Changes at the top
Abstract
In this editorial, Editor Carol Stanier introduces the new Chair of the Journal of Materials Chemistry Editorial Board, George Malliaras, and comments on the amazing growth in impact factor (to an all-time high of 3.69). She describes several exciting developments in publishing at the RSC.
This first issue of Journal of Materials Chemistry in 2007 not only marks the start of our 17th year of publication, we are also delighted to announce that Journal of Materials Chemistry has a new Chair of the Editorial Board, George Malliaras. George is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University, and has recently become Director of the Cornell NanoScale Facility. He works mainly on organic electronics, and has collaborations worldwide. Read his profile in this issue.
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| Plate1 George Malliaras | ||
But of course this means that we must also say goodbye to a dear friend, with the retirement of our Chair of four years, Maurizio Prato. Maurizio has overseen many developments to Journal of Materials Chemistry, including a new cover design, the celebrations associated with our 250th issue (issue 28, 2006), and even a new Editor, all accompanied by an ever-rising impact factor. He can rightly be proud of his legacy in this respect. And indeed we are grateful to all members of our Editorial Boards for their valuable support and input.
Impact and speed
The 2005 impact factors,† released by ISI® in June 2006, showed an impressive average increase of over 10% for RSC journals. For Journal of Materials Chemistry, last year saw an increase in impact factor of 35%, to a whopping 3.69, our highest ever value.This is the largest percentage growth for any general materials journal (see Fig. 1) and demonstrates just how fast we are changing in this dynamic field. We are still the only weekly materials chemistry journal and also the fastest to publish your work, in an average time of just 33 days for communications in 2006, from receipt to publication.
It is evident that publishing in Journal of Materials Chemistry ensures that your work appears quickly and is noticed. Table 1 shows the most accessed articles from 2006.
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| Fig. 1 Percentage growth in impact factor for a variety of materials journals. | ||
| Title | Citation |
|---|---|
| Metal–organic frameworks—prospective industrial applications | U. Mueller, M. Schubert, F. Teich, H. Puetter, K. Schierle-Arndt and J. Pastré, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 626 |
| Anionic surfactant induced mesophase transformation to synthesize highly ordered large-pore mesoporous silica structures | D. Chen, Z. Li, Y. Wan, X. Tu, Y. Shi, Z. Chen, W. Shen, C. Yu, B. Tu and D. Zhao, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 1511 |
| Morphology of polymer/fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells | H. Hoppe and N. S. Sariciftci, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 45 |
| Polymer sensors for nitroaromatic explosives detection | S. J. Toal and W. C. Trogler, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 2871 |
| Recent bio-applications of sol–gel materials | D. Avnir, T. Coradin, O. Lev and J. Livage, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 1013 |
| Novel porous materials for emerging applications | X. S. Zhao, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 623 |
| Enzyme-responsive materials: a new class of smart biomaterials | R. V. Ulijn, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 2217 |
| Templating methods for preparation of porous structures | X. S. Zhao, F. Su, Q. Yan, W. Guo, X. Y. Bao, L. Lv and Z. Zhou, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 637 |
| Insights into hierarchically meso–macroporous structured materials | Z.-Y. Yuan and B.-L. Su, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 663 |
| Highly efficient UV-absorbing thin-film coatings for protection of organic materials against photodegradation | P. G. Parejo, M. Zayat and D. Levy, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 2165 |
Soft Matter—we have lift-off
It's official, Soft Matter (see Fig. 2) has separated from its host journal, Journal of Materials Chemistry, and is now a fully fledged solo publication. Its availability since launch to readers of this journal and the online hosts, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry and Lab on a Chip, has ensured that Soft Matter received a large and interdisciplinary audience from the outset. Journal of Materials Chemistry readers wishing to continue to read Soft Matter now need to recommend the journal to their librarian. Fill in the online recommendation form at www.rsc.org/libraryrecommendation | ||
| Fig. 2 Soft Matter goes solo. | ||
Science comes to life
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 their journal of choice, providing both the graphical abstract and text from a journal's contents page. You can subscribe via the Journal of Materials Chemistry homepage.Subscribers to Journal of Materials Chemistry will now link from journals' 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 RSC journals 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/sciencecomesalive
These developments demonstrate the investment in publishing products and services over the past year and 2007 will see us enhancing our products further.
