MedChemCommin partnership with the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry

Dear Colleague!

With this first issue of MedChemCommthe European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry makes the next big step towards a top level learned society. MedChemCommwill be the official journal of EFMC, thus being a forum for exchanging ideas, presenting new and innovative concepts and exploring new ground in the medicinal chemistry field. MedChemCommwill also include MedChemWatch, the e-newsletter of EFMC, which provides a platform for discussion of hot topics in medicinal chemistry, gives updates and reports on all our activities, and presents leading research groups.

Unlike many other scientific disciplines medicinal chemistry has the peculiarity of a strong industry involvement. This is also represented with the two editors in chief: Prof. Greg Verdine is affiliated at Harvard University, and Dr Tony Wood is Head of Worldwide Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer. This, from the very beginning on, ensures top quality and gives the journal a strong industrial flavour, which is also reflected in the guidelines for authors. Needs for compound data are made in such a way as to ensure high quality of the data but also to allow industrial labs to publish their top level work. This will foster the academia/industry exchange of ideas and concepts, thus driving the whole discipline forward.

With this new journal EFMC is partnering with the Royal Society of Chemistry. This is a perfect alliance, as two learned societies line up and combine their efforts to serving the scientific community. EFMC has a strong network of more than 7000 medicinal chemists, and its scientific meetings combine strong science with a unique flair. The International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC-ISMC) every second year hosts more than 1200 scientists, half from industry, half from academia, to present and discuss the latest achievements in the field. The Advances in Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry (ASMC), organised together with Chembridge, focuses on the more synthetic oriented part of medicinal chemistry. And finally, the Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry series brings together scientists from the US with those from a certain region of Europe, thus having a special flair in combining local strengths with top international level. Speakers at these top events will be encouraged to publish their work in MedChemCommand thus share their opinion and vision with the whole community. RSC Publishing brings in its top quality publishing services and, most important, its strong commitment to high scientific standards. RSC journals are among the highest ranked ones in their disciplines, and we are confident that the alliance with RSC will be of great value for the scientific community and set new standards in the field of medicinal chemistry.

Enjoy reading and submit your next high quality work to MedChemComm!

Gerhard F. Ecker

President EFMC

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