On the eighth of March, a significant event took place both for the team of chemical scientists of YURSPU (NPI), working under the leadership of V.M. Chernyshev, and for our university as a whole: an article "Pd and Pt Catalyst Poisoning in the Study of Reaction Mechanisms: What" was published in one of the most authoritative chemical journals ACS Catalysis Does the Mercury Test Mean forCatalysis?» ("The use of catalytic poisons in studies of the mechanisms of palladium- and platinum-catalyzed reactions: what is the significance of the mercury test for catalysis?").

- Viktor Mikhailovich, congratulations on your unconditional success! The recently published article has become the highest-rated for the entire time of your work. What is its essence and novelty?

- Yes, indeed, together with colleagues from the IOH RAS and the Kurchatov Institute, we published an article in the journal ACS Catalysis (2019, vol. 9, pp. 2984-2995), one of the most highly rated journals in chemistry, publishing experimental and theoretical articles on catalysis (the impact factor of the journal is 11.4). The publication of such a level can serve as pride not only for our team, but also for advanced foreign research teams in the most prestigious universities and scientific organizations.

Our article "Pd and Pt Catalyst Poisoning in the Study of Reaction Mechanisms: What Does the Mercury Test Mean for Catalysis?" is devoted to methods for establishing the mechanisms of so-called metal-catalyzed reactions, which are based on the use of catalytic poisons. Catalytic poisons are special substances that "poison" the catalyst, that is, significantly reduce its activity and, accordingly, the speed of the catalyzed reaction. They are often used when they want to find out the true nature of the catalyst, namely homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysis actually occurs? The main attention in the article is paid to a long-known and very widely used method called "mercury test". In this method, metallic mercury is used as a catalytic poison. So, until now, it was believed that mercury poisons only heterogeneous catalysts (metal nanoparticles), but is inert with respect to homogeneous catalysts (metal complexes). Some exceptions were known, but they were considered only as a special case. The novelty of the article is that we were the first to show the general fallacy of this principle and reliably proved that metallic mercury reacts with both heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts and is a poison for both types of catalysts. Moreover, it was shown for the first time that mercury is even a stronger poison for many homogeneous catalysts than for heterogeneous ones. This is very important, because every year several hundred articles are published in the world chemical literature (and several thousand articles have been published in total), in which the mercury test is used as the main method of studying the mechanisms of reactions and, as it turned out, often leads to erroneous conclusions. Erroneous ideas about the reaction mechanism often do not allow choosing the right effective catalyst, inhibit the development of a particular scientific direction.

Another, even more important aspect of this article is that in it we formulated for the first time a number of important principles, the observance of which is necessary for the correct application of any catalytic poisons in the study of the mechanisms of chemical reactions.

- It is known that a significant part of the research was carried out by chemists of the YURSPU (NPI) working under your leadership. However, representatives of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences are among your co-authors. What was their contribution to the joint work?

This article was made possible largely due to the fruitful cooperation of research teams from different organizations. Moreover, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor V.P. Ananikov is the head of the basic Department of the YURSPU(NPI) at the IOH RAS, is also an employee of our university, I am a member of the staff of this department, and one of the co-authors of this article is a student of the YURSPU (NPI) Gleb Early, performed a significant part of the experiments while undergoing training practice at the basic department directly at the IOH named after N.D. Zelinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences. So our article is rather the fruit of the work of a scientific "conglomerate" between educational and academic structures. Moreover, as the growth of our joint articles in highly-rated international journals and financial support from the RFBR and the Russian National Fund shows, such cooperation is very productive. What are the features of this cooperation? First of all, it is the exchange of ideas and the attraction of "intellectual resources" from the academic environment, the spread of "scientific culture" from advanced academic laboratories to the university environment. Secondly, and this is extremely important, is the use of the IOH RAS instrument base. An article in such a journal would be impossible without performing a very large number of experiments on devices that are not available at our university and are very expensive – tens and hundreds of millions of rubles. These are both NMR spectrometers and advanced mass spectrometers available at IOH RAS.

- How long did it take you to prepare the article, how did the work on it go?

- In terms of time - from the idea that the mercury test is incorrect in principle, to the publication of the article – about two and a half years. Moreover, this is two and a half years of intense experimental and theoretical work with the involvement of significant human and hardware resources, material support from the RNF and RFBR. How was the work going? The main part of the synthetic experiments, the isolation of new substances, the production of catalysts, as well as the study of the effect of mercury on the rate of catalytic reactions was carried out at YURGPU (NPI). The main part of the experiments to establish the structure of substances, special experiments showing the mechanism of reactions of mercury with catalysts, were carried out at the IOH RAS. All members of the team of authors made a significant contribution to the development of the idea and interpretation of the experimental results, as well as to the writing of the article.

- Did the reviewers have any comments, and how did they manage to overcome them?

- Yes, there were a lot of comments. Firstly, there are four reviewers (leading scientists from different countries), and each has his own opinion, sometimes contradicting the opinion of another reviewer. There were three rounds of review: the first review, comments, questions and suggestions of reviewers, work on comments, then the second review, again work on improving the article, and finally the third review and publication of the article. The process of such interaction with the editorial board and reviewers took almost five months. And this is quite normal, a common situation for a journal of this level, where published articles undergo very strict criticism and selection.

- What could you recommend to our scientists when preparing articles of this level?

- To create a high-level "scientific product", first of all, serious systematic work is necessary. For those scientists who do not have publications in highly rated journals yet, but who intend to have them in the future, I would recommend tuning in to painstaking, persistent systematic work. It is necessary to start small – publications in international medium-level journals, for example, the third and second quartile of Web of Science. Already for this, as a rule, it is required to form a scientific group, find funding. The main thing is, of course, people, a team of like–minded people, and ambitious and ready to work hard and overcome difficulties. The issue of financing is also very important. If the team still has an insufficient level of scientific qualification, then, probably, one of the most effective ways to improve it is cooperation with successful teams, including in partner organizations. Very often successful research groups go to such cooperation – ambitious and hardworking "associates" are needed by almost everyone and always. Working on projects together with successful research teams headed by leading scientists contributes to the expansion of scientific horizons, the rapid growth of scientific qualifications, the creation of scientific connections and, as a result, the appearance of articles in prestigious scientific journals. The latter is currently an important qualification feature when applying for grants from the Russian National Fund and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. At the same time, the probability of receiving a grant for your own scientific project increases.

Having formed an effective scientific group, using our own human and material resources attracted within the framework of scientific cooperation, it is necessary to realize a worthwhile scientific idea and get a significant scientific result, that is, a high-level "scientific product". It can be a new knowledge, a new method, a new class of substances with unusual properties, and the like. Having such a result, it is necessary to describe it in the form of an article and send it to a highly rated magazine. At the same time, you should be prepared for frequent refusals from the editorial board, negative reviews, harsh criticism from reviewers. It is advisable to take criticism into account, refine the "scientific product", and with systematic work, the level of articles will gradually increase and publications in "top" scientific journals will go. This path is not very fast, but scientific cooperation with successful teams will significantly accelerate it. These are my recommendations.