jacs-au
JACS Au (jacs-au)
Journal positioning
JACS Au is published by the American Chemical Society as the gold open-access companion to the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). Its defining character is that it applies a JACS-level quality bar across the full breadth of chemistry while making every article freely available. A paper belongs in JACS Au when it reports an important, rigorous, broadly interesting chemical advance and the authors want — or are required to publish — fully open access. The journal is not a lower-tier outlet for JACS rejects; it is positioned as an equally selective, high-quality venue that spans organic, inorganic, physical, analytical, materials, biological, and computational chemistry. Readership is the whole ACS chemistry community. This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the JACS Au / ACS Publications site.
When to trigger
- The author names JACS Au as the target venue for a broad, high-quality chemistry advance that they intend to publish gold open access.
- A manuscript would be competitive at JACS but the authors need or prefer open access (funder mandate, visibility, reuse), and they are choosing between JACS Au, JACS, and ACS Central Science.
- A strong, rigorous chemical result spans subfields and needs a broad, selective, open venue rather than a specialized journal.
- The author needs JACS Au's quality bar, breadth, open-access expectations, and desk-reject criteria before submission.