Chemistry - A European Journal Submission Guide
A package-readiness guide to Chemistry - A European Journal: the Chemistry Europe significance bar, the Research Exchange portal, no-page-charge economics, the transfer network, and the desk-screen patterns that send chemistry manuscripts back before review.
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How to approach Chemistry - A European Journal
Use the submission guide like a working checklist. The goal is to make fit, package completeness, and cover-letter framing obvious before you open the portal.
Stage | What to check |
|---|---|
1. Scope | Confirm core-chemistry scope and the right Chemistry Europe venue |
2. Package | Assemble a complete characterization and Supporting Information package |
3. Cover letter | State the advance explicitly and choose the article format |
4. Final check | Submit through the Research Exchange portal |
Quick answer: Chemistry - A European Journal, published by Wiley-VCH for Chemistry Europe, takes rigorous chemistry with a clear advance across the whole discipline. It runs single-anonymized peer review through the Research Exchange portal, charges no page charges and no color charges, offers optional open access at a 4,640 USD APC, and returns a first decision in roughly 14 days with a first review round near 1.5 months.
The desk screen rewards a complete characterization package paired with an explicit statement of what is new, so the manuscripts that clear it fastest are both novel and fully documented.
This Chemistry - A European Journal submission guide focuses on the two-sided bar that trips up most submissions. Unlike a pure soundness journal, Chemistry - A European Journal wants a genuine chemical advance; unlike a flagship, it does not demand the advance be field-shifting. The real risk is landing in the gap: a paper that is fully correct but reads as incremental, or one with a strong idea but a thin data package.
Before you spend the submission, run a Chemistry - A European Journal manuscript fit check to test whether your advance is stated clearly and your characterization is complete enough to clear the screen.
From our manuscript review practice
In our pre-submission review work with Chemistry - A European Journal manuscripts, the papers that stall fastest are not the under-characterized ones. They are the technically complete studies whose central result is a competent but incremental extension of known chemistry, submitted with no clear statement of what is new. Chemistry - A European Journal weighs both significance and rigor, so a paper that is correct but unsurprising hits the desk screen as hard as one that is exciting but missing its NMR and HRMS panels.
What does Chemistry - A European Journal actually publish, and how does it judge a paper?
Chemistry - A European Journal accepts work when four things hold at once: the result advances chemistry rather than just confirming it, every new compound carries complete characterization, the scope sits inside core chemistry, and the article type matches the burden of proof. Miss any one and the portal will not rescue the submission.
What to pressure-test | What should already be true before upload |
|---|---|
The advance | The paper states explicitly what is new and why it matters to chemists, not just that it works. |
Characterization | Every new compound has full characterization (NMR, HRMS, IR, elemental analysis or equivalent purity data) reported. |
Scope | The work is core chemistry or a genuinely chemistry-interfacing study, not a thin chemistry angle on a materials or biology paper. |
Article type | A Communication is justified by urgency and a Full Paper by completeness; the type is chosen deliberately. |
Declarations | Cover letter, ORCID, data availability, conflict of interest, and funding statements are ready before upload. |
Source: Chemistry - A European Journal author guidelines and Notice to Authors (accessed June 2026).
Chemistry - A European Journal is the broad general-chemistry journal of Chemistry Europe, the association of 16 chemical societies across 15 European countries, published by Wiley-VCH. Founded in 1995, it appears weekly and covers all areas of chemistry: organic, inorganic, physical, analytical, materials, and the interfaces between them. The editorial identity matters before you write the cover letter. This is a society-owned journal "run by chemists, for chemists," and its bar is a real but achievable advance, not the broad conceptual leap a flagship demands.
That two-sided bar is the thing to internalize. At a pure soundness journal, the editor asks only "is this correct?" At Angewandte Chemie, the editor asks "is this important enough for the whole field?" At Chemistry - A European Journal, the editor asks a third question: "is this a solid, well-documented advance that chemists in this subfield will want to cite?" The practical consequence is that two very different manuscripts fail here for opposite reasons.
The exciting-but-thin paper fails on rigor; the rigorous-but-flat paper fails on advance. Both are common, and both are avoidable before you upload.
The fastest way to misread this journal is to treat it as a consolation venue for an Angewandte rejection. It is not a lower bar on the same axis. It is a different balance point, and a manuscript optimized purely for significance, with the experimental completeness deferred, often lands worse here than at the flagship it was written for.
What does the Chemistry - A European Journal submission portal require?
Chemistry - A European Journal manuscripts are submitted through Wiley's Research Exchange online submission service at editorialmanager.com/chemistry. ORCID registration and authentication are required, and the submitting author must be a corresponding author. Here is what the initial package needs to be complete.
