Happy New Year to all Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry authors, reviewers and readers

More papers and greater impact

Building on the success achieved in its first five years of publication, 2008 was another superb year for Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry (OBC). The journal's impressive upward trend in ISI® impact factor to 3.17 coupled with rapid publication times reinforces OBC’s position as the journal of choice. OBC is now known for publishing the very best synthetic, physical and biomolecular organic chemistry.

In 2008, the number of submissions to OBC rose by almost 20% compared to 2007, a clear indication of our great service to authors and the quality of the journal. We would like to thank all our authors, reviewers, editorial and advisory board members for their continued and ever-growing support.

Across RSC Publishing, we are working with more authors than ever before—2008 saw the number of authors publishing in RSC Journals increase by 30%. Titles across the collection recorded impressive rises in impact factors, and the latest immediacy indices confirm the relevance and topicality of research published by the RSC.

RSC Publishing is committed to providing a world-class publishing service and global visibility to its authors. With the number of citations increasing and immediacy and impact factors rising, it is clear to see that OBC and RSC Publishing are recognised by researchers worldwide as key resources for publishing and reading the very best research.

Celebrating success

Congratulations to Dr Akimitsu Okamoto who was the recipient of the 2008 OBC Lecture Award. The award, presented at the 31st National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium in Pittsburgh, US, was in recognition of Dr Okamoto's significant contribution to the field of bioorganic chemistry.

The nominations for the 2009 OBC Lecture Award closed on 1^st December 2008 and the winner will be announced shortly.

In 2008, the editorial team attended 15 conferences worldwide and was represented by the editorial board at many others. This gave us the opportunity to listen to some fantastic presentations and meet a great number of scientists, including many of our authors, reviewers and readers. As part of our promotional activities to highlight the success of OBC, and to reward excellent work by younger researchers in the field, we awarded a number of poster prizes at a selection of these conferences. Most recently, we awarded poster prizes at the 2nd EuCheMS Chemistry Congress held in Turin, Italy. The judges from the EuCheMS Organic Division committee were impressed by the high scientific standard of the poster presentations and chose Lee Challinor of Imperial College and Matthias Welker of the University of Nottingham, both UK, as the prize winners. We plan to continue to support the scientific community in 2009 and look forward to meeting more enthusiastic scientists from around the world.

OBC is a strong supporter of young scientists within the journal's home community in the UK. In 2008, we offered 20 of the top research institutions in the UK the chance to nominate one of their most promising students to receive a free one-year print subscription to OBC. The feedback we received was excellent and we are delighted that young scientists across the UK will have OBC's cutting edge chemistry at their fingertips from January 2009.

Top work across the spectrum

We believe OBC published great work from across the organic chemistry spectrum in 2008 and statistics show our readers agree. OBC's most cited Emerging Area was ‘A hitchhiker's guide to G-quadruplex ligands’ by Marie-Paule Teulade-Fichou (D. Monchaud and M.-P. Teulade-Fichou, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 627) while David Spring's ‘Diversity-oriented synthesis; a spectrum of approaches and results’ was the most cited Perspective (R. J. Spandl, A. Bender and D. R. Spring, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 1149). The most downloaded articles of the year range from chemical biology [see ‘Cell-penetrating peptides as delivery vehicles for biology and medicine’ by Shana Kelley et al. (K. M. Stewart, K. L. Horton and S. O. Kelley, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 2242)] to total synthesis [see ‘First total synthesis of clausine L and pityriazole, a metabolite of the human pathogenic yeast Malassezia furfur’ by Hans-Joachim Knölker et al. (R. Forke, A. Jäger and H.-J. Knölker, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 2481)] to natural products [see ‘Natural products: chemical instruments to apprehend biological symphony’ by Mathieu Pucheault (M. Pucheault, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2008, 6, 424)]. It is clear that whatever your specialisation within the broad scope of organic chemistry, OBC is the home for your best research.

A positive start

Yet again, OBC is bringing in the New Year with a fantastic selection of articles. In his Perspective article (A. Okamoto, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2009, 7, 21), OBC Lecture Award winner Akimitsu Okamoto introduces and discusses several newly designed chemical assays for detecting the presence or absence of methyl groups in long DNA strands.

In her Hot Article, Beate Koksch at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, demonstrates how nanoparticle–peptide interactions can be used to direct the organisation of gold nanoparticles (S. C. Wagner, M. Roskamp, H. Cölfen, C. Böttcher, S. Schlecht and B. Koksch, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2009, 7, 46). We hope that you will enjoy all articles in issue 1 and subsequent issues throughout the year.

