2003, A Double Dalton Celebration

John Dalton

On 6th September, 1803, John Dalton wrote the first known list of atomic weights in his laboratory notebook and thus started to develop his atomic theory upon which the whole of modern chemistry has been built. He made this public on 21st October 1803 in a talk to the Manchester Philosophical Society. Two hundred years later, this Journal, which bears his name, is proud to celebrate this wonderful contribution to the development of science in general and chemistry in particular. In this issue, we print an appreciation of the life and work of John Dalton by Professor Mike Lappert, who is a devotee of John Dalton and currently owns the house in the Lake District in which John Dalton lived. This is a sensitive and affectionate piece, which will be of great interest to everyone. The second Dalton Celebration Perspective in this issue is by Professor Malcolm Chisholm, formerly Associate Editor for the Americas of J. Chem. Soc., Dalton Trans., in which he shows the wonderful interplay of experiment and theory which is now possible building on that remarkable insight of John Dalton. These two articles were published on the Web on 6th September (the 200th anniversary of John Dalton's original notebook entry). Professor Helmut Werner's article describing his beautiful work on ligands in which phosphine terminated arms are attached to arenes completes the line up of Celebration Perspectives in this issue. These three articles are published in print on 21st October, exactly 200 years after the lecture to the Manchester Philosophical Society. We are extremely grateful to Mike, Malcolm and Helmut for their efforts in preparing these fine celebratory articles. Other articles in the series of Dalton Celebration Perspectives were published earlier in this year, by Professor C. N. R. Rao (C. N. R. Rao and M. Nath, Dalton Trans., 2003, 1–24) and Professor C. Bianchini (C. Bianchini, A. Meli and W. Oberhauser, Dalton Trans., 2003, 2627–2635).

Impact factor

As we celebrate these momentous moments in scientific history, it is with great pleasure that we also celebrate Dalton Transactions' rising to become the premier journal in the world for publishing papers in all areas of inorganic chemistry. In June, the impact factors for 2002 were announced in the journal citation report from the Institute for Scientific Information and, for the first time in its history, the impact factor for Dalton Transactions is higher than 3 (3.023). Not only is this the highest value ever achieved by this journal, but for the first time it is higher than that for Inorganic Chemistry. The impact factor for Dalton Transactions has risen steadily over the last 12 years and has almost doubled in the same period. This is a remarkable achievement, particularly as the impact factor for most other journals has remained fairly constant over that period, and you, our authors, referees and readers, must claim all the credit for making Dalton Transaction what it is today.

Personalia

My term as Scientific Editor and Chairman of the Dalton Editorial Board comes to an end at the end of this year. Four years has passed very quickly, but it has been a most enjoyable experience, particularly watching how well the journal has progressed, building on the tremendous job carried out by my predecessor, Guy Orpen.

It is very pleasing for me to be able to tell you that Professor Paul Walton of York University, UK, has agreed to take over from me as Chair of the Dalton Editorial Board from January 2004. Paul is one of the best of the young Inorganic Chemists in the UK. He has tremendous enthusiasm and is a great supporter of Dalton Transactions. His work is in the area of biomimetic chemistry and especially in trying to construct functional models for zinc containing enzymes. I believe this to be a really exciting appointment and I leave Dalton Transactions in the best possible hands. I wish Paul great success and happiness in his new role.

A number of changes have been made to the International Advisory Editorial Board as a result of natural evolution. We say goodbye to Dieter Fenske (Karlsruhe), Mike Fryzuk (UBC), Graham Heath (ANU), Henryk Kozlowski (Wrocław), Len Lindoy (Sydney), Hiroshi Ogino (Tohoku), Hubert Schmidbaur (Munich), Rudi van Eldik (Erlangen) and Xiao-Zeng You (Nanjing) and thank them very much for their many and varied contributions to the workings of Dalton Transactions over the years. Part of the current high standing of the journal can be laid at their doors. I am delighted to announce that Geoff Coates (Cornell), Roland Fischer (Bochum), Anthony Hill (ANU), David Milstein (Weizmann Institute), Kyoko Nozaki (Tokyo), Chris Orvig (UBC), Anna Trzeciak (Wrocław) and Han Vos (Dublin City University), have accepted invitations to serve on the IAEB and I am certain they will do all they can to continue the success of Dalton Transactions.