Manuscript file and format: Submit the manuscript as a single file with all text, schemes, figures, tables, and the Table of Contents text and graphic placed at the appropriate positions in the document. Supporting Information goes in a separate PDF, alongside any media or data files. This single-combined-file convention is a frequent intake stumble for authors used to Elsevier's separate-figure-upload model.
Abstract and Table of Contents graphic: The abstract is capped at 200 words. The Table of Contents entry needs accompanying text of up to 50 words (maximum 450 characters with spaces) and an image sized 5.5 by 5.0 cm or 11.5 by 2.5 cm, with a minimum font size of 6 to 7 points. A missing or oversized TOC graphic is a routine return-for-correction at intake, before an editor reads the science.
Article-type expectations: Full Papers carry the complete experimental section and characterization. Communications are reserved for results urgent and important enough to justify preliminary publication, and they still require that the experimental work be reproducible. A Minireview runs to roughly 15 pages (about 25,000 characters) of main text plus references, figures, and legends, while figures should be embedded as high-resolution graphics (at least 300 dpi) at maximum sizes of 8.4 cm for one-column and 17.8 cm for two-column. Decide the type before you write, because a Communication that reads like a truncated Full Paper, with the urgency missing, is a common early reject.
Required declarations: Every submission needs a cover letter, ORCID iDs for the corresponding author, a data availability statement, a conflict of interest disclosure, and a funding statement with grant numbers. A Supporting Information PDF should carry the characterization data, spectra, crystallographic details, and extended methods that do not fit the main text. An ethics statement is required for any work involving humans or animals.
What is the Chemistry - A European Journal editorial triage timeline?
Chemistry - A European Journal runs a fast desk screen followed by a single-anonymized review round. SciRev community data reports a first review round of about 1.5 months with an average of 2.5 reports per manuscript, and roughly 1.5 rounds before a final decision; journal-acceptance feedback databases put the median first decision near 14 days. Treat these as planning ranges.
Day 0: Submission and intake
Research Exchange accepts the package, verifies ORCID authentication and corresponding-author status, and runs format checks on the abstract length, TOC graphic dimensions, single-file structure, and required declarations. Format-incomplete packages are returned here before an editor reads the science.
Days 1 to 14: Editor desk screen
A handling editor evaluates the chemical advance, characterization completeness, and scope fit. Immediate rejections, for out-of-scope work or an obviously incremental result, come back in about a day. The median first editorial decision sits near 14 days, which blends the fast desk verdicts with the manuscripts sent straight to review.
Weeks 2 to 8: Single-anonymized peer review
Manuscripts that clear the desk go to reviewers who see author identities while staying anonymous themselves, the standard model for Chemistry Europe titles. The first round averages about 1.5 months and returns roughly 2.5 reports.
Weeks 8 to 12: Decision and revision
Reject, major revision, minor revision, or accept. A major or minor revision is the most common outcome for a sound, novel manuscript, and the journal usually runs about 1.5 rounds before a final decision.
Transfer option: the Chemistry Europe network
If the paper is declined, the decision letter offers a transfer to another Chemistry Europe, Asian Chemical Editorial Society, or Wiley journal with overlapping scope. Files and, where available, reviewer reports move automatically through the submission system, so a redirect to European Journal of Organic Chemistry, European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, or ChemistryOpen does not restart the clock from zero.
How does Chemistry - A European Journal compare with its peer chemistry journals?
Chemistry - A European Journal sits in a crowded field of general and society-owned chemistry journals. The editorial difference is not the metric, it is what each journal will and will not weigh.
Journal | Selectivity model | Scope | Publisher / owner | APC (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Chemistry - A European Journal | Solid, documented advance | All of chemistry | Wiley-VCH / Chemistry Europe | Optional, ~$4,640 (no page charges) |
Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. | Broad conceptual advance, ~15-25% accept | All of chemistry | Wiley-VCH / GDCh | Optional / hybrid |
Chemical Science | High novelty, fully open access | All of chemistry | Royal Society of Chemistry | Free to author (society-funded OA) |
Journal of the American Chemical Society | Field-shaping, ~8% accept | All of chemistry | American Chemical Society | Optional / hybrid |
European Journal of Organic Chemistry | Solid organic advance | Organic chemistry only | Wiley-VCH / Chemistry Europe | Optional / hybrid |
Source: Chemistry Europe and RSC journal pages, ACS journal metrics, JCR 2024 JIF values, and publisher APC pages (accessed June 2026).
The decision logic is editorial, not numeric. Choose Chemistry - A European Journal when the chemistry spans more than one subfield and the advance is real but not field-shifting, and when no-page-charge economics matter.
Choose Angewandte Chemie or JACS only when a referee would call the result broadly important, not just solid, because their desk editors reject competent work for lack of reach. Choose Chemical Science when you want a fully free open-access flagship and the novelty can survive a high bar.