Board changes in 2009

2009 sees the retirement of three editorial board members. Thank you to Professors Miguel Garcia-Garibay, Jesús Jiménez-Barbero and Shu Kobayashi for contributing to the success of the journal. We have some great new editorial board members lined up to help support and promote the journal. We were unable to announce these as this issue went to press but please keep an eye on our website (www.rsc.org/obc) for the latest news.

Forming collaborations

In early 2008, Vikki Allen attended the Contemporary Organic Synthesis, Methods and Techniques Symposia in Thailand and Singapore. The meetings, which brought together world class speakers from Thailand, Singapore and the United Kingdom, provided delegates with great opportunities to talk about chemistry and form international collaborations. As part of her south-east Asian tour, Vikki also visited a number of chemistry departments in the two countries and gained first-hand knowledge of the great science taking place, in particular in the area of natural products.

As this issue goes to press, Vikki is representing OBC on a tour of chemistry departments in Hong Kong and southern China. These Asian tours demonstrate OBC's commitment to forging and maintaining relationships with the growing Asian scientific community. We are pleased that submissions from Asia have increased in recent years and we welcome and encourage all high-quality Asian submissions.

New improved ReSourCe

During 2009, we will release a new version of ReSourCe, our system for online manuscript submission and peer review (www.rsc.org/resource). Although our service is already popular with authors and reviewers, we've listened to your feedback and made further improvements. We're keen to build on your experience of ReSourCe, so if you would you like to help us shape the next release by taking part in beta-testing or by supplying your comments and suggestions, please contact resourcesupport@rsc.org.

Your RSC subscriptions and free content

We know that it can be difficult to keep track of online resources that are available to you. So, we've introduced a special web page to help you to find out exactly what RSC content you can access. This new 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.

You can also find out about RSC content that is available free—including: research articles that are free for a limited time; news articles in magazines; and free chapters from the RSC eBook Collection. Visit www.rsc.org/Publishing/freeRSCcontent.asp.

As you can see, 2009 will be an exciting year for OBC. On behalf of the editorial board and the OBC team at the RSC, we wish you a very happy and successful 2009.

RSC Publishing news

Food, glorious food

In 2009, the theme for RSC public engagement activities will be food; looking at all aspects of the supply chain from field to fork and eventually to waste disposal and recycling. Planned activities include the launch of a major report into securing a sustainable food supply; the publication of a new edition of the ground-breaking book Kitchen Chemistry; lectures and events at the new Chemistry Centre at Burlington House—the world's foremost venue for showcasing chemistry; and Chemistry Week 2009 (7^th–15^th November), when practising scientists and science teachers will engage in a week-long festival for the chemical sciences. Please get in touch with us (food@rsc.org) if you would like to be involved.

RSC books

The RSC eBook Collection has become a world-class electronic resource with licenses being signed to leading institutions across the globe. New content continues to be uploaded regularly and this comprehensive resource now includes over 800 quality titles. Electronic book publications are uploaded within days of print publication, effortlessly disseminating extensive, high-quality, scientific content direct to scientists, libraries, students, teachers and researchers around the world. Please visit www.rsc.org/eBooks for further information or to visit the RSC eBook Collection.

Over 80 new print books will be published in 2009 as our list continues to grow in size and importance in the international market. Keep up-to-date with all the latest cutting edge titles being published by the RSC by visiting www.rsc.org/ej_alert and subscribing to our eAlerts. We send regular information on discount offers, print books and new electronic content throughout the year.

New journals

Our journal portfolio has expanded with the launch of three new journals.

Energy & Environmental Science, launched in July 2008, publishes research from all aspects of the chemical sciences relating to energy conversion and storage, alternative fuel technologies and environmental science. www.rsc.org/ees

Metallomics: Integrated biometal science covers the research fields related to metals in biological, environmental and clinical systems. www.rsc.org/metallomics

Integrative Biology: Quantitative biosciences from nano to macro is a unique, interdisciplinary journal covering quantitative multi-scale biology using enabling technologies and tools to exploit the convergence of biology with physics, chemistry, engineering, imaging and informatics. www.rsc.org/ibiology

The current issue of all three journals is freely available online. Free online institutional access to all 2009 content is available for registered users—full details are on the website.

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