This year we welcomed Dr Jamie Humphrey as Managing Editor. On completion of his PhD studies (ruthenaborane clusters) with Professor Catherine Housecroft, Jamie moved straight into working for the Publishing Department of the RSC, and in his time has been involved with several journals, including J. Chem. Soc., Faraday Trans., New Journal of Chemistry and also the RSC's electronic-only journals programme. Jamie remains Managing Editor of the electronic-only journal CrystEngComm, and Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences, a journal which he helped to launch in 2002. We welcome him to the DaltonTransactions team and wish him every success as Managing Editor of the best general inorganic chemistry journal in the world.

Jamie is very ably assisted in the Dalton Transactions Editorial Office by his Deputy Dr Claire Darby (nee White) who has been with the journal for all the time of my Editorship and is a constant source of support. Assistant Editors Dr Katharine Sanderson and Dr Beverley Williams, Crystallographic Data Editor Dr Kirsty Anderson and Publishing Assistant Emma Gilson complete the Editorial Team. Dr Stephen Wilkes and his Production Team, Dr Robin Forder, Dr Alan Holder and Dr Janette Lane also, of course, have a huge role to play in ensuring that Dalton Transactions remains the fastest journal in which to publish your best inorganic chemistry papers. Working together, the enthusiasm and dedication of the two teams have helped to improve the quality of the journal, as well as reducing the publication times from receipt which now average 80 days for full papers and six weeks for communications.

Graham McCann, as the previous Managing Editor is one of the people who has been instrumental in improving the quality of the journal over the past few years Earlier this year, he moved to concentrate more on Journal of Materials Chemistry and Catalysts and Catalysed Reactions. As Scientific Editor, it was to him that I would turn for advice and help in all matters. This was always freely given. We wish him every success in this new role. Graham, thank you for everything.

Perspective articles

Perspective articles are personal reviews written in order to introduce the general reader of Dalton Transactions to topical areas of inorganic chemistry, with which they may be somewhat unfamiliar. They have been a great success and we encourage submission of more, with the aim to continue with the publication of at least one Perspective per issue of Dalton Transactions. We are very grateful to the authors, who have put in considerable time and effort to producing these fascinating articles. We hope you have enjoyed these. If you would be interested in submitting a Perspective article, please contact Jamie Humphrey in Cambridge in the first instance.

Dalton Discussions

A more recent ‘tradition’ bearing the John Dalton name is Dalton Discussions, short focussed conferences usually running over two or three days. The oral papers are all submitted as articles for publication and undergo the usual rigorous refereeing procedure before being produced in paper form prior to the conference. This means that the talks can be short (5 min) and the discussion long (15 min) and this format has proven very successful. The papers are then published as a special issue of Dalton Transactions.

This year, we had a very successful meeting in Lieden, Netherlands on Ligand Design for Functional Complexes, organised by Jan Reedijk, with the assistance of Kees Elsevier, Paul Walton and Mike Ward. The papers were published as issue 10 of 2003. Thank you so much to Jan for his untiring efforts to ensure that this has been a great success. Dalton Discussion 6 on Organometallic Chemistry and Homogeneous Catalysis took place in York in September and the programme, put together by Robin Perutz, was outstanding. Look out for the discussion papers in the next issue (21) of Dalton Transactions. Thank you, to Robin and the DD6 organising committee, Simon Duckett, Fran Kerton and John McGrady, for all the very hard work you have put into organising this meeting.

Other Dalton Discussions, for which the planning is currently well under way are: DD7, Ionic and Electronic Properties of Solids, being organised by Peter Bruce and Richard Catlow in St. Andrews, 2–7 July, 2004 and DD8, Metalloprotein Activation of Small Molecules, being organised by Paul Walton and Emma Raven in 2005.

Endnote

My four years as Editor of Dalton Transactions have been thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding. This is largely because of the enormous support I have had from the Editorial team, the Dalton Editorial Board and the International Advisory Editorial Board. However, it is you the authors, readers and referees of the journal that have made it what it is today and I thank you so much for your enthusiasm for Dalton Transactions and the enormous support you have given me as Editor. It has been an enormous privilege to hold this position at this momentous point in the history of inorganic chemistry and I am certain that you will continue to offer your full support to Paul Walton as he takes over.

As always, if you have any suggestions as to how Dalton Transactions can be improved, please do not hesitate to contact Jamie Humphrey or Paul Walton.

Thank you all so much for everything!

David Cole-Hamilton

St. Andrews,

August, 2003

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