Choose European Journal of Organic Chemistry when the work is purely organic and would read as too narrow for a general-chemistry readership. The mistake we see most is authors treating Chemistry - A European Journal as "Angewandte minus prestige." It is a different balance of advance and rigor, and a flagship-style draft often arrives here with experimental completeness left half-finished.
For deeper context on the closest peers, see is Chemical Science a good journal, the Angewandte Chemie review time breakdown, and the JACS journal metrics profile.
Common failure patterns at Chemistry - A European Journal
In our pre-submission review work with Chemistry - A European Journal manuscripts, the desk-screen failures cluster around the journal's two-sided bar: it wants both a real advance and a complete data package, and a manuscript can fail on either axis.
Across our Chemistry - A European Journal pre-submission reviews, four patterns generate the most consistent early returns, and each is a named rejection pattern you can test before upload. In our review of chemistry manuscripts deciding between Chemistry - A European Journal and the more selective flagships, the same triage repeats: editors screen the stated advance and the characterization package together, not one then the other.
How this guide was built: we reviewed Chemistry - A European Journal's published author guidelines, Notice to Authors, and the Chemistry Europe transfer network documentation, and the sources checked are listed at the end of this page. Our Manusights submission analysis then compared those guidelines with recurring patterns from pre-submission reviews of chemistry manuscripts choosing between Chemistry - A European Journal, Angewandte Chemie, and European Journal of Organic Chemistry.
This guide tells you what Chemistry - A European Journal editors look for; the review tells you whether YOUR paper clears the journal-specific advance-and-rigor screen before you upload. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.
Incremental chemistry with no stated advance
The most common desk-screen trigger we see is a technically complete paper that never says what is new. The synthesis works, the spectra are clean, and the conclusion restates the introduction; what is missing is the sentence that tells the editor why a chemist in this subfield would cite it.
Because Chemistry - A European Journal weighs significance alongside rigor, a competent extension of a known reaction or a one-more-analogue study with no conceptual hook reads as incremental. This is the single highest-leverage fix before submission, because it is usually an articulation problem, not a science problem: the advance is in the data but never stated in the abstract or cover letter.
Check whether your Chemistry - A European Journal advance is stated clearly →
Incomplete characterization or Supporting Information package
A second pattern is a data package with holes. The journal requires reported compounds to be supported by complete characterization. In chemistry, that means NMR (with both 1H and 13C where applicable), high-resolution mass spectrometry, IR, melting point, and elemental analysis or an equivalent purity measure for new compounds, with crystallographic data deposited where relevant.
Manuscripts that characterize only a subset of products, show spectra in the figures without numerical assignments in the Supporting Information, or omit copies of key spectra from the SI read as incomplete to a referee. We also see complete data that simply did not make it into the uploaded SI file, which is the cheapest version of this problem to fix and the most costly to leave in.
Check if your Chemistry - A European Journal characterization package is complete →
Scope drift outside core chemistry
A third recurring failure is scope. Chemistry - A European Journal publishes chemistry and the chemistry-interfacing sciences, and editors return work where the chemistry is a thin wrapper on a study that really belongs in a materials-engineering, device, or biology venue.
A manuscript whose actual contribution is a battery-performance result with a token ligand synthesis, or a biological-activity screen with a small analytical-chemistry appendix, is at high risk of an out-of-scope desk rejection even when the science is sound. The test is simple: if the central hypothesis is not a chemistry hypothesis, the scope fit is weak regardless of how the abstract is framed.
Communication submitted without urgency or completeness
The fourth pattern is an article-type mismatch. Authors who want a fast, short publication sometimes submit a Communication that is really a truncated Full Paper: the experimental section is thin, the result is solid but not urgent, and the format choice reads as a shortcut rather than a justified call.
A Communication at Chemistry - A European Journal is reserved for results important and timely enough to merit preliminary publication, and it must still be reproducible from the text and Supporting Information. If the urgency or experimental completeness is missing, the format costs the time it was meant to save.
Check whether your Chemistry - A European Journal article type and package match →
Readiness check
Run the scan against the requirements while they're in front of you.
See score, top issues, and journal-fit signals before you submit.
Submit If
Chemistry - A European Journal is the right home for a large band of solid, novel chemistry. Submit when these specific, testable conditions hold:
- the abstract and cover letter state, in one sentence, what is new and why chemists in your subfield will cite it
- every new compound has a complete characterization set (1H and 13C NMR, HRMS, IR, and a purity measure) reported in the manuscript or Supporting Information
- the central question is a chemistry hypothesis and the work spans or interfaces more than one narrow subfield
- you have chosen the article type deliberately, with a Communication justified by genuine urgency and completeness rather than length
- you value no-page-charge, free-color economics and Web of Science, Scopus, and MEDLINE indexing under a society-owned title
The review tells you whether YOUR paper clears the advance-and-rigor screen before you upload, not just what the guidelines say in the abstract.
