The founders of Science², who are academic chemists, have created the first journal of the association that is called Chemistry Squared (Chemistry²; www.chem2.org). It is a chemistry journal based on high scientific standards. This is ensured by a rigorous peer reviewing process based exclusively on high scientific quality. This journal is “open access” and the “benefits” from the publication fees are solely dedicated to the training of young scientists and maintenance of the association.

The second open-access journal of the association, called Physics Squared (Physics²; www.phys2.org), is currently being created. Physics² will be a physics journal meeting high standards.

Why publish with Science²?

• A guarantee of top quality: Science² is committed to publishing high-quality innovative research. From the very beginning, a prominent level of quality will be ensured, with the goal of achieving impact factors equivalent to some of the best current multidisciplinary journals of the corresponding fields. All scientists involved in Science² are active top researchers in their field (see Association Members)
• Promote open access: Science² wants to contribute to making research results freely accessible to all society, in return to its efforts in maintaining high quality research programs for the advancement of knowledge.
• Revert back the funds collected to science: The strict and transparent non-profit character of Science² has stimulated an original model that reverts back to Science the benefits from article-processing charges (APCs) through training grants for early-career investigators. While a program of conference travel grants for young co-authors of Science² papers will be implemented immediately, PhD and postdoctoral grants will follow.
• The peer reviewers of our journals know that they are working exclusively for the scientific community, evaluating great science (all manuscripts received being initially assessed by the editors; see below), and aware that the benefits from published papers promote the training of talented young researchers (see GRANTS).
• Authors have the option to implement blog on their published article at the journal’s site, so that their results can be discussed together with colleagues and collaborators.

Submitted manuscripts will undergo initial assessment to ensure that they meet the publication high standards of the journal. A manuscript will be returned to the author(s) without being forwarded to reviewers if one or more of the following specifications apply:

1. the work is of poor scientific quality
2. the novelty of the work falls below that expected
3. scientific misconduct is detected
4. the quality of the English in the manuscript is poor
5. (scanned) copies of all characterization files/data (such as elemental analyses, NMR Spectra, Mass spectra, CIFs, etc.) are not provided as Supporting Information
6. the manuscript falls outside the scope of the journal
7. the manuscript contains redundant data or significant amounts of information that has already been published elsewhere (or is under consideration by another journal)
8. the paper represents undue fragmentation of the research into multiple reports
9. the conclusions of the work presented are well known or have already been described in the literature.

The first journal of the association is of chemistry, but the other areas of science (physics, biology, computational science and so on) will progressively be represented through the creation of the respective journals. Actually, Science² is currently working on the creation of the physics journal of the association, namely Physics² (www.phys2.org). This journal will be launched in the coming months.

The funds raised by Science² will be used for the creation of international Masters, PhD and Post-doc fellowships addressed only to excellent candidates. The latter will be carefully selected by the administration authorities of the concerned countries.