Room at the top
Showcasing hot science from 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
And room at the bottom
Nanotechnology is always in the news, and Journal of Materials Chemistry carries many hot papers about developments in the nano arena (see Table 2 for a few recent examples). In addition we recently published (issue 40, 2006) a themed issue on anisotropic nanomaterials (see Fig. 3) guest-edited by Luis Liz-Marzán, which included papers from such big players as Zhong Lin Wang (Daniel Moore and Zhong L. Wang, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 3898), Younan Xia (Unyong Jeong, Pedro H. C. Camargo, Young Hwan Lee and Younan Xia, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 3893), and C. N. R. Rao (Chandra Sekhar Rout, A. Govindaraj and C. N. R. Rao, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 3936), as well as Liz-Marzán himself (Marek Grzelczak, Jorge Pérez-Juste, Benito Rodríguez-González and Luis M. Liz-Marzán, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 3946). | ||
| Fig. 3 Noncarbon anisotropic nanomaterials themed issue, guest-edited by Luis Liz-Marzán. | ||
| Title | Citation |
|---|---|
| DNA-mediated assembly of iron platinum (FePt) nanoparticles | S. Srivastava, B. Samanta, P. Arumugam, G. Han and V. M. Rotello, J. Mater. Chem., 2007, DOI: 10.1039/b613887j |
| A simple chemical method for the preparation of silver nanocables from self-assembling tubular Ag+ precursors | O. Weichold, S.-C. Hsu and M. Möller, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, DOI: 10.1039/b612671e |
| Synthesis of new microporous layered organic–inorganic hybrid nanocomposites by alkoxysilylation of a crystalline layered silicate, ilerite | R. Ishii, T. Ikeda, T. Itoh, T. Ebina, T. Yokoyama, T.i Hanaoka and F. Mizukami, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 4035 |
| Selective self-assembly of single walled carbon nanotubes in long steel tubing for chemical separations | M. Karwa, Z. Iqbal and S. Mitra, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 2890 |
| Nano-brass colloids: synthesis by co-hydrogenolysis of [CpCu(PMe3)] with [ZnCp*2] and investigation of the oxidation behaviour of α/β-CuZn nanoparticles | M. Cokoja, H. Parala, M. K. Schröter, A. Birkner, M. W. E. van den Berg, K. V. Klementiev, W. Grünert and R. A. Fischer, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 2420 |
| Drilling nanoholes in colloidal spheres by selective etching | Q. Yan, F. Liu, L. Wang, J. Y. Lee and X. S. Zhao, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 2132 |
| Morphology templating of nanofibrous silica through pH-sensitive gels: “in situ” and “post-diffusion” strategies | G. Roy, J. F. Miravet, B. Escuder, C. Sanchez and M. Llusar, J. Mater. Chem., 2006, 16, 1817 |
But it is not just Journal of Materials Chemistry that is publishing high-quality papers on the topic—due to the interdisciplinary nature of the subject other RSC journals and books also include related content. This wealth of nano material has now been brought together in one convenient webpage, which is regularly updated with the latest research and books from RSC Publishing. Visit: www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/nanoscience/
Continuing on a theme…
At Journal of Materials Chemistry we are well known for our high quality themed issues, and last year was no exception. In addition to the nanomaterials issue mentioned above, we published three other themed issues (see Fig. 4), on porous materials for emerging applications (issue 7, 2006), high performance computing in materials chemistry (issue 20, 2006), and molecular magnetic materials (issue 26, 2006). This year we will continue to focus on some of the hottest areas of materials chemistry, in themed issues co-ordinated by M. Saiful Islam on new energy materials, by Cameron Alexander on materials for biomedical devices, and an exciting issue profiling Emerging Investigators from all areas of materials chemistry. So look out for these coming up soon! | ||
| Fig. 4 Themed issues from 2006. | ||
Out and about
Conferences are of great importance in the calendar of any researcher, whether in academia or in industry, but the plethora of meetings going on can make it very difficult to decide how best to spend your time. Download the stunning Journal of Materials Chemistry year planner (Fig. 5) from our website, or pick one up at one of the many meetings we will be represented at, to solve all your planning dilemmas. The year planner highlights some of the most important conferences in materials this coming year, with plenty of space for you to add more specialised meetings, as well as your own personal appointments. One of the key conferences highlighted here is MC8. The ‘Materials Chemistry’ series of RSC Conferences has provided a showcase for developments in the field every two years for more than a decade, and the need for such a meeting is stronger than ever. MC7 was very successful and attracted over 450 delegates. MC8: Advancing Materials by Chemical Design will be held at University College London on 2–5 July 2007 (chaired by Professor Paul McMillan) and will focus on key areas at the interface between materials chemistry, physics, and engineering. Symposia will be held across the traditional core areas of materials chemistry: soft matter, solid state materials, nanomaterials and biomaterials. Confirmed plenary speakers include Professor Paul Alivisatos, University of California, Berkeley, USA, Professor Dr Heino Finkelmann, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, Professor George M Whitesides, Harvard University, USA and Professor Roald Hoffman, Cornell University, USA. Don't miss it! | ||
| Fig. 5 Journal of Materials Chemistry year planner. | ||
Open plan
Authors publishing in RSC journals 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 RSC journals are also able to retrospectively apply for their work to be included in the scheme. Further information can be found at: www.rsc.org/openscienceNot 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 Journal of Materials 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
Thank you all…
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. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all readers who have downloaded or cited our articles, all authors who have contributed their top class work to Journal of Materials Chemistry, and all our referees, who have given up their valuable time to advise us and to help their colleagues improve and advance their science.Global and topical
The contents of this issue are very multinational and topics covered range from organic superconductors (H. Kobayashi, H. Cui and A. Kobayashi, J. Mater. Chem., 2007, DOI: 10.1039/b613457m), to multiferroics (J. R. Sahu, C. R. Serrao, N. Ray, U. V. Waghmare and C. N. R. Rao, J. Mater. Chem., 2007, DOI: 10.1039/b612093h), to assembly and properties of nanoparticles (M. Clemente-León, E. Coronado, A. Soriano-Portillo, N. Gálvez and J. M. Domínguez-Vera, J. Mater. Chem., 2007, DOI: 10.1039/b614592b). You can also find out more about the newest additions to our Editorial Board. Go to your library or access our webpage www.rsc.org/materials to find out more.Here at Journal of Materials Chemistry we look forward to another year of growth and advancement in materials chemistry, and helping to promote your best research.
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Carol Stanier
Editor, Journal of Materials Chemistry
Footnote |
| † 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. These impressive new figures reinforce the RSC's reputation as the home of exciting new research. |
| This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2007 |