CrystEngComm: all grown up!
When is a journal considered established? I was thinking about this the other day as I happened upon the following phrase we have long used on our team when referring to CrystEngComm – ‘CrystEngComm is a relatively new journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry’. It dawned on me that CrystEngComm is no longer a young journal at all. Indeed it is all grown up and what a fine journal it has become!So what constitutes this ‘grown up’ status? In the past year over 1000 quality articles were published in the journal, we recruited 2 new Associate Editors to bring the total to 3, we featured 4 different themed issues and achieved an 2010 impact factor of 4.0. To me, this certainly sounds like an established journal and its significant growth is clearly visible in Fig. 1 below.
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| Fig. 1 | ||
Back at its launch in 1999, CrystEngComm’s beginnings were deep rooted in the crystal engineering and supramolecular field. However, the field of crystal engineering is constantly growing and changing to address societal demands and to reach new frontiers – covering metal-organic frameworks for gas storage through to nanocrystals for LEDs and the emergence of 2D crystal engineering. The journal has grown and expanded with the community to showcase all facets of its research findings and the journal coverage now includes all aspects of the design and understanding of solid-state and crystalline materials.
To ensure that the journal is representative of the complete crystal engineering community, in 2011 we welcomed new CrystEngComm Editorial Board members from the field of nanostructured materials. Professor Shu-Hong Yu (Fig. 2, left) joined the Editorial Board as a new Associate Editor for the journal. Shu-Hong is based at the University of Science & Technology of China in Hefei and the National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, China and his Editorial Office opened on the 1st May 2011. His appointment provides researchers working in the area of nanocrystals with a new option for submitting their articles to CrystEngComm. Shu-Hong's own research interests include bio-inspired synthesis and self-assembly of advanced inorganic materials, templated-directed organization of nanoparticles, novel inorganic synthesis, the synthesis of biominerals and their applications, and the optical, electronic, magnetic, and catalytic properties of low dimensional nanostructured materials.
Professor Nicola Pinna (Fig. 2, right) joined the Board in August 2011 and is based at both the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and Seoul National University, Korea. Nicola's research is focussed on nanostructured materials and his achievements include work to develop new synthetic approaches to allow a more generalized synthesis strategy for inorganic nanomaterials via a ‘toolbox’ of well-known chemical reactions.
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| Fig. 2 Shu-Hong Yu (left) and Nicola Pinna (right). | ||
We thank Professors Jennifer Swift and Christoph Janiak, whose terms of office as Editorial Board members ended at the end of 2011, for their significant contribution to the journal. Their advice and support have been very important in the development of the journal over the last few years. We also take the opportunity to congratulate Len MacGillivray for an excellent first year at the helm of CrystEngComm as Chair of the Editorial Board and look forward to the next three years working with Len to continue to develop the journal.
This year we also welcomed a new CrystEngComm web writer, Claire Murray. Claire is based at the University of Reading, is Deputy Chair of the British Young Crystallographers Group and winner of the 2011 Durward Cruickshank Young Crystallographers' Prize, awarded at the BCA Spring meeting 2011. You can read Claire's regular posts on the CrystEngComm Blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/ce/) or sign up to the sign up to the blog's RSS feed (http://blogs.rsc.org/ce/feed/).
Some policy changes that took place recently include changes to the use of the terms ‘nano’ and ‘novel’. The use of the words ‘novel’, ‘new’ and ‘unprecedented’ should be avoided unless the work described in the article is of significant impact. For articles that describe the synthesis or applications of crystals on the nano- or micro-scale, authors should only use descriptive terms (e.g. nanobelt) that are general and widely accepted in the literature, to aid article discoverability. If you have any questions regarding these policies please contact us at mailto:crystengcomm-rsc@rsc.org.
We continue to meet our authors, readers and referees at conferences throughout the year, which is a great opportunity for us to hear your views of the journal and to find out more about the research being carried out in the field of crystal engineering. This year we attended two excellent meetings, the BCA Annual Spring Meeting (Keele, UK) and IUCr2011 (Madrid, Spain). We also awarded many CrystEngComm poster prizes throughout the year and congratulations to all the recipients.
A CrystEngComm symposium on the topic of Pharamaceutical Polymorphism took place in the Chemistry Centre in Burlington House, London on the 4th November. Speakers at this meeting included Z. Jane Li (Boehringer Ingelheim), Ivo Rietveld (Universite Paris Descartes) and Graeme Day (University of Cambridge), amongst other internationally recognised researchers from both academia and industry. This is the journal's first symposium and yet another sign that CrystEngComm is all grown up.
