Happy New Year from ChemComm

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Abstract

Welcome to the New Year and issue 1, 2006 of ChemComm. In this editorial we reflect on the past 40th anniversary year and look to the future and the exciting developments in RSC Publishing.

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Introduction

2005 was a year of festivity for ChemComm as we celebrated our 40th anniversary. This coincided with the transition to weekly publication, the new easily readable three-page format and the launch of the new-look website. The Journal has gone from strength to strength over the past year and 2006 is shaping up to be another promising year.

40th anniversary celebrations

As part of the 40th anniversary celebrations we looked back through the decades to discover the top 40 most cited articles published in ChemComm since its commencement in 1965. The most cited article was Sir Jack Baldwin's 1976 paper “Rules for ring closure”¹ with more than 1500 citations (Table 1). R. Donald Sedgwick and co-workers take the number two spot with their 1981 breakthrough in Mass Spectrometry entitled “Fast atom bombardment of solids (F.A.B.): a new ion source for mass spectrometry”.² Mathias Brust et al. appear at number three with “Synthesis of thiol-derivatised gold nanoparticles in a two-phase liquid–liquid system”,³ published in 1994. This paper was recently listed in the Chemical Abstracts Service top ten most cited articles in materials science. Also of note is Roger Sheldon's feature article “Catalytic reactions in ionic liquids”⁴ at number 11 with an impressive 400 citations since its publication just four years ago.

Table 1 Top 10 most cited articles published in ChemComm since 1965

1	Rules for ring closure
	Jack E. Baldwin, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1976, 734
2	Fast atom bombardment of solids (F.A.B.): a new ion source for mass spectrometry
	Michael Barber, Robert S. Bordoli, R. Donald Sedgwick and Andrew N. Tyler, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1981, 325
3	Synthesis of thiol-derivatised gold nanoparticles in a two-phase liquid–liquid system
	Mathias Brust, Merryl Walker, Donald Bethell, David J. Schiffrin and Robin Whyman, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1994, 801
4	Electrochemical polymerization of pyrrole
	A. F. Diaz, K. Keiji Kanazawa and Gian Piero Gardini, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1979, 635
5	Synthesis of electrically conducting organic polymers: halogen derivatives of polyacetylene, (CH)x
	Hideki Shirakawa, Edwin J. Louis, Alan G. MacDiarmid, Chwan K. Chiang and Alan J. Heeger, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1977, 578
6	Isolation, separation and characterisation of the fullerenes C60 and C70: the third form of carbon
	Roger Taylor, Jonathan P. Hare, Ala'a K. Abdul-Sada and Harold W. Kroto, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1990, 1423
7	Synthesis of highly ordered mesoporous materials from a layered polysilicate
	S. Inagaki, Y. Fukushima and K. Kuroda, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1993, 680
8	Preparation and use of tetra-n-butylammonium per-ruthenate (TBAP reagent) and tetra-n-propylammonium per-ruthenate (TPAP reagent) as new catalytic oxidants for alcohols
	William P. Griffith, Steven V. Ley, Gwynne P. Whitcombe and Andrew D. White, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1987, 1625
9	Soluble conducting polythiophenes
	Masa-aki Sato, Susumu Tanaka and Kyoji Kaeriyama, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1986, 873
10	Synthesis of an ultralarge pore titanium silicate isomorphous to MCM-41 and its application as a catalyst for selective oxidation of hydrocarbons
	A. Corma, M. T. Navarro and J. Pérez Pariente, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1994, 147

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We also compiled a list of the top 40 most cited ChemComm authors over the past 40 years. Michael F. Lappert came in first with 5913 citations received for his 187 ChemComm articles published between 1965 and 2004 (Table 2). Sir Jack E. Baldwin was in second position with 5081 citations, closely followed by Peter B. Hitchcock. Full details of the top 40 most cited articles⁵ and ChemComm authors⁶ can be accessed via our website.

Table 2 Top 10 most cited ChemComm authors since 1965

	Author	Total Citations	Total Papers
1	M. F. Lappert	5913	187
2	J. E. Baldwin	5081	172
3	P. B. Hitchcock	5012	206
4	J. M. Lehn	4556	97
5	B. F. G. Johnson	4381	183
6	D. J. Williams	4368	203
7	J. Lewis	3688	142
8	M. L. H. Green	3382	146
9	A. G. Orpen	2930	108
10	M. Green	2831	157

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The 40th anniversary celebrations also included a series of lectures and specially commissioned anniversary articles that were published throughout the year and reviewed the latest ideas and opinions in areas across the chemical sciences. We are pleased to announce that there are some further articles that will be published over the coming months to complete this popular series. Throughout 2006, we shall also continue to publish the highly successful Feature Articles which are now in their 10th year and continue to provide up-to-date accounts of research in topical fields.

Editorial Board changes

We would like to sincerely thank Professor Jerry Atwood for his contributions as an Associate Editor, as he retires after 10 years' service. We would also like to express our gratitude to Professor Colin Raston and Professor Makoto Fujita who are also retiring from the ChemComm Editorial Board.

Following the retirement of Professor Atwood, we are pleased to welcome Professor Jonathan Sessler from the University of Texas at Austin to the position of Associate Editor for Supramolecular Chemistry. Submissions to ChemComm from North America to all of our Associate Editors are welcomed via ReSourCe, our homepage for authors and referees.

