Editorial − The Analyst leads the way in rapid publication

In 2001 The Analyst continued from strength to strength with its impact factor rising to 1.818 and with the total number of citations to The Analyst increasing by just over 6%. The journal also prides itself on its rapid publication times with full papers being published approximately 120 days from receipt and urgent communications within 60 days. In fact an article published in the ACS Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Science compared 10 analytical science journals and concluded, “ The Analyst has recently become the clear leader in publication speed” (I. Disspatonyi, G. Horvai, and T. Braun, J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., 2001, 41, 1452–1456). A major part of this success is of course due to the rapid, thorough, peer review process and the Editorial Board would like to give a special thanks to all of those referees involved. This year we have published on the web site a list of the referees who gave up their valuable time to examine papers for The Analyst .

2001 saw some new faces on the Editorial Board of The Analyst and I hope you will join me in welcoming Lars Andersson, (AstraZeneca Research & Development, Sodertalje. Sweden), Ryszard Lobinski (CNRS, Pau, France) and Elisabeth Verpoorte (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland) to the Board. We also have to say our thanks and farewell to Richard Miller (the previous Chairman of the Editorial Board), Malcolm Smyth (Associate Scientific Editor), Rita Cornelis and Stephen Haswell who all completed their terms on the Editorial Board during the year.

The Analyst aims to promote the view that research in analytical science is clearly concerned with quantum scientific advances in the detection, characterisation and quantitative determination of analytes. The publication of two well received thematic issues in 2001 in the areas of Molecular Imprinting (edited by Klaus Mosbach and Karsten Haupt) and New Directions in Electroanalysis (edited by Damien Arrigan) helped to underline this view. A special issue for “Young Investigators” published last year and edited by Steven Soper illustrated the exciting new science being carried out by some of the most promising younger analytical scientists.

Academic publishing is currently in a phase of rapid change and the Editorial Board is pleased to see The Analyst is at the forefront of these developments. One of the major areas of change is in the use of electronic transfer of documents to enhance the services provided. The launch of the electronic manuscript submission route last year proved to be a huge success, with approximately 40% of new submissions now arriving using the file upload system. Where appropriate, papers can then be sent on to referees electronically, which can drastically cut down postal delays and speed up the rate at which comments are fed back to the authors.

Up until now the only information freely available in the web version of The Analyst to non-subscribers has been the paper title and author’s names. We are delighted to announce, however, that access to the abstracts of papers appearing in the web version of The Analyst is now free. The access policy to on-line journals has also changed from 1st January 2002 with all PDF articles published before January 2000 being freely available (i.e. our back issues from 1997–1999).

Another new development is that non-subscribers can now purchase on-line access to individual Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) articles in PDF format using the RSC e-commerce system. The payment is by credit card and is automatically validated allowing customers immediate access to the article required.

The RSC has also recently reached an agreement with the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, which will allow the researchers at 150 Russian institutions to access the online forms of all RSC journals, including The Analyst. The 3-year agreement (2001–2003) covers all existing journals produced by the RSC and will also include any new journals published by the RSC in 2002 and 2003. If you have any Russian colleagues or collaborators who might be interested in this news, please do let them know. These new policies from the Royal Society of Chemistry should open access to The Analyst for an even wider audience.

There are two new facilities that will become available in 2002 that will be of great use to some of our readers. These include a new Reference Linking Facility for users of RSC journals online. Value-added features provided by links from the references in online articles are to include access to the full-text of the cited article.

At launch, the Reference Linking facilities will be:

• free access to the Chemical Abstracts Service abstract for the reference via ChemPort (www.chemport.org)
• links to the full text of the reference, where available online, on the publisher's server (a subscription or pay-per-view may be required to access the article)
• a mechanism to purchase a printed copy of the cited article via the RSC Library and Information Centre's Document Delivery Service

Future enhancements will include links to other resources. You can try reference linking now by visiting www.rsc.org/is/journals/references/ref_record.htm where there is an example of a published online article with reference links.

The second quarter of 2002 will see the launch of an RSC chemical biology web site. This is a joint venture between RSC Publishing and the Chemical Biology Forum. The intention is to provide a valuable resource for the chemical biology community, a major component of which will be a virtual journal, bringing together links to all the RSC’s published material in chemical biology. This will of course include the bioanalytical papers found in The Analyst. So by publishing your bioanalytical work in The Analyst it will be easily accessible by both the analytical science and chemical biology communities.

As stated earlier, scientific publishing is a rapidly changing field and we encourage feedback on new developments and suggestion for improvement. If you have any ideas for new themes or any other feedback for the journal the Editorial Board is always keen to hear your views so please send them to analyst@rsc.org.

Here is wishing you a very Happy New Year from the Editorial Board and Editorial team.

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