suitable characterisations of compounds must be included – read our experimental data guidelines.

For studies that involve the use of live animals or human subjects an ethical statement may be required. For full details, please refer to our Human & Animal Welfare policy.

Results & discussion

This is arguably the most important section of your article.

Your results should be organised into an orderly and logical sequence. Only the most relevant results should be described in the text, to highlight the most important points. Figures, tables, and equations should be used for purposes of clarity and brevity. Data should not be reproduced in more than one form, for example in both figures and tables, without good reason.

The purpose of the discussion is to explain the meaning of your results and why they are important. You should state the impact of your results compared with recent work and relate it back to the problem or question you posed in your introduction. Ensure claims are backed up by evidence and explain any complex arguments.

Conclusions

This is for interpretation of the key results and to highlight the novelty and significance of the work. The conclusions should not summarise information already present in the article or abstract. You can also include any plans for relevant future work here.

Author Contributions (optional)

In the interests of transparency, we strongly encourage authors of research articles to include an "Author contributions" section in their manuscript, for publication in the final article. Contributions should be explained concisely. We strongly recommend you use CRediT (the Contributor Roles Taxonomy from CASRAI) for standardised contribution descriptions.

All authors should have agreed to their individual contributions ahead of submission and these should accurately reflect contributions to the work. Please note that for any manuscript with more than ten co-authors the corresponding author must provide the editor with a statement to specify the contribution of each author. Please refer to our general author guidelines for more information about authorship.

Conflicts of interest

In accordance with our policy on Conflicts of interest please ensure that a conflicts of interest statement is included in your manuscript. This statement is required for all submitted manuscripts. If no conflicts exist, please state that ‘There are no conflicts to declare’.

Data availability

A data availability statement (DAS) is required to be submitted alongside all articles. Please read our full guidance on data availability statements for more details and examples of suitable statements you can use.

Acknowledgements

Contributors (those not already included as co-authors) may be acknowledged. Keep this section as brief as possible. You should also declare all sources of funding at this point.

Footnotes

Footnotes relating to the title and/or authors, including affiliations, should appear at the very bottom of the first page of the article. If Supplementary Information is available this is also stated here.

Please also include any dedications in the footnotes. At the editor's discretion, dedications of a personal nature may be more appropriate in the Acknowledgements section of the article.

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Bibliographic references & notes

We encourage the citation of primary research over review articles, where appropriate, in order to give credit to those who first reported a finding. This is part of our commitment to the principles of San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

We will format your content according to our house style before publication; however, it’s important you use Vancouver style (not Harvard style) for all journals except Chemistry Education Research and Practice, which requires the use of Harvard referencing.

You can also automatically format references from your Endnote citation manager using our style files.

Notes relating to the main text should appear at the end of the article, just above the references. These might include:

• comments relevant to but not central to the matter under discussion
• limited experimental and spectral data
• crystallographic data

Referencing in the text

Use superscript numbers to show the reference source of statements in the text – for example, reactive small molecule species.³ Usually these should appear at the end of the sentence (after the punctuation), but can be after the relevant word or compound. The reference numbers should be cited in the correct sequence through the text (including those in tables and figure captions, numbered according to where the table or figure is designated to appear).

If a statement has multiple references you should reference all of the citations in the text. If you have two citations, or if you have more than two and the numbers are not consecutive, use commas (with no spaces) between numbers, examples: ^12,13 or ^12,14,15. If there are more than two numbers and they are consecutive, use an en-dash to separate the first and last citation – for example, ^14–20.

The author(s) can be mentioned at their first citation in the text, but initials are not necessary. For papers with one or two authors simply state the surname(s), and for papers with three or more authors you should use the first author’s surname followed by et al.

Listing your references

The references themselves are listed in numerical order at the end of the main article. The names and initials of all authors should be given in the reference. Please note, references cited in the Supplementary Information should be included in a separate references list within the Supplementary Information document. 

Journal articles

The journal abbreviations to be used in Royal Society of Chemistry publications are defined in Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI). If you cannot find a recognised abbreviation for a journal and it is not obvious how the title should be abbreviated, please cite the full journal title.

Journal articles should be cited in the form: 

A. Name, B. Name and C. Name, Journal Title, year, volume, page.

Inclusion of article title is optional for most journals, but required for Food & Function, Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers, Materials Chemistry Frontiers, Organic Chemistry Frontiers and Industrial Chemistry & Materials.

When page numbers are not yet known, articles should be cited by DOI (Digital Object Identifier) – for example, T. J. Hebden, R. R. Schrock, M. K. Takase and P. Müller, Chem. Commun., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2CC17634C.

Books

A. Name, B. Name and C. Name, Book Title, Publisher, Publisher Location, year. For example, S T Beckett, Science of Chocolate, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 2000. If you are referencing published conference proceedings, these should be cited like a book.

Book chapters

A. Name, in Book Title, ed. Editor Name(s), Publisher, Publisher Location, edition, year, chapter, pages. The ‘ed.’ in the example above stands for ‘edited by’, that is, the editor(s) of the book; if the book has no editors this can be left out.

Theses

A. Name, PhD thesis, University Name, year.

Lectures, meetings & conferences

A. Name, presented in part at Conference Title, Place, Month, year.

Reference to unpublished material

If you reference unpublished material in your article you must provide the editor with copies of the manuscripts with your submission. You should not reference unpublished work without the permission of those who completed the work.

For material accepted for publication, but not yet published: A. Name, Journal Title, in press. For material submitted for publication, but not yet accepted: A. Name, Journal Title, submitted. For material that has yet to be submitted for publication: A. Name, unpublished work.

Online resources (including databases, websites & wikis)

Name of resource, URL, (accessed date). Please note the most important information to include is the URL and the date accessed. For example, The Merck Index Online, http://www.rsc.org/Merck-Index/monograph/mono1500000841, (accessed October 2013).

Preprint servers (for example, ChemRxiv, arXiv)

ChemRxiv & bioRxiv: The citation should include the author(s), the name of the preprint server, the year, the word “preprint” and the DOI (including version number).

S. Bhattacharjee, S. P. Chaudhary and S. Bhattacharyya, ChemRxiv, 2019, preprint, DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv.9794270.v1

arXiv: The citation should include the author(s), the name of the preprint server, the year, the article number and the url (including version number).

D. Carrascal, L. Fernandez and J. Ferrer, arXiv, 2009, preprint, arXiv:0904.1138, https://arxiv.org/abs/0904.1138v1

Patents

You should provide the name of the patentee(s), patent issuer, patent number and year. For example: J. C. Chung, US Pat., 20100105549A1, 2010; Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, Jpn. Pat., 2013034915A, 2013. 

Software

T. Bellander, M. Lewne and B. Brunekreef, GAUSSIAN 3 (Revision B.05), Gaussian Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, 2003.

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