An exciting new year for PCCP
Abstract
Welcome to the first issue of PCCP in 2012, where we would like to share with you our successes from the last year and inform you of some new developments for the journal. We want to wish all our authors, readers and reviewers a Happy New Year as we look forward to an exciting new era for PCCP.
High quality
PCCP is established as the top community-spanning physical chemistry journal—and we are committed to ensuring PCCP continues to be seen as a home for the best physical chemistry research.2011 was another successful year for PCCP. Submissions to the journal continue to increase, showing that PCCP remains the “journal of choice” in the broad scientific communities it serves. Record submissions have meant that yet again, we saw significant growth for PCCP, publishing over 20![[thin space (1/6-em)]](https://www.rsc.org/images/entities/char_2009.gif)
000 pages in 2011. This massive achievement means that PCCP has more than tripled in size in the last 4 years, whilst still maintaining our strict quality standards and great author service.
The journal's times-to-publication remain low and the Editorial Office is working hard to ensure PCCP is the fastest journal in the field. PCCP now also offers authors the chance to publish their accepted article as an Accepted Manuscript. This means that research is available, in citable form, to the community even more rapidly.
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| Fig. 1 PCCP's impressive growth. | ||
Community-spanning
PCCP continues to be the ideal home for high-impact research in the fields of physical chemistry, chemical physics and biophysical chemistry. Our broad scope and truly international readership spans many communities. As well as covering the ‘core’ physical areas, PCCP also publishes research from interdisciplinary areas such as nanoscience, materials, biophysical chemistry and soft matter.By publishing PCCP as a single volume (not dividing the journal into different sections) we believe it provides an additional benefit to our authors and readers, by bringing important interdisciplinary work to the attention of the whole community. As an example of the journal's broad scope, you can view the top 5 cited PCCP Perspective review articles from 2010 in Table 1.
| Titles | Authors | DOI |
|---|---|---|
| Halogen bonding: an electrostatically-driven highly directional noncovalent interaction | Peter Politzer, Jane S. Murray and Timothy Clark | 10.1039/c004189k |
| Synthesis and applications of electrochemically self-assembled titania nanotube arrays | C. A. Grimes et al. | 10.1039/b924125f |
| At the interface: solvation and designing ionic liquids | Robert Hayes, Gregory G. Warr and Rob Atkin | 10.1039/b920393a |
| The halogen bond: an interim perspective | Anthony C. Legon | 10.1039/c002129f |
| Supramolecular nanoarchitectures for light energy conversion | Taku Hasobe | 10.1039/b910564f |
Themed issues
Themed issues are an important part of PCCP, allowing us to highlight current topical subjects and to attract research from exciting new areas of science. This year PCCP has published a lively mix of themed issues which can be seen in Table 2. In 2012, we have more themed issues planned which will cover the breadth of our scope, including ultrafast chemical dynamics, electron transfer theory and theoretical chemical physics of biological systems, as well as an issue on single metal nanoparticles.| 2011 Themed Issues | |
|---|---|
| Homochirality and origin of life | Issue 3 |
| Single-molecule optical studies of soft and complex matter | Issue 5 |
| Controlled nanostructures for applications in catalysis | Issue 7 |
| Materials innovation through interfacial physics and chemistry | Issue 11 |
| Molecular collision dynamics | Issue 18 |
| Analysis and control of ultrafast photon-induced reactions | Issue 19 |
| Nano-bio: the interface between bio-systems and nano-devices | Issue 21 |
| Multiscale modelling | Issue 22 |
| Hydrogen interactions with diamond | Issue 24 |
| Nanostructures in ionic liquids | Issue 30 |
| Weak hydrogen bonds – strong effects? | Issue 31 |
| Molecular electronics | Issue 32 |
| Multiply charged ions (MCIs) in the gas-phase | Issue 41 |
| Cold and ultracold molecules | Issue 42 |
| The physics and chemistry of ice and water | Issue 44 |
| Aromaticity, electron delocalisation, and related molecular properties | Issue 46 |
All published themed issues can be viewed on the PCCP homepage through the Themed Issues tab and further details about upcoming themed issues can be found on the PCCP blog—we encourage you to take a look today. If you have a proposal for a new themed issue please contact us at mailto:pccp@rsc.org.
Exciting changes to the PCCP Board
This year sees many changes to the PCCP Editorial Board as four members complete their terms on the Board. We want to sincerely thank Piero Casavecchia and Vincenzo Barone for their support of PCCP, and would like to express a special thank you to Pekka Pyykkö and Martin Suhm for their dedicated service to the journal as Editorial Board Chair and Deputy Chair, respectively.We are delighted to welcome Daniella Goldfarb (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel) as the new Chair of the PCCP Editorial Board. Daniella says: “I feel honoured and privileged to be given the chance to Chair the PCCP Editorial Board and contribute to its growth and success. In addition to PCCP's high scientific merit and broad scope, I particularly like its truly international character that is well manifested in the scientific community it serves.” Daniella has served on the Board since 2007 and will be supported by the new Deputy Chair, David Nesbitt. We look forward to their continued support of the journal in their new roles.
