Happy New Year from Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences!

The Owners of the journal,Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences(PPS), the European Society for Photobiology (ESP) and the European Photochemistry Association (EPA) would like to wish all our subscribers and readers a successful and fulfilling 2006. Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences (homepage: http://www.rsc.org/pps) has experienced many exciting new developments since its launch in January 2002 and it is on course to continue its dynamic strategy of promoting and disseminating interdisciplinary research across the fields of photochemistry and photobiology. The initiative by the two societies for a common journal has indeed resulted in a strong interface between photochemists and photobiologists and has also made visible areas of exciting scientific overlap.

In particular, we welcome two new affiliated members of the Journal, the Asia and Oceania Society for Photobiology (AOSP) and the Korean Society of Photoscience (KSP). These two affiliated members will play an important part in promoting synergy and increasing the profile of the Journal within the photochemistry and photobiology communities across Oceania and Asia. We would also like to welcome the key player in this initiative, Professor Pill-Soon Song (Jeju, Korea), who will be the new Editor-in-Asia.

Other highlights of 2005 include the publication of excellent Special Issues and Perspectives (review articles). A list of some of the Perspectives, outside of the Special Issues, can be found at http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/pp/PPSPerspectives.asp. The Special Issues have revolved around chosen themes and reflect the hard work of the coordinating editors, authors and all the referees who contributed to their scientific quality. Those published this year were the issue on time-resolved spectroscopy dedicated to Professor Hiroshi Masuhara [organised by Frank Wilkinson; Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2005, 4(1)], the commemoration issue of the 14th International Congress on Photobiology, held in Jungmun, Jeju, Korea [organised by Janet Bornman; Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2005, 4(9)], and the state-of-the-art issue on current photosynthesis research, dedicated to Professor Jim Barber on the occasion of his 65th birthday [organised by Jon Nield and Peter Nixon; Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2005, 4(12)].

In 2006 we can look forward to the following Special Issues: Photodamage of the Skin [organised by Franz Trautinger; Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2006, 5(2)] and Proton Transfer in Biological Systems [organised by Cristiano Viappiani, Joachim Heberle and Thomas Gensch; Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2006]. Sadly, at the end of 2005, photoscience lost one of its founding fathers, George Hammond, who in the early sixties in the United States was one of the initiators of modern organic photochemistry and has educated, trained or adopted as a friend many of the present generation of photochemists. To honour George, PPS will publish a Special Issue in 2006 (coordinated by Dick Weiss and Carl Wamser) based on contributions from George's former coworkers. This issue and others will show that photochemistry and photophysics are highly successful research areas that have now spread and integrated into many different areas of photoscience.

We also start 2006 with several new members of the Editorial Board of PPS, but firstly we would like to thank the outgoing editors of 2005 for all their hard work and dedication during their terms of office. You all helped to put PPS on the map and some of you were also involved in coordinating Special Issues and Perspectives, all of which takes a lot of time and effort—our sincere thanks: Frank Wilkinson, who has been the Editor-in-Chief for the photochemistry section since the start of PPS and has been the driving force in making the photochemical side of the journal what it is today, will take a step aside and become Deputy Editor-in-Chief for photochemistry, allowing us to continue to rely on his wisdom and expertise. Frank will replace Jacob Wirz, who will continue to give his expert help as an Associate Editor as will Fred Lewis and Yehuda Haas.

We are very happy to welcome Frans De Schryver (Leuven, Belgium) as the new Editor-in-Chief for photochemistry, who will take over from Frank. We are indeed fortunate to have on-board such a distinguished scientist as Frans De Schryver to help us in continuing the excellent work done by Frank to date.

We would also like to thank Jacques Piette for his dedication to the journal as Editor-in-Chief for the photobiology section from 2002 until 2004, at which time he became the President of ESP and Janet Bornman took over as Editor-in-Chief for photobiology. We are very glad that Jacques has agreed to continue on the Editorial Board as Associate Editor for the next term as an expert in Photodynamic Therapy. To our Associate Editors whose terms of office end: Silvia Braslavsky (Photoreceptors; Mülheim, Germany), Lesley Rhodes (Photodermatology; Manchester, UK), James Barber (Photosynthesis; London, UK), and Rolf-Markus Szeimies (Photodynamic Therapy; Regensburg, Germany)—thank you for your hard work, dedication and support of the journal.

