Happy New Year from Green Chemistry

Welcome to the January 2007 issue of Green Chemistry, our ninth year of publication, which will see a number of developments for the Journal.

Editorial board

We welcome two new members onto the board; Mike Green from Sasol in South Africa and Alexei Lapkin from Bath University, whose interests reflect the widening scope of the Journal. Alexei and Mike replace Steve Howdle and Michael Warhurst, who we thank for their input into the Journal during their time on the board.

Content

As many of you will have already read, the December 2006 Highlights section was the last one to be published. We would like to thank Markus Hölscher, our News Editor, for his regular contribution to the Journal which provided an up-to-date overview of current research.

For peer-reviewed contributions, Green Chemistry continues to publish original research papers, communications, perspectives and review articles, and last year the most highly accessed paper was a review of dissolution of cellulose with ionic liquids by Zhu et al., published in the April issue (Green Chem., 2006, 8, 325–327 (DOI: 10.1039/b601395c)). We have a number of reviews scheduled for 2007 and invite authors to submit their reviews to Green Chemistry.

We also have two themed issues planned for this year, the first containing papers from the Green Chemistry for Fuel Synthesis and Processing Symposium at the ACS meeting in San Francisco last September. Another collection of peer-reviewed research papers will be published from the international conference on Green Solvents for Processes held in Friedrichshafen, Germany, from October 8–11 2006.

Impact factors and immediacy index

The 2005 impact factors, released by ISI^® in June 2006, showed Green Chemistry to remain relatively static at 3.255. 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 citeable documents published within a journal in the preceding two years. As well as having a high impact, work published in RSC Journals is also amongst the most topical. The immediacy index measures how topical and urgent papers published in a journal are, by dividing the number of citations in a given year by the number of articles published in the journal that year. The 2005 immediacy index for Green Chemistry was 0.631.

The impressive impact factors and immediacy indexes for RSC journals reinforce the RSC's reputation as the home of exciting new research.

RSC prizes and awards

In 2006 Green Chemistry awarded two poster prizes, one at the 1st European Chemistry Congress and the other at the Green Solvents for Processes meeting.

In 2006, RSC Publishing awarded more than 20 prizes and sponsored lectureships to high-profile researchers. The recipients gained financial support to present and discuss their work at events throughout the world, in recognition of their research achievements. More than £15,000 (or $30,000) was granted to the recipients, in total, to cover travel expenses to sponsored lectureships in countries such as China, Japan, US and UK. In 2007, in addition to the poster prizes, Green Chemistry will be sponsoring two lectures, and full details of these events will be confirmed in due course.

RSC open science

Authors publishing in Green Chemistry now have the option of paying a fee in exchange for making their accepted communication, research paper or review article openly available to all via the web, with RSC Open Science. The scheme is only made available to authors once their papers have been accepted for publication, following the normal rigorous peer-review procedures (RSC Open Science operates in parallel with the normal publication route, which remains free to authors). Authors who have published their work in Green Chemistry are also able to retrospectively apply for their work to be included in the scheme. Further information can be found at: www.rsc.org/openscience.

Technological innovation

2006 has seen RSC Publishing invest significantly in technological developments across all of its products. Introduced last year, RSS feeds, or ‘really simple syndication’, have proved extremely popular with our readers. Subscribers receive alerts as soon as an Advance Article is published in Green Chemistry. You can subscribe via the Green Chemistry homepage.

Subscribers to Green Chemistry will now link from the contents lists straight through to the HTML view of selected articles, in just one quick step. Here you can download references to citation managers (such as EndNote, Ref Manager, ProCite and BibTex), sign up for RSS feeds, search for citing articles (otherwise known as ‘forward linking’), print the article with just one click and send the article to a friend or colleague.

From 2007, authors publishing in Green Chemistry will see their science “come alive” thanks to an exciting new project pioneered by the RSC. Enhanced HTML in RSC articles will allow chemical and biological compounds mentioned in the text to be identified; by clicking on the compound readers will be able to obtain further information about that compound, including a downloadable structure plus a list of relevant subject areas. The RSC is the first publisher to utilise the International Chemical Identifier (InChI) (a digital equivalent of the IUPAC name for any particular covalent compound where structures are expressed in terms of five layers of information—connectivity, tautomeric, isotopic, stereochemical, and electronic) for a project of this type and scope. The technology will be used to enhance RSS alerts so that future news feeds can include chemical structures and other enhanced information. RSC Publishing intends to evolve this project to match author and reader needs, so tell us what you think: we welcome your feedback on this new functionality and will incorporate your ideas to develop the service further. Find out more at www.rsc.org/sciencecomealive.

These developments demonstrate the investment in publishing products and services over the past year, and 2007 will see us enhancing our products further.

What our authors say

We are always happy to receive feedback from authors, especially if it helps us to further improve the publishing experience. Because we believe that RSC Publishing offers the best service of any scientific publisher, we have published a selection of the comments we have received from authors from around the globe—take a look at www.rsc.org/authorquotes.

Changes and developments to Chemical Science, Chemical Technology and Chemical Biology, and news of Chemistry World

Showcasing hot science from Green Chemistry and other RSC Journals in Chemical Science, Chemical Technology and Chemical Biology has proved very popular with readers and authors alike. In fact, the free supplements have become so successful that from January 2007, all issues will be eight pages (in print), contain new article types and come complete with a fresh new look for the front page. Supplementary material will also be available online.

Meanwhile Chemistry World, the RSC's award-winning magazine, launched two new web features at the end of 2006. The Chemistry World Blog is an interactive forum for news, discussion and opinion, looking at the science hitting the headlines. The Chemistry World Podcast interviews high profile scientists about the latest and hottest topics in science, and is free to download at www.rsc.org/chemistryworld.

Not just journals…

As well as an impressive portfolio of prestigious journals, the RSC has a wide selection of products for anyone with an interest in the chemical sciences. Visit the shop at www.rsc.org/shop to browse over 400 book titles, subscribe to or purchase an individual article from Green Chemistry or any other RSC journal, join or renew RSC membership, or register to attend a conference or training event.

In addition, RSC Publishing is pleased to announce the launch of the RSC eBook Collection. RSC books are now available online and can be easily downloaded as either chapters or books. The collection is fully searchable and also integrated with RSC Journal content. To search the collection or for further information, visit www.rsc.org/ebooks.

We would like to thank our readers and authors for their continued support of Green Chemistry, and look forward to the year ahead.

Martyn Poliakoff, Chair of the Editorial Board

Walter Leitner, Scientific Editor

Sarah Ruthven, RSC Editor

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