Analytical Methods – an exciting start!

Greetings readers, fellow analytical scientists and researchers

It's my pleasure to welcome you to Volume 2, Issue 1, of our exciting and already well received new journal, Analytical Methods. It's with great satisfaction that the Editorial Board and RSC Journal team are able to report how highly successful the 2009 launch of Analytical Methods has been. It is also my personal pleasure to note the very high quality and broad spectrum, both scientifically (discipline) and geographically (origin), of articles published in the journal in the first three 2009 issues.

As with any new venture, the first twelve months are both challenging and rewarding, as we observe the steady growth in the number of manuscripts submitted, we are impressed and excited by the quality of manuscripts being sent for peer review. At the time of writing, the journal has accepted contributions from no fewer than 25 countries, showing a truly international recognition of the journal, despite its relative youth. However, we are never complacent, and see 2010 as a significant year for progress of the journal. We therefore encourage you all to send your best and most exciting research findings from 2010 for publication in Analytical Methods. From our side, we will promise to provide the best possible exposure and visibility of your work to our wide and varied readership, from all fields of academia, industry and public/governmental agencies. We are also committed to providing a rapid, stringent and fair peer review process, to ensure your work is published in its best condition, and in amongst the best work of your peers.

Our wide scope and the interdisciplinary nature of our journal is what makes the launch of Analytical Methods such an exciting new development. As researchers, we often plough ahead within our fields of interest, unaware of the wider societal significance of our findings. Equally, industrial scientists, often constrained by tighter timelines and targets, often miss the chance to catch-up on the latest possibilities emerging out of fundamental research laboratories. We really hope Analytical Methods will provide an avenue to facilitate improved communication between these houses, whereby researchers can show their wares to the wider community and carefully observe how such advances are applied in the future. When this connection works, we all feel a greater sense of achievement and satisfaction, knowing that someone out there really values our work and we are solving a significant problem. By engaging in this process, we all help to establish a new status quo, by pushing back boundaries, whether they are improved detection capabilities, identifying new target analytes or characterising ever more complex samples.

One of the issues of any new journal is to establish its place within a highly competitive market. With this in mind the Editorial Board has thought very carefully about the scope of the journal and the type of submissions the journal will publish. As a new ‘sister’ to the RSC's highly successful journal, Analyst, we hope Analytical Methods provides the ideal platform for demonstration of new and innovative utilisation of fundamental developments in analytical science. We urge you all to take a look at the currently defined scope of the journal and the range of article types requested. As you'll see we have provided for a variety of contributions, ranging from expert reviews of the latest developments in an analytical field, all the way to technical notes on significant analytical observations and innovative technical performance improvements. We believe offering this range of submission types will maximise the diversity, both of subject matter and origin (academic, industrial etc.), of the papers we publish.

The year 2010 looks like an interesting and challenging year for society once again. The major issues of climate change, energy, sustainable food supply and water/air quality remain at the top of all our national agendas. Analytical scientists have an important role to play in helping to begin to solve these issues, or at least to begin to better understand and demonstrate the scientific principals underpinning these issues. Developments which seem academically or technically significant to us, may indeed have a whole greater significance to our fellow scientists working in related, and indeed apparently unrelated disciplines. To know this all we need do is communicate.

On that note, there is work to be done. Please don't forget that we are ready to read about it.

Good luck

Brett Paull

Editor-in-Chief, Analytical Methods

News from RSC Publishing

Happy New Year and welcome to issue 1, 2010. We are delighted that the response to the first issues of Analytical Methods has been so positive and we hope that you continue to find the articles you read in Analytical Methods interesting and useful.

Don't forget that 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 this year, the current issue of the journal is freely available to everyone online, while free institutional access to previous issues is available following a simple registration process. To register, visit our website and complete the registration form at http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/free_access_registration.asp.

We wish you a very happy and successful 2010 and look forward to your continued support of Analytical Methods. To submit your article, visit our website www.rsc.org/methods. Your comments and suggestions for the journal are very welcome at any time, please contact us at mailto:methods-RSC@rsc.org.

