In this issue, we’d like to introduce ourselves — the editorial team of Nature Synthesis — by sharing our previous research areas of expertise and also the topics within the journal’s scope that each editor is responsible for.

The Nature Synthesis editorial team, from left to right: Thomas West, Alison Stoddart, Peter Seavill and Alexandra Groves. Credit: Amie Fernandez

At present, the team is made up of four professional editors, who are all located in the London office of Springer Nature. In January 2021, Alison Stoddart was the first member of the pre-launch crew. Since then, Alison has been joined by Thomas West, Peter Seavill and Alexandra Groves. Before our editorial careers at Nature Synthesis, we have all carried out our own research in academia and, for some of us, gained experience as industrial chemists or in other editorial roles.

Alison has previously been part of the editorial teams of Chemical Communications (published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)) and Nature Materials as well as, most recently, the founding editor of Nature Reviews Materials. By training, Alison is a synthetic polymer chemist and has a PhD from Durham University. Before starting as an editor, she spent some time as a medicinal chemist working in a start-up pharmaceutical company. At Nature Synthesis, Alison is handling papers on the themes of materials chemistry (including polymers and porous materials), nanomaterials, supramolecular chemistry and self-assembly, and materials-related topics focused on recycling and sustainable synthesis.

Thomas joined the Nature Synthesis team in March 2021 having previously undertaken post-doctoral research in academia and industrial process chemistry. By training Thomas is an organic chemist and completed a PhD on catalytic sigmatropic rearrangements at the University of St Andrews. Now, as an editor at Nature Synthesis, Thomas handles papers in the areas of organic synthetic methodology, catalytic methods in organic synthesis, organometallics, total synthesis, as well as some aspects of biocatalysis, biosynthesis and synthetic biology.

Peter joined the Nature Synthesis team in June 2021 having previously been an editor at the RSC, working primarily on the journal Energy & Environmental Science. Prior to this, Peter carried out a PhD in the interdisciplinary field of electro-organic synthesis at University College London. Now, at Nature Synthesis, Peter handles papers on a range of topics in organic chemistry and materials science, such as organic synthetic methodology, catalytic methods in organic synthesis, materials synthesis (of energy-related materials), automation in synthesis, as well as some aspects of biosynthesis and the use of computational methods, such as machine learning, for synthesis.

Alexandra joined the Nature Synthesis team in March 2022 having previously worked as an industrial chemist, researching carbon capture and utilization. Prior to this, Alexandra carried out a PhD in materials chemistry, studying the hydrothermal synthesis of electrocatalysts at University College London. Now, at Nature Synthesis, Alex handles papers in the areas of materials and nanomaterials synthesis (including metals and alloys), inorganic synthesis, solid-state chemistry, photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, as well as processing techniques, scalability, recycling and sustainable synthesis.

As a team, we are responsible for the initial assessment of submitted manuscripts and taking them through to a final editorial decision. Like other Nature research journals, there are no external editorial board members of Nature Synthesis. When a paper is submitted to the journal, the primary and secondary editors assigned to the manuscript are decided based on its scientific content. Having this consistency ensures that editors keep abreast with the scientific literature in the field and hence, are aware of the state-of-the-art as well as timely and important challenges. By maintaining this awareness of the field, editorial decisions can be kept as consistent as possible. Alongside handling research articles on their specialist areas, editors focus ideas for other journal content on the topics they represent.

Although we’ve outlined the topics that each editor is responsible for, it is often the case that manuscripts don’t fall neatly into silos. For such interdisciplinary papers, the discussion between primary and secondary editors is a key part of the editorial process. The editorial team also has regular meetings which include discussions of some of the manuscripts recently received by the journal. These discussions familiarize the editors with all content within our scientific scope.

The Nature Synthesis team has started to travel for the first time since the launch of the journal and we are looking forward to meeting researchers in person and hearing about your outstanding synthetic advances in chemistry and materials science.