Compounds: Five Years of Serving the Dissemination of Chemistry

Compounds has existed as a scientific publication in the field of chemistry for five years now. It began its journey with the publication of the first editorial article, which appeared on the journal’s website on 9 December 2020 [1] and represented the start of the first issue of the first volume of the journal of June 2021 [2]. Throughout the first years of our journal’s life, we introduced several improvements that led to a greater and better service to the scientific world, thus becoming a useful tool for the research community to disseminate their scientific results while maintaining the best possible quality and highest standards. During these years, we have seen with pride and satisfaction the growing acceptance that our journal has achieved among the scientific community. We may count the 133 publications that have been accumulated over this five-year period (Figure 1) as irrefutable proof of this ever-growing acceptance, since they have accumulated a total of 493 citations (Crossref) and nearly 350,000 views according to article metrics on the MDPI publishing platform, where several requests from the same IP address are counted as one view/download (Figure 2). This would imply that a publication in Compounds has an average of 3.7 citations and 2572 views.

During the year 2024, a total of 44 articles were published, of which 38.6% were regular articles, 27.3% were review articles and 4.5% were short communications. This represents an increase of 4.8% compared to the number of articles that were published in 2023. The total distribution of publications over the past five years (based on the type of article) is shown in Figure 3.

In 2024, Compounds was indexed in the Scopus database, where it was assigned a CiteScore [3] for the year 2023 of 2.3. It should be noted that the CiteScore Tracker for the year 2024 is 3.6, pending the final results. Scopus included Compounds in the categories of Materials Science (miscellaneous), Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology and Chemistry (miscellaneous). Likewise, Scopus assigned a SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) value for the year 2023 of 0.487. This implies that one of the milestones that were set when the journal was born has been successfully reached [4]. It is also important to note that at this moment, Compounds is being tracked for an Impact Factor by the Journal Citation Report.

Another remarkable aspect is the publication of five Special Issues during 2024, some of which are still open for contributions during 2025 (

Table 1. Special Issues that are open for submission of contributions and Special Issues that closed in 2024.

Special Issue	Deadline	Ref.
Fluorescence in Lanthanide Coordination Compounds	31 March 2025	[5]
Decarbonisation: From Fossil to Renewable Fuels Through Power to X	30 April 2025	[6]
Organic Compounds with Biological Activity	30 September 2025	[7]
(Bio)molecules form Natural Extracts: An infinite World of Opportunities	closed	[8]
Feature Papers in Compounds (2024)	closed	[9]

).

In the Editor’s Choice Articles section [10], we have accumulated 27 articles over this five-year period, of which 7 new articles were incorporated during 2024. The publications that make up this section accumulate a total of 117 citations (CrossRef)—which implies that these articles have an average of 4.3 citations per article—and represent a total of almost 70,000 views according to article metrics on the MDPI publishing platform (where several requests from the same IP address are counted as one view/download), which would represent an average of 2617 views per article (see Figure 4 and Figure 5).

This Editorial may also be a good moment to congratulate the authors whose contributions have been selected as cover stories of the four issues that were published during the past year (see Figure 6): “Effect of Particle Size on the Physical Properties of PLA/Potato Peel Composites” [11], “(1E)-1,2-Diaryldiazene Derivatives Containing a Donor–π-Acceptor-Type Tolane Skeleton as Smectic Liquid–Crystalline Dyes” [12], “Comparative Study of the Chemical Composition of Root, Stem and Leaf Essential Oils from Synedrella nodiflora (L.) Gaertn” [13] and “Bench to Any Side—The Pharmacology and Applications of Natural and Synthetic Alkylated Hydroxy Cinnamates and Cinnamides” [14].

Compounds is currently listed on different indexing and abstracting service platforms. Thus, in addition to the CA Plus/Sc Finder, CNKI, CNPIEC, DOAJ, EBSCO and PATENTSCOPE services, bidCNRS, Scopus, OpenAIRE and WoS-ESCI were added during 2024. We also maintain a presence in different content aggregators (Google Scholar, Scilit and World CAT/OCLC) and journal directories, repository delivery services and digital preservation services (Electronic Journals Library—EZB, Open policy finder, DeepGreen, Jisc, CLOCKSS and Suisse National Library—Helvetocat). In addition, our Editorial Office continues their work to include Compounds in new indexing and abstracting services and journal ranking lists to give greater visibility to the contributions that we publish.

Going forward, our main objective remains unchanged. We want to continue improving day by day, so that Compounds is positioned as a quality reference journal and to consolidate a forum in which to present, debate and disseminate the most cutting-edge achievements in the field of chemistry. Therefore, in this Editorial, and both on my own behalf and on behalf of the members of the Editorial Committee, I invite the scientific community to continue trusting in Compounds. We invite you to contribute and will therefore welcome any scientific articles, short communications, review articles and letters that meet our quality standards.

I also invite you to collaborate with us in the editing and publication of Special Issues that are dedicated to topics that are aligned with the scope of Compounds.

Finally, I would like to express my most sincere gratitude for the invaluable help of all the scientists who have collaborated as reviewers throughout this time, since there is no doubt that high-quality academic publishing is built on rigorous peer review. In this sense, Compounds was able to uphold its high standards for published papers due to the outstanding efforts of our reviewers. Thanks to them and to the good work of the entire editorial team, manuscripts are peer-reviewed, and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 32.5 days after submission [15].