Happy New Year from NJC

30th Anniversary

Thirty years old! Thirty years ago this month NJC was first published (under the title Nouveau Journal de Chimie) as a forum for the publication of research that, by its quality and scope, would arouse interest beyond that of specialists in a restricted domain. The goal, which was to permit understanding, dialogue and mutual enrichment among chemists of different specialities, remains ours today.

Thirty years merits some celebratory ardour. The festivities will start with an event at the 233rd ACS National Meeting and Exposition to be held in Chicago. Another event will be held later in the year in Europe, details of which will be announced on the NJC website. We wish to use these occasions to thank all of the authors, referees and readers who have supported NJC over the years. Whether you are an “old” or a “new” NJC supporter, we invite you to join us sometime in 2007 to celebrate this anniversary.

Throughout 2007, NJC will be publishing “anniversary” papers. The first one, from the group of Jerry Atwood, NJC’s Co-Editor-in-Chief, introduces a series of papers on zinc. Zinc, the 30th element of the periodic table, will be a focus for 2007—Perspective reviews on various aspects of the chemistry of zinc have been commissioned to appear this year.

Looking forward–looking back

Each year brings changes, and 2007 is no exception. George Gokel retired from the NJC Editorial Board at the end of 2006. We thank him most warmly for his extensive efforts on behalf of NJC during the past 6 years, and particularly as North American Associate Editor for 3 years. We welcome into this position Professor Mike Scott of the University of Florida, who has been a member of the Editorial Board for 4 years. American authors are invited to submit their work for NJC to Mike using ReSourCe.

We would also like to welcome Barbara Nawrot (biochemistry) from the Polish Academy of Sciences in Łódź and Mats Almgren (materials) of Uppsala University to the Editorial Board. At the same time, we thank departing Board members John Gladysz, Luca Prodi and David Reinhoudt for their contributions to the journal.

In other news, a new website, which complements the RSC NJC website, is now available at http://www.njc.cnrs.fr. Here you will find information about NJC’s history, the people working on the journal and the latest news concerning NJC.

Successful initiatives begun in the past few years will be continued in 2007. Following the thematic issue on “Trends in Supramolecular Chemistry” published in October 2006, we will be publishing another thematic issue on dendrimers later this spring. This issue will contain contributions from speakers at the 5th International Dendrimers Symposium being organized by Jean-Pierre Majoral in Toulouse later this summer.

The NJC Interface Poster Prizes, initiated in 2005 to recognize innovative work at the interface of two or more disciplines, were awarded in 2006 to several young chemists: to Rie Wakabayashi and Deanna D’Alessandro at the ICCP-4 International Conference on Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines held in Rome in July, and to Anja Graesslin, Nathalie Mougin and Ross Gordon at the 1st European Chemistry Congress in Budapest last August.

Plate1 Professor Mike Scott presents Ms. Rie Wakabayashi with her NJC Interface Poster Prize certificate at the ICCP-4 conference last July.

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, the US and the UK.

In 2007 NJC will be sponsoring lectures, and further Interface Poster Prizes will be awarded. Full details of these events and the conferences where the editors and Board members of NJC will be present will be posted on the Journal website.

Content

Since mid-2006, the criteria for NJC Letters have changed. Letters published in NJC should report short accounts of original and significant research, which will appeal to a wide general readership or be of exceptional interest to the specialist. Letters, as opposed to full papers, should report limited data and present a single clear message. Given the generally short times to publication in NJC for all types of papers, urgency is no longer a requirement for NJC Letters.

With the increased collaboration at the biology–chemistry interface, we would like the content of NJC to reflect this. We are strengthening the editorial board to reflect this important interface, and will be attending a number of meetings in the area this year.

The 2005 impact factors, released by ISI® in June 2006, 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 citeable documents published within a journal in the preceding two years. The average impact factor during the 1999–2005 period for NJC was 2.5, substantially up from the 1.7 average of the previous 8 years. This average value of 2.5 was exceeded for the last two years, placing NJC within the top ranks of general chemistry journals.

RSC Open Science

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/openscience.

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 around the globe—take a look at www.rsc.org/authorquotes.

Technological innovation

2006 has seen RSC Publishing invest significantly in technological developments across all of its products. Introduced last year, RSS, or ‘really simple syndication’, feeds 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 NJC homepage.

Subscribers to NJC will now link from the 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/sciencecomealive.

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

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

Showcasing hot science from RSC Journals in Chemical Science, Chemical Technology and Chemical Biology has proved to be 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 long (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 NJC or any other RSC journal, join the RSC or renew your 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 whole books. The collection is fully searchable and integrated with RSC Journal content. To search the collection or for further information, visit www.rsc.org/ebooks.

We hope you will agree that 2007 promises to be an exciting time for NJC and its authors and readers. We hope that we will have the opportunity to meet you at one of the birthday celebrations.

Denise Parent

(Editor, CNRS)

Sarah Ruthven

(Editor, RSC)

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