Dr Niamh O'Connor

Managing Editor, Analytical Methods

New integrated content delivery platform

RSC Publishing is proud to announce the launch of our powerful new content delivery platform that supports multiple content types. Powered by the industry's leading MarkLogic Server, and benefiting from the interactive browsing functionality offered by RSC's enhanced html mark-up technology, the platform delivers exceptionally fast and precise results. Users can now search 165 years of world-class RSC-hosted content including 20 000 book chapters, 300 000 journal articles and 450 000 database records from a single, simple search. Designed around readers' preferences (identified from a detailed and ongoing user-interview process), our user-friendly platform offers faster browsing, intelligent searching, consistent user experience irrespective of content type sought, and simpler more intuitive navigation. We'll be releasing even more exciting functionality later in the year. Please tell us what you think at mailto:rscpublishing@rsc.org.

ChemSpider

Last year RSC acquired ChemSpider, the richest single source of structure based chemistry information freely available online, with fast searching of over 21.5 million chemical structures. Alongside the powerful database, the ChemSpider development team brings well over 40 years of additional cheminformatics experience to the RSC, including a chemistry centric document markup system capable of finding chemical names and converting to chemical structures and linking to online resources. Integration of this technology with RSC's existing award winning enhanced html mark-up technology, RSC Prospect, will lead to substantial enhancements in semantic enrichment for the chemical sciences. Find out more at www.chemspider.com.

Continued e-alert success in 2010

2009 saw the launch of the new RSC journal e-alerts; in 2010 we are hoping to see a continued rise in their popularity. The e-alerts are packed with information and links enabling readers to easily view content as soon as it's published, helping them to stay abreast of journal content. The new e-alert registration system has been designed so readers can manage their own subscriptions, tailoring the information they receive and giving them the freedom to unsubscribe at any point. You can find out more information online: www.rsc.org/alerts.

New for 2010: The RSC eBook Subject Collections

In response to readers needs and testament to the innovation of RSC Publishing, we are pleased to announce the launch of new RSC eBook Subject Collections.

The 9 new RSC eBook Subject Collections, including a Tutorial Chemistry Texts and Paperbacks package, deliver the high quality content contained in our books into subject specialist packages. With new content being uploaded throughout the year, the new RSC eBook Subject Collections are set to become another key, premier resource. To find out more, please visit www.rsc.org/ebooks.

High impact publishing

Publication of the 2008 impact factors, calculated by ISI, once again brought good news for authors and readers of RSC journals. Nearly all the RSC journals increased in impact factor, immediacy index and article influence, with an impressive average impact factor increase of 8.2%. Overall, the average impact factor for the RSC portfolio now stands at 4.7, equal to that of the ACS collection.

RSC journals feature in the top 10 rankings (by impact factor and immediacy index) in 6 of the 7 core chemistry categories as listed on ISI, and of the top 100 chemistry journals, ranked by impact factor, 15 are from RSC Publishing.

Chemical Science

This new flagship journal will launch in mid-2010, and will publish findings of exceptional significance from across all the chemical sciences. Editor-in-Chief Professor David MacMillan of Princeton leads a dynamic international team of Associate Editors responsible for the scientific development of the journal. Free institutional online access to the entire 2010 and 2011 content of Chemical Science will be automatically provided to all existing customers.

Keep in touch with the latest news at www.rsc.org/chemicalscience.

…on a related note

RSC is pleased to announce a significant new global symposia series supporting the launch of the Chemical Science. The International Symposia on Advancing the Chemical Sciences (ISACS) meetings will be held on three continents, over three sequential weeks, focusing on distinct subject areas. More information can be found at: www.rsc.org/isacs.

Free access available for all new RSC journals

Free institutional online access is available for all our newest journals. Access, which is managed by institution and IP address, is provided following a simple registration process. Make sure you and your colleagues don't miss out on the free access by filling in the registration form:

www.rsc.org/free_access_registration.

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