JAAS 25^th Anniversary—Highlighting the past, present and future of atomic spectroscopy

2010 is the anniversary of two significant events in atomic spectrometry. It is the 25^th anniversary of the publication of the first issues of JAAS and in December it will be the 30^th anniversary of the publication of the first article on ICP-MS, a technique central to many of the developments in this field over recent years. We have published some exceptional articles over the last 25 years, and from the high quality of submissions that we have been delighted to receive this year, the journal is well-placed to look forward to the years ahead.

To mark our 25^th birthday, JAAS has already been celebrating in several ways. These include the publication of the fourth in the series of the Young Analytical Scientists issues, guest edited by Spiros Pergantis, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2010, 25, 11–13, DOI: 10.1039/B924768h, the launch of JAAS News (http://pubs.rsc.org/Blog/ja/) with Steve Ray (Indiana University, US) as News Editor, and the publication of a series of Editorials to mark this anniversary. These personal accounts range from Frank Vanhaecke looking back 25 years to the launch of JAAS, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2010, 25, 101–102, DOI: 10.1039/B923534p, to comments on the current status of the field of atomic spectrometry in 2010 by Gary Hieftje, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2010, 25, 611–612, DOI 10.1039/C005046F. We also look forward to the publication of an article from Sam Houk to mark 30 years since the publication of the first article on ICP-MS.

As we are approaching the half-way point of this year, we would like to take the opportunity to look forward to some of the events planned for the remainder of the 2010.

We are looking forward to celebrating with JAAS sponsored events at the BNASS conference in July in Cambridge, UK (also 30 years old this year), and with a silver anniversary symposium at the FACSS meeting in October.

JAAS will also be hosting a one-day Symposium on Tuesday 23rd November, to be held in Beijing in China. The topics that will be presented during the Symposium range from the latest developments in ICP-MS and atomic absorption spectrometry, to tips and advice on how to publish an article in JAAS.

We are delighted to announce that the speakers at the Symposium will include Shan Gao (China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China), Detlef Günther, (ETH, Switzerland), Takafumi Hirata (Kyoto University, Japan), Norbert Jakubowski (BAM, Berlin, Germany), Martín Resano (University of Zaragoza, Spain), Rebeca Santamaria Fernandez (LGC, UK), Ashley Townsend (University of Tasmania, Australia) and Xinrong Zhang (Tsinghua University, China).

We are very fortunate to have the support of the State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics and the State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources for this event. Several leading companies have also kindly offered to provide sponsorship, and we anticipate that delegates will be able to find out about the latest developments from these companies. These include Analytik Jena, ThermoFisher Scientific (Bremen), Nu Instruments and Nanjing Fuwei Environmental Purification Co., Ltd.

The Asia-Pacific Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry is being held in Chengdu from 26th–30th November shortly after the JAAS Symposium. The lead organiser of the conference is Professor Xiandeng Hou who is a member of the JAAS Advisory Board, and we hope that by holding these two events close together, this will enable a larger proportion of the community to be involved with our birthday celebrations. The topics that will be covered at the conference include plasma-based optical/mass spectrometry, spectral instrumentation, spectroscopy in elemental speciation, spectroscopic sensing of bio-related species, environmental analysis, food and pharmaceutical analysis, nanomaterial-based spectroscopy, sample preparation in spectral analysis, and much more.

Finally we wish to thank all of our authors and reviewers for their contributions and efforts which have allowed JAAS to be in the position of celebrating 25 years. We hope that you, as readers of JAAS, will also continue to enjoy the events that we have planned to mark this special anniversary year, and that we will have the opportunity to see you at one of them.

May Copsey

Detlef Günther

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