We also welcome two new Editorial Board members from January 2012, Frank Neese (Max-Planck Institut für Bioanorganische Chemie, Germany) and Benny Gerber (Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel) and we look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.
This year also saw the appointment of two of our Editorial Board members as Associate Editors for PCCP, Katsuhiko Ariga and Seong Keun Kim. Working in conjunction with our team of highly-qualified professional editors in our Cambridge Editorial Office, Professors Ariga and Kim handle submissions to PCCP in the areas of materials and biophysical chemistry, respectively. We are also delighted that from 2012, Frank Neese will join them as an Associate Editor, specialising in theoretical and computational chemistry. We remain committed to providing exceptional service to our authors, and with the choice of submitting either to our professional editors in the Editorial Office or to our academic Associate Editors, PCCP authors benefit from a fair, efficient and independent peer-review system.
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| Plate1 Frank Neese | ||
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| Plate2 Benny Gerber | ||
An international profile
PCCP is proud to be a Society journal and is published on a not-for-profit basis for the benefit of the whole scientific community. The journal is owned by 17 national chemical societies from across the world which proves the truly international nature of PCCP.As a Society journal, it is important to PCCP to support the scientific community and we continue to sponsor a variety of international meetings through awarding PCCP Poster Prizes to some of the best up-and-coming new scientists. In 2011 we supported a whole range of meetings, covering areas including electrochemistry, catalysis, ionic liquids and theoretical chemistry, which spanned the whole globe from Europe to the USA and Asia. Further sponsorship is planned over the next year, so if you have any suggestions of conferences where we could offer PCCP prizes please let us know at mailto:pccp@rsc.org.
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| Plate3 PCCP Poster Prizes winners at the 2011 Bunsentagung | ||
In 2012, we will continue to attend international conferences, to ensure we are aware of the latest ‘hot’ topics and cutting-edge research. This is also a great opportunity to meet our authors, readers and referees, so if we are at a conference you're attending, please do come and say hello—we'd love to get your feedback on PCCP.
The Editorial Office continues to work hard to make sure the work published in PCCP has the highest visibility possible. As well as the popular PCCP blog, we now also promote the latest high-quality research and news from the journal on our dedicated Twitter feed @PCCP—we encourage you to sign-up and follow our tweets today at http://twitter.com/pccp.
Our dedicated Press Office also promotes PCCP articles to the wider scientific press, which has resulted in PCCP articles being featured in leading international scientific magazines, such as Chemistry World, Materials Today and Science. Examples include, Sang and Coppens’ article about “super fit enzymes” (10.1039/c0cp02273j) which was highlighted in Materials Today and Graham J. Hutchings' paper on CO bond cleavage (10.1039/c0cp01852j) which was chosen as a Science Editors' Choice.
Looking to the future
We want to thank everyone in the scientific community who has contributed to PCCP. It is the support of our authors, Board members, readers and referees who have made PCCP the journal it is today. We take this opportunity to especially thank our referees—as their dedication and support is invaluable to the success of the journal.We plan to build on the success of recent years, by maintaining the best levels of service, and ensuring that PCCP remains the “journal of choice” for high-impact research in the broad communities it serves.
We always welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions; please do contact us at mailto:pccp@rsc.org.
With our best wishes for the New Year,
Jane Hordern
Deputy Editor, PCCP
Philip Earis
Editor, PCCP
Daniella Goldfarb
Chair, PCCP Editorial Board
RSC Publishing growth and successes
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So more and more authors—from 70+ countries in 2011—are trusting us to ensure their research is communicated to the global community. Our Editorial and Advisory Boards are international, and our publishing operation is supported by offices in USA, China, India and Japan. Plus our content is downloaded by growing numbers of readers in virtually every country in the world.
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We continue to provide expert, interdisciplinary chemical science books: over 100 new print titles are planned for 2012 alongside the launch of several new series including:
• Food and Nutritional Components in Focus
• New Developments in Mass Spectrometry
• New Developments in NMR
• RSC Smart Materials
Our ability to deliver fast, accurate information to our customers was rewarded by the BIC Basic Award, an accolade held by few publishers. www.rsc.org/books
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RSC Conferences and Events 2012
The RSC organises a broad range of conferences and events to promote the advancement of the chemical sciences. Please visit the website for the most up to date listing: www.rsc.org/eventsThe major scientific meetings planned for 2012 include:
Tribology (Faraday Discussion 156)
2–4 April 2012, Southampton, UK
Molecular Reaction Dynamics in Gases, Liquids and Interfaces (Faraday Discussion 157)
25–27 June 2012, Assisi, Italy
Soft Matter Approaches to Structured Foods (Faraday Discussion 158)
2–4 July 2012, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Crystallisation—a Biological Perspective (Faraday Discussion 159)
23–25 July 2012, Leeds, UK
Ion Specific Hofmeister Effects (Faraday Discussion 160)
3–5 September 2012, Oxford, UK
21st IUPAC International Conference on Physical Organic Chemistry (ICPOC 21)
9–13 September 2012, Durham, UK
Lipids and Membrane Biophysics (Faraday Discussion 161)
11–13 September 2012, London, UK
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