Think Twice If
Chemistry - A European Journal is not the right venue for everything. Pause if any of these specific manuscript patterns describe your draft:
- the paper is fully correct but the conclusion restates the introduction, with no sentence that names a conceptual advance (the most common stall we see)
- a synthesis manuscript characterizes only some of the reported compounds, or shows spectra as figures without the numerical assignments and spectral copies in the Supporting Information
- a materials, device, or biological study uses a thin chemistry section as the venue hook, which reads as out-of-scope to a chemistry editor
- a Communication manuscript is chosen for speed even though the result is neither urgent nor experimentally complete enough for the format
- the work is purely organic or purely inorganic and tightly scoped, in which case European Journal of Organic Chemistry or European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry may fit the readership better
If you are unsure which side of the line your draft falls on, run a Chemistry - A European Journal desk-screen check to surface the advance and characterization gaps before an editor does. The check is free to run (/ai-review) and takes a single upload.
What is the Chemistry - A European Journal pre-submission checklist?
- [ ] The abstract (≤200 words) and cover letter state explicitly what is new and why it matters to chemists
- [ ] Every new compound has complete characterization (NMR, HRMS, IR, purity) reported in the manuscript or Supporting Information
- [ ] All spectra, crystallographic data, and extended methods are in the separate Supporting Information PDF, not only in the main text
- [ ] The manuscript is a single file with text, schemes, figures, tables, and the TOC graphic in position;
SI is a separate PDF
- [ ] The Table of Contents graphic is sized correctly (5.5 by 5.0 cm or 11.5 by 2.5 cm) with ≤50 words of text
- [ ] ORCID, data availability, conflict of interest, and funding declarations are ready, and the submitting author is a corresponding author
- [ ] You have confirmed whether your institution's Wiley agreement covers the optional ~$4,640 open-access APC
- ] Run a final [Chemistry - A European Journal submission readiness check to catch the gaps editors filter for on first read
What should you read next?
Frequently asked questions
SciRev community data reports a first review round of roughly 1.5 months (about 2.9 weeks in the most recent reports) with 2.5 reviewer reports on average and about 1.5 rounds before a final decision. Journal-acceptance feedback databases put the median submission-to-first-decision near 14 days, which includes the fast desk-screen verdicts. Immediate rejections come back in about a day. Treat these as planning ranges, not promises, and budget for a major or minor revision as the most common outcome.
Chemistry - A European Journal has no page charges, and color is free of charge for all article graphics. Subscription publication is therefore free to the author. Open access is optional: if you select it on an accepted paper, the article processing charge is 4,640 USD / 4,070 EUR / 3,040 GBP as of 2026. Many institutions cover the APC through Wiley read-and-publish agreements, so check your institution's transformative agreement before paying out of pocket.
The journal publishes Full Papers, Communications, Concepts, Reviews, and Minireviews across all areas of chemistry. Abstracts are capped at 200 words, and the Table of Contents graphic carries up to 50 words of text (450 characters with spaces) plus an image at 5.5 by 5.0 cm or 11.5 by 2.5 cm. A Communication is reserved for results urgent enough to justify preliminary publication; a Full Paper carries the complete experimental section and characterization. Pick the type before you write, because the burden of proof differs.
Chemistry - A European Journal is the broad, solid, Q1-or-Q2 general-chemistry home in the Chemistry Europe family, with a 2024 JCR JIF of 3.7. It is society-owned (Wiley-VCH for an association of 16 European chemical societies), indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, and MEDLINE, and reputable. Angewandte Chemie (JIF 16.9) is far more selective and wants a broad conceptual advance. Submit to Chemistry - A European Journal when the chemistry is rigorous and complete but the advance is solid rather than field-shifting.
The most consistent desk-screen triggers we see are incremental chemistry with no clear conceptual advance, an incomplete characterization or Supporting Information package, scope drift outside core chemistry, and a Communication submitted without the urgency or completeness the format demands. Because the journal weighs both significance and rigor, a paper that is merely correct but unsurprising stalls just as fast as one that is exciting but under-characterized. A clean advance plus a complete data package is what clears the screen.
Sources
- Chemistry - A European Journal overview and scope (Chemistry Europe / Wiley Online Library)
- Chemistry - A European Journal Notice to Authors
- Chemistry - A European Journal Research Exchange submission portal
- Chemistry Europe manuscript transfer guidelines
- Chemistry - A European Journal review-process data (SciRev)
- Chemistry - A European Journal impact factor history (BioxBio)
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