Happy New Year from The Analyst

Welcome to issue 1 of The Analyst, 2005. This first issue of the year is a good time to bring your attention to the innovation brought in 2004 to improve our services to The Analyst authors, referees and readers, and to highlight new developments for The Analyst in the coming year.

January 2004 saw the launch of the RSC’s Journals Archive. This fully searchable archive provides access to over 200,000 articles in 1.2 million pages published from 1841 to 1996. Readers can browse articles from The Analyst going back to 1876! For more details, please visit viahttp://www.rsc.org/archive.

In October 2004 we announced the launch of ReSourCe, the RSC’s service for authors and referees, which streamlines the electronic submission and review processes. Authors can submit and track their manuscripts and collect pdf reprints, whilst referees are able to download articles for review, submit their report and see the outcome of manuscripts they previously examined. All this through a single entry point. For more information visit http://www.rsc.org/resource or read our recent editorial.¹

New for 2005, you may already have noticed several changes to the look and feel of The Analyst. The most obvious is the new front cover, a new style and design which extends across all RSC journals. We are looking to authors to provide eye-catching artwork to feature on the cover. If you have an image you would like to be featured alongside your paper, please contact the Editorial Office.

This issue also sees the introduction of illustrated contents entries to enhance the impact of papers in The Analyst. You will see that we now encourage authors to supply colourful images to attract readers’ attention along with a short statement to highlight the novel aspects of the work reported. We do hope that this will make the contents of The Analyst more attractive and easier to browse.

Our popular i-section: imagination, insight, innovation, will now appear monthly. Since its launch in 2003² we have brought you a diverse range of articles designed to collect together all of the general interest and topical elements of The Analyst. The i-section has proved extremely popular with our readers.

In June we published an Editorial on the Expectations for the quality and originality of communications submitted to The Analyst.³ We are now pleased to announce that the page length of communications has increased to 3 pages, allowing authors more flexibility in presenting preliminary research findings that are highly original, of immediate interest and are likely to have a high impact. The key aim of Analyst communications is to present innovative chemical concepts with important analytical implications. Analyst communications are given priority treatment, and are fast-tracked through the publication process.

Also in this issue appears Chemical Technology, an exciting new supplement from the RSC. Chemical Technology draws together coverage from RSC publications and provides succinct accounts of the latest applications and technological aspects of research across the broad range of the chemical sciences. Chemical Technology is freely available online and as a free supplement in the print issues of The Analyst and selected other RSC journals.

We look forward to receiving your papers describing novel analytical methods and innovative techniques throughout the coming year. We also value and welcome your comments and suggestions for The Analyst. Please do feel free to contact a member of the Editorial Board or the Cambridge Editorial Office. We look forward to hearing from you.

Claire Darby

Managing Editor

Gillian Greenway

Chair, The Analyst Editorial Board

References

1. Analyst, 2004, 129(11), 983.
2. Analyst, 2003, 128(1), 1.
3. Analyst, 2004, 129(6), 477.

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