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DOI: 10.1039/B417867J (Editorial) Nat. Prod. Rep., 2005, 22, 9-10

New year's revelation – impact factor now 7.59!

Abstract

On behalf of the Editorial Board and the Royal Society of Chemistry we wish all of our readers and authors a very happy and successful 2005.

Editorial Board

The Editorial Board is very much a ‘hands on’ Board who are involved in the primary commissioning of articles and then acting as Commissioning Editors. Through last year Professor Christopher Schofield (Oxford) and Professor John Mann (Belfast) stepped down from the Editorial Board but have been re-engaged by NPR as International Advisory Board members. In both cases they served the Board well for many years and we thank them for their highly productive work as Commissioning Editors. This allowed several new members to be recruited to the Editorial Board and it is a great pleasure to welcome Drs Emma Raven (Leicester), Kira Weissman (Cambridge) and Stephen Wrigley (Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc.). Emma Raven will broaden the scope of our coverage into bio-inorganic chemistry, an area that the Board felt needed developing. Kira Weissman will commission in all areas of molecular biology and enzymology associated with secondary metabolism and overview coverage in emerging areas within chemical-biology and Steven Wrigley will advise on coverage in the pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals arena in topics associated with natural products. We very much look forward to working with them over the next few years.

We must highlight the remaining and current members of the Editorial Board, Wilhelm Boland, Tim Bugg, Rob Field, Jim Hanson, Marcel Jaspars, Finian Leeper and Jurgen Rohr who all work continuously and effectively for NPR. We are all committed to ensuring that NPR remains a high quality journal of Natural Products Chemistry and Chemical Biology and a repository of timely high quality review articles to serve the international community.

International Advisory Editorial Board

The International Advisory Editorial Board (IAEB) for NPR was formalised in 2002 as a response to new RSC Journals Committee structures and over the last two years we have benefited greatly from these advisors. Our efforts to secure an increase in authors from Asia has been supported by Professors Ren Xiang Tan (China) and Michio Murata (Japan) and has borne fruit with at least six articles in 2004 from Japan, China and Taiwan. For 2005 we are delighted to welcome Professor David Kingston as a new member of the IAEB. Professor Kingston (Virginia Tech, US) has long experience in natural products with anticancer activity, with a particular interest in bio-actives from plants from tropical regions. He also has interests in biodiversity conservation in South America.

Natural Product Updates

NPU will have a new look and new typesetting in 2005 but be assured the quality of the content will continue.

Natural Product Reports Lecture Award

We congratulate Professor John Mann (Queens University, Belfast) who was the recipient of the Natural Product Reports Lecture Award for 2004. John will deliver his lecture in Perth, Australia in early 2005. The Previous recipients of this Award were Professor Tom Simpson (in 2003) and Professor John Vederas (in 2002).

Editorial office and production

You will have already noticed the new cover design and maybe that in 2004 we achieved 20 years of publishing NPR.

Hot off the press

Hot off the press has become an established feature, opening every issue of NPR since 1996. Its success is based squarely in the Department of Chemistry at Glasgow University where Drs Bob Hill and Marie-Clare Parker have developed this into a highly informative and attractive feature. Marie-Clare has stepped back from HOTP and we thank her for her work in delivering up-to-date copy speedily and in time for each production deadline. We were extremely pleased when Dr Andrew Sutherland, also of Glasgow, agreed to take on this task with Bob Hill, and HOTP continues to be an important aspect of the journal.

The style of NPR continues to develop under the watchful eye and high level of professionalism of the Editorial and Production teams at the RSC. During 2004, Clare Bostock-Smith, previous Managing Editor was asked to manage Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry and very recently she has embarked upon a new career challenge. Caroline Potter also had a period of maternity leave and produced a baby boy on 29 February 2004. She is now back at work on Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry.

The introduction of colour and the profiling of authors by publishing photos and biographical sketches have been extremely successful in improving the readability of articles and developing an attractive overall image. The Production and Editorial teams are committed to working with authors to advise on the colour content of articles.

RSC innovation

With the introduction of ReSourCe for author and referees, tracking articles has become a whole lot easier. The ReSourCe services for referees were launched early in 2004 and allow referees to download articles for review, upload their reports, view their refereeing history, and update research interest information. These referee services are available to any current RSC referee. Now ReSourCe has been integrated with the RSC online services for authors. New and current authors can register to use ReSourCe to view and access all the information and tools they need to submit their manuscripts. Existing ReSourCe users (referees) do not need to register again; they automatically have access to all author services using their existing ID.1

The RSC has striven to develop other tools to help authors with the publication process. A recent collaboration with the Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics (at the University of Cambridge, UK) has resulted in the launch of the Experimental Data Checker – a java applet which analyses experimental data. Its aim is to provide helpful information, which an author can use to improve a paper, a referee can use to check a paper and a reader can use to analyse a paper. A detailed study of this has been published in OBC.2

In conclusion, we invite comments and suggestions for coverage from you, the readers, and hope you continue to read and enjoy NPR. Thank you for your support.

David O'Hagan (Chair of the Editorial Board) and Janet Freshwater (Acting Managing Editor)

References

  1. J. Freshwater, Nat. Prod. Rep., 2004, 21, E9 RSC.
  2. S. E. Adams, J. M. Goodman, R. J. Kidd, A. D. McNaught, P. Murray-Rust, F. R. Norton, J. A. Townsend and C. A. Waudby, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2004, 2, 3067 RSC.
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2005