Message from the Chairman of the Editorial Board of PCCP

PCCP enters its fifth year of publication, with confidence and optimism. The number of articles published in 2002 was a new all time high (see Fig. 1), and the journal continues to grow in size. Publication times remain impressively quick. For example, the mean [t(50%)] time from receipt to publication of papers in late 2002 was just 96 days. For Communications, this figure was a mere 40 days. Within that time, the Editorial Office will have obtained reports from two of its extensive international pool of referees—three if the first two responses are contradictory (rather than the single referee's report favoured by some journals!) and communicated these reports to the authors. It will have encouraged speedy action by the authors in the light of these reports, received and processed the revised manuscript, polished the text where required, issued and received corrected proofs and arranged publication. As Fig. 2 illustrates, the time delay between acceptance and advance publication on the web is rapidly shrinking. We Editorial Board members have now learnt to expect such polished performance and strong statistics, but we, along with our readers, do need periodic reminders of the scale and the quality of the very impressive and efficient ‘behind the scenes’ activities that need to be going on, ceaselessly, to ensure the continued health and vitality of PCCP.

Fig. 1 Number of published papers.

Fig. 2 Time (days) from acceptance to Advance Article publication.

The turn of any year always brings change. One is obvious—the cover design of the journal has been refreshed to allow for greater flexibility with the cover image. Professor Jürgen Troe has reached the end of his term of office as Chairman (but will continue as a member of PCCP Editorial Board for one more year). A further three Board members (Professors R. Ahlrichs, J. N. L. Connor and S. Pignataro) have also completed their terms of office. Each has made very substantial contributions to the successful launch and growth of PCCP as a truly international journal of Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics, and the personality, energy and wisdom each brought to the table will be missed at future Board meetings. Regular readers may experience a slight feeling of deja-vu when learning of my appointment as the ‘new’ Chairman of the Editorial Board of PCCP, since I did serve in this capacity during the inaugural year of the journal. I asked to stand down thereafter so that I could devote myself as fully as possible to an EPSRC Senior Research Fellowship. That Fellowship has now ended, and I am honoured to receive another opportunity to guide the fortunes of PCCP. In this regard, I anticipate help and support from the impressive cohort of new Editorial Board members: Professor P. Bartlett (Southampton), Professor M. Head-Gordon (Berkeley), Professor G. Marletta (Catania), Professor Dr H. Möhwald (MPI Potsdam) and Professor S. A. Rice (Chicago). Finally, while reviewing personnel changes, it gives me pleasure to extend a very warm welcome to all new members of our International Advisory Editorial Board (IAEB) and also to thank retiring members of that Board. IAEB members play a crucial role in promoting PCCP across the globe, in supporting the journal with high quality submissions from their own groups, and in the refereeing and adjudication of articles submitted by others.

Electronic publishing continues to grow in impact, and PCCP continues to be at the forefront of such developments.

• Abstracts of all PCCP papers have been freely available on the web since mid-2002 and access to online PCCP papers is now free to all just two years after publication.

• E-mail alerts now include direct links to articles—please sign up at http://www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/ej_update_form.htm to take advantage of this service.

• Access to the electronic form of any RSC printed journal comes free with a 2003 institutional subscription, while those institutional subscribers who wish to receive just the electronic version can now subscribe and save 10%. One institutional print subscription, or online only subscription, allows site-wide access to the electronic version of that journal at no further cost.

• Users of RSC journals online can now benefit from a new Reference Linking facility. This citation linking backbone is a collaborative reference linking service that allows a user to click on a citation and be taken directly to the target content. Facilities include: free access to the Chemical Abstracts Service abstract for the reference via ChemPort (http://www.chemport.org) and 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), via CrossRef. Future enhancements will include a mechanism to purchase a printed copy of the cited article via the RSC Library and Information Centre's Document Delivery Service and links to other resources.

• Due to popular demand, and leading to further reductions in publication times, proofs of articles are now sent to authors in PDF format. Reprints of articles are also provided in PDF format.

As always, I and all other Editorial Board members welcome suggestions as to how the journal might be improved or enhanced further. I wish you every success in 2003.

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