This year we also welcome Professor Nazario Martín and Professor Ryong Ryoo to the ChemComm Editorial Board. We very much look forward to working with all the new Board members.

The RSC and Chemical Biology

Following its successful launch in 2005, the RSC's new monthly chemical biology journal Molecular BioSystems goes from strength to strength. The journal is devoted to publishing the best work in chemical biology with a particular focus on the interface between chemistry and the -omic sciences and systems biology, and many top authors from prestigious organisations around the world have already submitted articles. The journal has been very well-received in the community – and subscribers to ChemComm in 2006 will continue to receive free (print and online) access to this exciting new addition to the RSC portfolio.

January 2006 sees the launch of another exciting new supplement from the RSC: Chemical Biology. A companion publication of Chemical Science and Chemical Technology (Fig. 1), it draws together coverage from RSC publications and provides succinct accounts of the latest chemical biology research. It will appear monthly as a free print supplement in Molecular BioSystems and there will also be free online access.

Fig. 1 Chemical Science, Chemical Technology and Chemical Biology – free supplements highlighting news and research from all RSC publications.

Chemical biology content published in ChemComm is highlighted in the Chemical Biology Virtual Journal. The portal, which was launched in 2002 in recognition of the significant amount of chemical biology material published across RSC journals, enables interested readers to readily access relevant items. All chemical biology articles and related papers published in RSC journals are drawn together online every two weeks, with a selection of the primary literature free to access for a month.

Technological advances

2005 has seen RSC Publishing invest significantly in technological developments across all of its products. First there was the introduction of the new website in the summer which included a contemporary, fresh look and an enhanced structure for improved and intuitive navigation between relevant, associated content (Fig. 2). The improvements to the technological infrastructure have made the site more flexible and efficient, and better equip the RSC to deliver enhanced publishing products and services for its customers in the future. The new look was just the start and towards the end of the year we were pleased to provide further enhancements in the form of RSS feeds and ‘forward linking’ facilities.

Fig. 2 The new ChemComm website.

RSS feeds

RSS, or ‘really simple syndication’, is the latest way to keep up with the research published by the RSC. The new service provides subscribers with alerts as soon as an Advance Article is published in their journal of choice. Journal readers simply need to go to the journal homepage, click on the RSS link, and follow the step-by-step instructions to register for these enhanced alerts. RSS feeds include both the graphical abstract and text from a journal's contents page – i.e. they deliver access to new research straight to a reader's PC, as soon as it is published! Many feed reader software packages also have the added benefit of remembering what has been read previously, which in turn makes tracking and managing journal browsing more efficient.

Forward linking

‘Forward linking’, the reverse of reference linking, enables readers to link from any RSC published paper to the articles in which it is cited. In essence, it allows researchers to easily track the progression of a concept or discovery, since its original publication. With one click of a button (on the ‘search for citing articles’ link) a list of citing articles included in Cross-Ref is presented, complete with DOI links.

At a time when research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary in nature and the amount of published works continues to grow, it is hoped that the new technology, developed in conjunction with Cross-Ref, will significantly reduce the time spent by researchers searching for information.

These developments demonstrate the investment in publishing products and services over the past year and 2006 will see us enhancing our products further, with improvements to the HTML functionality of all journals and ReSourCe (the author and referee web interface) already underway.

Impact factors

The 2004 impact factors, released by ISI^® in June 2005, showed an impressive average increase of over 10% for RSC Journals (Fig. 3). Calculated annually, ISI^® impact factors provide an indication of the quality of a journal – they take into account the number of citations in a given year for all the citeable documents published within a journal in the preceding two years. It is worth noting that alongside the ACS Publications, journals from RSC Publishing have the highest median impact factor among publishers in the chemical sciences. This encouraging statistic demonstrates the recognition and status that researchers place in society published work.

Fig. 3 Median impact factor in seven ISI core chemistry categories.

Not just journals…

As well as an impressive portfolio of prestigious journals, the RSC has a significant collection of book titles. The first titles in three new series: RSC Biomolecular Sciences; RSC Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Series; and Issues in Toxicology were published in 2005, with further titles due during 2006. Future growth in the books publishing programme is planned, which reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the chemical sciences.

As you can see, 2006 promises to be another exciting year for ChemComm and RSC Publishing as a whole. ChemComm is still the leading weekly journal for the publication of communications on important developments in the chemical sciences. As ever, we are delighted to still be renowned as the fastest publisher of articles drawn from all the world's major areas of chemical research. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our authors, referees and readers for their continued support. On behalf of the Editorial Board and Editorial Staff at the Royal Society of Chemistry, we would like to wish you a happy and successful New Year.

Roeland Nolte

Chairman, ChemComm Editorial Board

Sarah Thomas

Editor, ChemComm

Kathryn Sear

Deputy Editor, ChemComm

Notes and references

1. J. E. Baldwin, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1976, 734–736.
2. M. Barber, R. S. Bordoli, R. D. Sedgwick and A. N. Tyler, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1981, 325–327.
3. M. Brust, M. Walker, D. Bethell, D. J. Schiffrin and R. Whyman, J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1994, 801–802.
4. R. Sheldon, Chem. Commun., 2001, 2399–2407.
5. http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/cc/News/Top40MostCitedArticles.asp.
6. http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/cc/News/MostCitedAuthors.asp.

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