A very warm welcome to the other new Associate Editors who will carry on the good work: Ruben Sommaruga (Aquatic Photobiology; Innsbruck, Austria), Paolo di Mascio (Reactive Oxygen Species/Oxidative stress; Sao Paolo, Brazil), Thu-Hoa Tran-Thi (Photophysical Chemistry, Gif-sur-Yvette, France), Aba Losi (Plant and Bacterial Photosensors; Parma, Italy), Jon Nield (Photosynthesis; London, UK), Minjoong Yoon (Photophysics/Nanophotonics; Daejeon, Korea) and Motoyuki Tsuda (Animal Photoreceptors; Hyogo, Japan).

We are also very pleased that Santi Nonell (Photosensitisation; Barcelona, Spain), has agreed to take over from Jacques Piette as Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the photobiology section.

We extend our thanks to all the many referees. Your time and effort are much appreciated, especially since you are the anonymous team ensuring the good reputation of the Journal. We are also indebted to our Associate Editors and their referees for the large part they play in keeping the typical publication time under 100 days for a full paper, from receipt to publication on the web.

For the publishers of PPS, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC, Cambridge), there will also be several changes and new faces. Jamie Humphrey, who up until now has been the Managing Editor for PPS, will be succeeded by Sarah Ruthven, who recently joined RSC but has extensive experience in the publishing business. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Jamie for all the support, easy contact and unending willingness to try to meet all our needs and requests from day one of the Journal. Our warm thanks also to Janet Dean, Publisher for PPS, who together with Jamie spent a great deal of time on the various contracts and agreements along the way, and who was always a careful negotiator for us. Adrian Kybett will be the new Publisher for PPS.

We would also like to thank all the RSC Publishing Assistants who deal with the incoming manuscripts and their further progress. In particular we appreciate highly the excellent collaboration we have enjoyed with Emma Gilson. At the same time we look forward very much to working with the new Publishing Assistant, Jackie Cockrill.

In June 2005 the impact factor for Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences was 1.798, a 32% increase relative to the impact factor received in 2004 (1.394) and we expect that it will continue to increase. PPS is covered by the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Research Alert, Chemistry Citation Index (CCI), Biochemistry & Biophysics Citation Index (BBCI), Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences (CC/PC&ES), MEDLINE and Index Medicus.

Technological advances. 2005 has seen RSC Publishing invest significantly in technological developments across all of its products. First there was the introduction of the new website in the summer which included 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 for its customers 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, 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—i.e. they deliver access to new research straight to a readers PC, as soon as it is published! Many feed reader software packages also have the added benefit of remembering what has been read previously, which in turn makes tracking and managing journal browsing more efficient. Forward linking, the reverse of reference linking, enables readers to link from any RSC published paper to the articles in which it is cited. In essence, it allows researchers to easily track the progression of a concept or discovery, since its original publication. With one click of a button (on the ‘search for citing articles’ link) a list of citing articles included in Cross-Ref is presented, complete with DOI links. At a time when research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary in nature and the amount of published works continues to grow, it is hoped that the new technology, developed in conjunction with Cross-Ref, 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 the RSC enhancing their products further, with improvements to the HTML functionality of all journals and ReSourCe (the author and referee web interface) already underway.

Chemical Biology supplement. 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. It will appear monthly as a free print supplement in the front of this journal, and is also available free online.

CBVJ. Chemical biology content published in this journal is highlighted in the Chemical Biology Virtual Journal. The portal, which was launched in 2002 in recognition of the significant amount of chemical biology material published across RSC journals, enables interested readers to readily access relevant items. 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.

Books publishing. As well as an impressive portfolio of prestigious 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, which reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the chemical sciences.

Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences continued to attract international contributions throughout 2005, with a higher number of papers from the Americas and Japan compared to 2004, highlighting the global research reported in the Journal.

Janet F. Bornman and Frans De Schryver

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