Warmest wishes to all Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry authors, referees and readers for 2010

Great content and great impact

OBC has shown continued strong growth in 2009. Submissions of high quality rose by over 20% which allowed the number of articles published to rise by almost the same percentage. We believe that these figures indicate clearly OBC's attractiveness to the world's top organic chemists. We would like to thank all our authors, referees, and Editorial and Advisory Board members for their continued support.

The Editorial Staff on OBC is equally committed to providing great service to our author/reader base. In particular we pride ourselves on our independent and rigorous peer review system, which rests on all of you. We rely on your support throughout 2010 to make OBC even better. Feedback from you as readers, authors and reviewers allows us to improve the service we offer to the organic chemistry community. Please send your comments to the OBC editorial office.

The Editorial Board and Editorial Team alike were delighted when OBC's ISI^® impact factor of 3.55 was announced.† This statistic reflects the journal's continued strength and prominence in the field and emphasises OBC’s position as the journal of choice.

OBC Lecture Award

A brilliant OBC award lecture was given by Professor Wilfred van der Donk, University of Illinois, US, in August as part of the Natural Products symposium at the 42nd IUPAC Congress, held in Glasgow, UK. Professor van der Donk was selected in recognition of his contributions to the field of bioorganic chemistry, particularly related to lantibiotics and molecular processes associated with resistance to antibiotics and bacterial infections. Upon accepting the award he said ‘It's a great honour for me; a great honour for my students, and we very much appreciate it.’

The nominations for the 2010 OBC Lecture Award closed at the end of 2009 and the winner will be announced shortly.

OBC Staff at conferences

During 2009 the Editorial Team attended 18 conferences worldwide and was represented by the Editorial Board at many others. Travelling to conferences provides such excellent opportunities to talk and network with top scientists from around the world and get to know many of our authors, referees and readers.

OBC continued to promote the work of younger researchers by offering a significant number of poster prizes through the year to reward excellence in the field. Many of the prizes featured on our website during the year. If you are organising a conference in 2010 and believe that OBC should consider supporting a poster prize, please contact us telling us why.

OBC is also happy to be involved in promoting organic chemistry through various special international doctoral schools and workshops. Several of these high quality schools take place every year especially throughout Europe and OBC wants to help make them successful and popular for the next generation of organic chemists.

Support of young investigators is also pursued through a special online highlight issue of participants in the EUCHEMs Organic Division Young Investigator workshop, which took place Liblice, CZ last July. Look for work by these young stars in the pages of OBC during 2010.

Scientific horizons

Once again OBC published great work from across the organic chemistry spectrum in 2009. OBC's most cited¹ article from 2009 is ‘Nanoparticle-supported and magnetically recoverable palladium (Pd) catalyst: a selective and sustainable oxidation protocol with high turnover number’ by Rajender Varma (DOI: 10.1039/b817669h). Our hot articles range from autocatalysis and metathesis [see ‘Highly enantioselective asymmetric autocatalysis using chiral ruthenium complex-ion-exchanged synthetic hectorite as a chiral initiator’ by Kenso Soai et al. (DOI: 10.1039/b823282b), and ‘Two-directional cross-metathesis’ by Robert Stockman et al. (DOI: 10.1039/b907720k)] to coiled peptides [see ‘Switchable electrostatic interactions between gold nanoparticles and coiled coil peptides direct colloid assembly’ by Beate Koksch et al. (DOI: 10.1039/b813429d)] and mechanically interlocked molecular switches [see ‘Thermodynamic forecasting of mechanically interlocked switches’ by J. Fraser Stoddart et al. (DOI: 10.1039/b911874h)] Whatever your area of interest or specialisation within organic chemistry, OBC is the home for your best research and we look forward to receiving submissions from many of you throughout 2010.

Bright start

On OBC we are starting the year as we mean to go on with a great selection of articles. In the Perspective article (DOI: 10.1039/b916041h) OBC Editorial Board member Margaret Brimble discusses oxidative radical cyclisation as a route to spiroketals in natural product synthesis. Ali Tavassoli, in his Emerging Area article (DOI: 10.1039/b913300n), discusses the current state of art in synthetic biology and outlines potential future advances in the field.

Look out for OBC web theme issues too! Current topics include Biocatalysis, Enabling Technologies for Organic Synthesis and Chemical Proteomics.

Board changes in 2010

Thank you to Professors Dave Leigh, University of Edinburgh, and Mohamed Marahiel, University of Marburg, for their contributions to the steering of OBC during their time on the Editorial Board. We also wish Dave well as he transitions from OBC to join the Associate Editors for the new RSC journal, Chemical Science. News on new Editorial Board members will be announced through our website (www.rsc.org/obc).

As you can see, the New Year is shaping up to be a great year for OBC. On behalf of the Editorial Board and the OBC team at the RSC, we wish you a very happy and successful 2010.

RSC Publishing news

New integrated content delivery platform

RSC Publishing is proud to announce the launch of our powerful new website that supports multiple content types. Powered by the industry's leading MarkLogic Server, and benefiting from interactive browsing 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 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 chemistry document markup 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.

2009 also saw a 75% increase in the number of articles published in RSC Journals compared to 2007, so not only are our impact factors leading the way in the chemical sciences, but there are a wider variety of articles available for you to choose from.

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 University 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

MedChemComm

RSC Publishing will launch a new journal this year–MedChemComm will focus on medicinal chemistry research, including new studies related to biologically-active chemical or biochemical entities that can act as pharmacological agents with therapeutic potential or relevance. It will be the official journal of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry, and publish 6 issues this year, increasing to 12 issues in 2011. Visit the website at www.rsc.org/medchemcomm

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

References

1. Source ISI Web of Science at time of going to press.

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Footnote

† Thomson ISI Impact factor for 2008

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