Editorial

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Abstract

On behalf of the Natural Product Reports Editorial Board and the Royal Society of Chemistry we wish all of our readers and authors a very happy and successful 2006.

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Impact factor up at 7.9

2006 looks to be a very promising year for Natural Product Reports (NPR). As NPR enters its 23rd year of publication it looks to move with the times and will see several changes over the coming months.

Much of the success of the journal is, of course, down to our authors from around the world and the Editorial Board. The journal’s truly international reputation is reflected in its high impact factor, 7.9, scoring second place in the RSC portfolio and second place in the ISI^® ranking for organic chemistry.

The 2004 impact factors, released by ISI^® in June 2005, showed an impressive average increase of over 10% for RSC journals. Calculated annually, ISI^® impact factors provide an indication of the quality of a journal. They take into account the number of citations in a given year for all the citable documents published within a journal in the preceding two years. It is worth noting that together with ACS Publications, journals from RSC Publishing have the highest median impact factor among publishers in the chemical sciences (Fig. 1). This encouraging statistic demonstrates the recognition and status that researchers place in society-published work.

Fig. 1 Median impact factor in seven ISI core chemistry categories.

The Editorial Board are very involved with the development of the journal, commissioning work alongside the editorial office. We thank them for all of their efforts during the past year and wish them well in their roles for 2006. Particular thanks go to Professor Timothy Bugg (University of Warwick, UK) and Professor Jürgen Rohr (University of Kentucky, US) for their considerable efforts and achievements as they step down from the Editorial Board and join the Advisory Editorial Board.

Looking forward

We welcome to the Editorial Board Professor Bradley Moore (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, US). Bradley is well known for his work in the biosynthesis of marine microbial natural products and enzyme engineering. He has been recruited to support and strengthen further NPR’s coverage at the chemical biology interface and across North America. We would like also to welcome Professors John A. Robinson (University of Zurich), Margaret A. Brimble (University of Auckland) and Michel Rohmer (University of Strasbourg) as new members of our International Advisory Editorial Board.

Happy birthday, Hot off the press!

Hot off the press (HOTP), a well-established feature in NPR, is celebrating its 10th year of publication. HOTP began in 1996. Written by Dr Robert Hill (Glasgow University, UK) and Dr Andrew Pitt (Strathclyde University, UK), their first article¹ collated information on such areas as the total synthesis of Taxol^® and C.-H. Wong’s Whistler Award lecture, in which he shared his strategies for the chemical and chemo-enzymatic synthesis of complex oligosaccharides.

In 2000, Dr Andrew Pitt stepped back from HOTP and was replaced by Dr Marie Claire Parker (Glasgow University, UK), who then worked for the journal until the end of 2003, when Andrew Sutherland (also Glasgow University, UK) stepped up to the role. These articles aim to provide a general review of the literature published in the few months preceding its publication. By covering all areas within the scope of NPR, attention is drawn to significant advances in areas of interest to our readers, and we hope that you enjoy reading the 60th HOTP article, which appears in this issue.²

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the HOTP authors for their involvement; Dr Andrew Pitt, Dr Marie Claire Parker, Dr Andrew Sutherland and, in particular, Dr Robert Hill who has been involved since the very beginning. Your input is greatly appreciated.

New Highlight articles

We are pleased to announce the launch of Highlight articles for NPR. These are generally short (3–6 page) articles reviewing recent work and bringing into focus topics of both general and specialist interest. These concise works will also cover emerging areas within natural products chemistry. Highlights are launched in response to the need of the scientific community for up-to-the-minute information on the latest research.

The first Highlight to be published is written by Tad Begley on cofactor biosynthesis.³Highlights will be commissioned by the editorial staff and Editorial Board; however, if you have any suggestions of topics and authors then please contact the editorial office.

NPR lecture award

Congratulations to Professor Chris Schofield (University of Oxford, UK) who was the recipient of the 2005 Natural Product Reports Lecture Award. Professor Schofield will deliver his lecture during 2006. The award recipient for 2004 was Professor John Mann (Queens University, Belfast, UK) who gave his lecture in Perth, Australia early last year. Nominations for the 2006 award are now closed and the results will be announced early this year.

