For our readers in 2008, OBC will continue to publish some of the best, most topical research articles in the field. You as an author can rely on our excellent independent peer-review and rapid production services to make coming back to OBC a priority for your research program.
Pleasingly, the ISI® impact factor—a mark of a journal's prominence—for OBC showed a notable 12.5% rise (2.87), moving OBC up the ranks within organic chemistry.
The Perspective by John Baldwin (J. E. Baldwin and P. A. Leber, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 36–47) focuses on molecular rearrangements through thermal [1,3] carbon shifts. The other Perspective by Masahiko Yamaguchi (R. Amemiya and M. Yamaguchi, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 26–35) describes chiral recognition in noncovalent bonding interactions between helicenes and outlines why a right-handed helix favours a right-handed helix over a left-handed helix. In addition, this issue also contains a paper by Jason Micklefield (R. J. Worthington, N. M. Bell, R. Wong and J. Micklefield, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 92–103) that describes his research group’s latest work on pyrrolidine-amide oligonucleotide mimics.
This year sees the retirement of three editorial board members who have been involved in the development and success of OBC since inception. Thank you to Professor Thomas Carell, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, Professor Karl Anker Jørgensen, Aarhus University, Denmark and Professor Itamar Willner, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Special thanks are extended to Itamar, who coordinated a themed issue for OBC on DNA-based nanoarchitectures and nanomachines in late 2006.
The conference in Cambridge also provided the venue for the 2007 OBC Lecture Award. Congratulations to the recipient Professor Ben List, Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Germany, who presented his winning lecture entitled ‘New strategies for organocatalysis’ at the conference. In his presentation, List highlighted the latest advancements, including asymmetric counter-ion directed catalysis for the highly enantioselective epoxidation of enals.
Although he has made huge progress in recent years, as reviewed in his Emerging Area article in OBC, List believes there is still great scope for development. ‘Developing active catalysts is the next challenge for chemists interested in organocatalysis,’ he said.
Nominations for the 2008 OBC Lecture Award are now closed and the results will be announced early this year.
Throughout 2007 the editorial team attended 14 conferences worldwide with the journal being represented alongside the editorial board at numerous other prestigious meetings and institutional visits. The team will be undertaking a busy travel programme during 2008, so we hope to meet many of you in the coming year.
As the only publisher able to offer these enhancements, we were delighted to be awarded the 2007 ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Publishing Innovation, where judges described RSC Prospect articles as ‘delightfully simple to use … benefits to authors and readers are immediately obvious’. Around 1400 articles have now been published with enhanced HTML—to see for yourself, look out for the RSC Prospect icon on our website. Further developments to the project will be announced in 2008. Many of you have already told us how impressed you are with the project: www.projectprospect.org has examples of enhanced articles, feedback from the scientific community, plus the latest news.
For authors, the RSC Journal templates have been revised and updated to assist submission in a format similar to the journal layout. The guidelines for the use of colour in RSC Journals will be relaxed during 2008, and the decision on the free use of colour will be based on whether the use of colour enhances the scientific understanding of the figure (the old policy required the colour to be essential). In addition, for the online version of the journals, colour will be introduced at no cost in both the PDF and HTML versions.
The RSC eBook Collection is testament to the RSC's publishing innovation as well as the high quality of the content contained in our books. With further technical developments and new 2008 content being uploaded throughout the year, the RSC eBook Collection is set to become a key resource. To search the collection or for further information, visit www.rsc.org/ebooks
Scientists worldwide are taking advantage of the free first chapter downloads and from January 2008, OBC will regularly highlight a book specifically for our readers through our ‘Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry book of choice’ scheme.
As you can see, the RSC remains committed to providing great service and benefits to all its journals readers and authors.
We thank all of our authors, reviewers and readers for their continued support. On behalf of the editorial board and the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry team at the RSC, we wish all of you a very happy and successful 2008.
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2008 |