The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are a specifically named element of the coverage that ‘Nexus’ is meant to publish.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

‘Bringing Together Scientists and Englineers’

In an announcement made today (May 9) by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University—called PolyU—we learn that Elsevier‘s imprint Cell Press has been selected by PolyU Press to publish a new gold open-access journal titled Nexus. That new journal has as its goal, an ambitious intention of “bringing together scientists and engineers to tackle the world’s greatest challenges.”

Hong Kong Polytechnic’s Jerry Yan, who holds the university’s chair in energy and buildings, is to serve as the new journal’s first editor-in-chief.

Nexus has opened for submissions, and is designed to “cover all subjects in the areas of applied sciences, engineering, technology, and inter- and multi-disciplinary fields.

“The journal,” as today’s announcement says it, “will publish original research and reports as well as reviews and commentaries on innovations that aim to improve lives, protect the planet, and contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

And this journal is quite significant to the university community and also to Cell Press, being the imprint’s first partner journal in the physical sciences and the first title published in collaboration with this university.

Cell Press’ administration sees this as a signal of the imprint’s “continued growth in open-access physical sciences titles, which include Cell Reports Physical Science and Cell Reports Sustainability.

In a prepared statement, Jin-Guang Teng, president of the university, is quoted, saying, “As the name of the journal suggests, we envision Nexus to be the leading scholarly forum that connects science with engineering and technology and brings together different disciplines to address the many challenges faced by society today through collaborative and interdisciplinary research.

“This vision reflects the spirit of PolyU’s motto: ‘To learn and to apply, for the benefit of mankind.'”

And Anne Kitson, managing editor of Cell Press and the Lancet, says, “We are embarking on a journey to create something new, inspiring, and transformative that will drive progress toward [the] United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

“Our shared vision for Nexus as a home for scientists and engineers across multiple disciplines is intended to spark new collaborations and ideas in order to drive progress toward achieving a more sustainable future for all.”

Yan, who has named the new journal, is quoted, saying, “As an editor, I was beginning to feel that we have a gap between science and engineering, and just because they’ve historically been distinct disciplines, the reason both sides do what they do is to solve problems, and those problems are interconnected.

“This means Nexus can’t be a traditional journal—we will need to go beyond the paper, encourage knowledge and system sharing, and challenge both sides to sync their approach.”

Yan is also advisory editor-in-chief of Applied Energy and the founding editor of Advances in Applied Energy, both of those being journals from Elsevier. He has published more than 400 papers in scholarly journals and is an award-winning and highly cited researcher with at least 10 patents.

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More from Publishing Perspectives on academic and scholarly publishing is here, more from us on the Chinese market is here, more from us open access is here, more on Elsevier is here, and more on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is here.