Technological advances

2005 has seen RSC Publishing invest significantly in technological developments across all of its products. The introduction of the new website in the summer brought a contemporary, fresh look and an enhanced structure for improved and intuitive navigation between relevant, associated content.

The improvements to the technological infrastructure have made the site more flexible and efficient, and better equip the RSC to deliver enhanced publishing products and services in the future. The new look was just the start, and towards the end of the year we were pleased to provide further enhancements in the form of RSS feeds and ‘forward linking’ facilities.

RSS feeds

RSS, or ‘really simple syndication’, is the latest way to keep up with the research published by the RSC. The new service provides subscribers with alerts as soon as an Advance Article is published in their journal of choice. Journal readers simply need to go to the journal homepage, click on the RSS link, and follow the step-by-step instructions to register for these enhanced alerts.

RSS feeds include both the graphical abstract and text from a journal’s contents page. Access to the latest research is delivered straight to a reader’s PC, as soon as it is published! Most ‘feed reader’ software also remembers what you have read, which makes tracking and managing journal browsing more efficient.

Forward linking

‘Forward linking’, the reverse of reference linking, enables readers to link from any RSC published paper to the articles in which it is cited. This allows researchers to track easily the progression of a concept or discovery from its original publication. With one click of a button (on the ‘search for citing articles’ link) a list of citing articles included in CrossRef is presented, complete with DOI links.

At a time when research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary in nature and the number of published works continues to grow, it is hoped that this new technology, developed in conjunction with CrossRef, will significantly reduce the time spent by researchers searching for information.

These developments demonstrate the investment in publishing products and services over the past year, and 2006 will see us enhancing our products further, with improvements to the HTML functionality of all journals and ReSourCe (the author and referee web interface) already underway.

This issue also sees the introduction of a new easy-to-read format. The improved legibility will enable readers to browse articles quickly and effortlessly, which is especially important as increasing numbers of readers access the journal electronically.

Chemical biology

Chemical biology content published in this journal is highlighted in the Chemical Biology Virtual Journal.⁴ The portal, launched in 2002 in recognition of the significant amount of chemical biology material published across RSC journals, enables interested readers to readily access relevant articles. All chemical biology articles and related papers published in RSC journals are drawn together online every two weeks, with a selection of the primary literature free to access for a month.

January 2006 sees the launch of another exciting new supplement from the RSC: Chemical Biology. A companion publication of Chemical Science and Chemical Technology, it draws together coverage from RSC publications and provides succinct accounts of the latest chemical biology research. Published monthly, every other issue will appear as a free print supplement in the front of this journal, and is also available free online.

Not just journals

As well as an impressive portfolio of journals, the RSC has a significant collection of book titles. The first titles in three new series: RSC Biomolecular Sciences; RSC Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Series; and Issues in Toxicology were published in 2005, with further titles due during 2006. Future growth in the books publishing programme is planned, reflecting the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the chemical sciences.

We hope that you agree that NPR continues to be an essential tool for all researchers in all areas of natural products chemistry. We hope that you will enjoy reading the critical reviews to be published in 2006 and also the Highlight articles focussing on areas of interest. Suggestions for future NPR reviews and authors are always welcome, as are suggestions for the development of this journal.

On behalf of the Natural Product Reports Editorial Board and the Royal Society of Chemistry we wish all of our readers and authors a very happy and successful 2006.

Professor David O’Hagan, Chair of the Editorial Board

Dr Vikki Allen, Editor

References

1. R. A. Hill and A. R. Pitt, Nat. Prod. Rep., 1996, 13, iii–v.
2. R. A. Hill and A. Sutherland, Nat. Prod. Rep., 2006, 23, 11–14.
3. T. P. Begley, Nat. Prod. Rep., 2006, 23, 15–25.
4. www.rsc.org/chembiolvj.

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