The CrystEngComm team congratulates Dan Shechtman on his Nobel prize achievement this year, which must give a great boost to all crystallographers around the world. Indeed Professor Shechtman kindly allowed our webwriter Claire to interview him for the CrystEngComm blog recently and you can read his inspiring words for younger scientists on our blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/ce/2011/11/09/interview-nobel-prizewinner-dan-shechtman/).
Four excellent themed issues were published this year and thank you to all our guest editors for your advice and support in putting these together. We are grateful also to the authors and referees of articles in these issues for working so well to the strict deadlines imposed. The topics and details of the issues can be found in Table 1 below to help you to easily find and read them online.
| Themed issue | Guest Editors | Issue |
|---|---|---|
| Crystal Growth | Jennifer Swift | Issue 4, 2011 |
| Reactions in molecular solids and host-guest systems | Len MacGillivray and Jerry Atwood | Issue 9, 2011 |
| This issue was dedicated to the work of the late Professor Fumio Toda. | ||
| Dynamic behaviour and reactivity in crystalline solids | Graeme Day and Tomislav Friščić | Issue 13, 2011 |
| 2D crystal engineering | Steven De Feyter and Neil Champness | Issue 18, 2011 |
So, now that we have established that CrystEngComm is all grown up where does it go from here?
Firstly, we continue to feature exciting new themed issues in the journal and watch out for 2012 issues on Crystal engineering and crystallography in the pharmaceutical industry (guest editors: Magali Hickey, Örn Almarsson and Matt Peterson), Post-synthetic modification of metal-organic frameworks (guest editors: Seth Cohen and Andy Burrows), Ionic liquids (guest editors: Peter Nockemann, Mark Muldoon and Cristina Lagunas) and Nanocrystalline materials (guest editors: Shu-Hong Yu, Len MacGillivray and Christoph Janiak). Also, keep an eye out for a forthcoming issue showcasing new talent in the field of crystal engineering from the Americas, which Associate Editor Christer Aakeröy is organising.
This year we will also introduce new types of articles such as ‘How to…’ articles illustrating various techniques, ‘Impacts of crystal engineering’ articles, highlighting cases where crystal engineering is applied in the real world and ‘Emerging theme…’ articles showcasing new areas in the field. If you are interested in writing such an article, please do contact the editorial office with your ideas and suggestions at mailto:crystengcomm-rsc@rsc.org. We would love to hear from you.
Crystal Clear, making a regular appearance on our blog, is growing in popularity every month. Look out for an opportunity to win a prize in our 2012 Crystal Clear competition (http://blogs.rsc.org/ce/category/crystal-clear/).
Next year we look forward to continuing to meet authors, readers and referees at international conferences. The ‘biggie’ next year is the second Crystal Engineering Gordon Research Conference, which will take place between June 10–15, 2012 at the Waterville Valley Resort, NH, USA. One of the co-Vice-Chairs of this meeting is CrystEngComm's own Associate Editor Christer Aakeröy. We wish Christer and his fellow organisers, Robin Rogers and Mike Zaworotko, the best of luck with this meeting, which will cover topics from nanocrystals and nucleation to polymorphism and porous materials, and look forward to meeting many of you there.
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| Fig. 3 The CrystEngComm Editorial Team (from left to right: top row, Kate Bandoo, Helen Lunn, Ruth Doherty; second row down, Debora Giovanelli, Jamie Humphrey; third row down, Amy Middleton-Gear, Jennifer Newton; fourth row down, Caroline Burley, Rachel Cooper; bottom row, Andrew Shore, Michael Parkin and Kirsty Muirhead (missing are Matt Cude, Bethany Johnson and Hannah Mudge). | ||
We are keen to continue to represent and advance the research in the crystal engineering community with the authority, confidence and trustworthiness expected of us from our loyal author- and readership. Walt Disney once said ‘Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.’ and though CrystEngComm is certainly not Disneyland I can safely say that the journal will also continue to grow as long as there are developments to report in the crystal engineering field!
Thank you to all our authors, readers and referees for your continued support of CrystEngComm. From the CrystEngComm Editorial Team, we wish you all the best for 2012!
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| Plate1 Ruth Doherty, Deputy Editor and Jamie Humphrey, Editor, CrystEngComm. | ||
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