Remembering ICC 16

Every four years, a group of outstanding individuals, the best in their field, come together from all over the world. These individuals have spent years learning their craft, and now they assemble to show what they can do. Such a gathering happened in 2016.

No, I’m not talking about the Olympics. I’m talking about the International Congress on Catalysis (ICC 2016). This meeting, held from 3–8 July 2016 in Beijing, brought together more than 2500 catalytic scientists from more than 50 countries to talk about the latest research in catalysis. This meeting was also the site of a first for Catalysts: the first face-to-face meeting of the editorial board.

Six editorial board members, several members of the editorial staff (including the past Managing Editor, Mary Fan and the new Managing Editor, Zu Qiu), and the CEO of MDPI (Franck Vazquez) met to discuss the growth of Catalysts in recent years and its future. Editorial board members who participated included: Maarten Roeffaers (KU-Leuven), Ivan Kozhevnikov (University of Liverpool), Umit Ozkan (The Ohio State University), Georgiy Shul’pin (Russian Academy of Sciences), Haichao Liu (Peking University), and Jae-Soon Choi (Oak Ridge National Laboratory). This group provided invaluable advice that will help Catalysts to succeed in the future.

At the forefront of our discussion was how to improve the status and reputation of Catalysts. The editorial board made a variety of helpful suggestions, some of which are being implemented while others are being considered for the future. Many of these suggestions had a common core question: how can Catalysts help its authors become recognized for their research? In other words, how can Catalysts best showcase its papers so that they are widely read and cited. Towards this end, Catalysts will start featuring one key article on each issue’s cover and will promote this article on social media and at sponsored conferences. We have also initiated two new types of article to encourage outstanding catalytic scientists to submit their work to Catalysts: perspectives and viewpoints. Perspectives will relate an individual’s personal point of view on the state-of-the-art on a specific area of catalysis. Viewpoints are commentaries from an editor about emerging and fast-developing research areas. Both of these new types of articles are by invitation only, but anyone with ideas on potential topics can contact me.

I am grateful to the editorial board for their time and helpful suggestions at our editorial board meeting. Together, we can make Catalysts an outstanding forum for the best research on catalysis.

Thanks for reading.

Prof. Dr. Keith L. Hohn
Editor-in-Chief