Advancing methods and applications—highlighting the link between fundamental and applied analytical science

Welcome to the first edition of Analytical Methods. It is no exaggeration to state that analytical science and technology plays a significant role in global development. Current worldwide challenges such as energy production, food stability and security, climate change and environmental control, require accurate and accessible measurement strategies in order for progress to be made and future strategies put in place.

In terms of the chemical sciences, in a recent Royal Society of Chemistry report (Chemistry for Tomorrow's World, Royal Society of Chemistry, July 2009, http://www.rsc.org/ScienceAndTechnology/roadmap) the following challenges were given priority status for immediate attention: creating and securing a safe, environmentally friendly, diverse and affordable food supply; improving and preserving human health; designing processes and products to create and maintain a supply of sustainable feedstocks; ensuring the sustainable management of water and air quality.

Addressing each of these global challenges will require significant development and new application of analytical science and technology—for example, the analysis of the food supply for nutrients and potential toxins, disease diagnosis and monitoring, process analysis and measurement of pollutants in air and water will be central to these efforts. Without appropriate, optimised, validated and targeted methods of analysis, meeting these challenges will not be possible.

The above examples underline the importance of the relationship between fundamental research and applied analysis. One cannot exist without the other. Method development and refinement of analytical approaches so that they can be used by the wider community, allows society to reap the benefits of the new scientific advances constantly emerging from the fundamental science laboratory.

This is the subject matter that Analytical Methods will provide, debate and address. We anticipate that articles published in this journal will be of interest to researchers across the world and across disciplines, as methods reported will be expected to address real analytical issues and provide solutions beneficial to the wider community.

Among the diverse topics covered in the articles in our first issue are, a calibration-less, reproducible approach for portable pH sensing (Craig Banks et al., Anal. Methods, 2009, DOI: 10.1039/b9ay00025a), measurement of NSAID pharmaceuticals in a sewage treatment plant effluent (Niklas Larsson et al., Anal. Methods, 2009, DOI: 10.1039/b9ay00015a), analysis of redox state and redox capacity in milk (Daniel Mandler et al., Anal. Methods, 2009, DOI: 10.1039/b9ay00078j) and functionalised gold nanoparticles for bioanalysis (Huan-Tsung Chang et al., Anal. Methods, 2009, DOI: 10.1039/b9ay00036d).

I hope you enjoy reading Analytical Methods and that you will submit some of your best work for publication in it.

Prof. Brett Paull

Editor-in-Chief, Analytical Methods

Editorial information

Welcome to the first issue of Analytical Methods: Advancing Methods and Applications.

We are delighted to be launching this new journal in response to feedback from the community regarding the importance of beneficial and practical analytical approaches. Analytical Methods is a sister title for our established journal Analyst, which focuses on interdisciplinary detection science, and we are delighted to have this opportunity to improve our service to the analytical science community.

We in the Editorial Office, together with our Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board are committed to ensuring that Analytical Methods meets your requirements as members of the community it serves, we hope it will become essential reading for all of you who are interested in the breadth of development of analytical methodologies.

Your comments and suggestions for the journal are very welcome at any time, please contact us at mailto:methods@rsc.org.

Dr Niamh O'Connor

Managing Editor, Analytical Methods

A range of article types

Analytical Methods will publish full Research Papers and Technical Notes as well as Review Articles. All articles are subject to rigorous peer review, overseen by the journal's Associate Editors, and accepted articles are published online first as fully citable Advance Articles as soon as they are ready.

Submission details

You can submit your article through our online submission system at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ay, or by e-mail attachment to mailto:methods@rsc.org. Our instructions for authors are available from our website www.rsc.org/authorguidelines and if you are interested in writing a Review Article for the journal please contact the Editorial Office at the e-mail address above.

Colour policy

We are happy to print figures in colour, free of charge, where the use of colour enhances the scientific understanding of the figure. In addition, for the online version of the journal, colour is provided at no cost in both the pdf and html versions.

All content free to access

To maximise the visibility of all of the work published, online access to Analytical Methods is completely free until the end of 2010, enabling you to read about the most recent developments in the field. During 2009 and 2010, the current issue of the journal will be freely available to everyone online. During this time, free institutional access to previous issues is available following a simple registration process. Access is managed by institution and IP address. To register, visit our website and complete the registration form at http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/free_access_registration.asp

Your RSC Subscriptions

We know that it can be difficult to keep track of online resources that are available to you. So, we have introduced a special web page to help you to find out exactly what RSC content you can access. This page is called Your RSC Subscriptions (www.rsc.org/Publishing/your_access.asp) and it lists all products for which your organisation has a current subscription, plus other content which may be available to you, such as the RSC Journals Archive and the RSC eBook collection.

Browsing and alerting services

Analytical Methods is published by RSC Publishing—a leading not-for-profit learned society publisher, wholly owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry, with a proud history of publishing excellence and innovation in electronic developments.

The Analytical Methods homepage contains the contents list for the current issue, delivering the content you want to see as soon as you arrive at the site. Graphical abstracts are included as standard, allowing you to browse content easily.

RSS feeds for Analytical Methods also include graphical abstracts, enabling at-a-glance identification of relevant articles. To get the latest articles delivered straight to your screen, sign up at www.rsc.org/rss—or you can sign up for e-mail contents alerts at www.rsc.org/ej_alert.

Citing

When you cite Analytical Methods articles in future manuscripts please note that the correct journal citation is Anal. Methods.

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