Metallomics: 2013 and beyond!

Welcome to Issue 1 of Metallomics in 2013, and we would like to wish you a very Happy New Year from RSC Publishing and the whole Metallomics team.

Looking back over a busy 2012, this was another excellent year in the early life of Metallomics, and I am delighted with how the journal is developing. I was particularly encouraged to see how the metallomics community is beginning to emerge. As an example of this, 2012 saw the Metals in Biology Gordon Research Conference reach 50 years old, and it was at this anniversary meeting that a session dedicated to Metallomics and Metalloproteomics was held for the first time.¹ Another encouraging sign of course is if the research community is reading and citing papers in the journal, and last year we were delighted with a further increase in Impact Factor to 3.91. This establishes Metallomics as the leading journal dedicated to the publication of primary research in biometal science.

In this Editorial, I would also like to warmly welcome Wolfgang Maret of Kings College London, to the position of Chair of the Metallomics Editorial Board. Wolfgang is a Senior Lecturer in Iron Metabolism in the Metal Metabolism Group in the School of Medicine. His research interests began with the catalytic mechanism of metalloenzymes as investigated with spectroscopic and kinetic methods and continued with the role of metal ions in health and disease, the molecular mechanisms of how proteins control nutritionally essential metal ions, and the cellular mechanism of how metal ions control protein structure and function. At the end of 2012, he started a 2-year term as president of the International Society for Zinc in Biology. Wolfgang takes over as Chair from Joe Caruso from the University of Cincinnati. Joe was Chair of the Editorial Board for the first four years of Metallomics, and has been integral in establishing and developing the journal from its launch in 2009. On behalf of RSC Publishing, I would like to extend our warmest thanks to Joe for his guidance during the early days, and helping to bring Metallomics to the place that it has reached today.

Into 2013 and beyond, myself, Wolfgang and other members of the Metallomics Editorial Board wish to continue to lead the way at the interface of bioinorganic chemistry, biological inorganic chemistry, analytical science, biochemistry and biology. Our vision for the journal was recently laid out in an Editorial Metallomics: Whence and Whither.² However I would like to take this opportunity to once again invite authors in all these areas (and others that we have yet to interact with) to find a new home in Metallomics in order to make their work known to a wider community of interested ‘‘biometallogists.’’ With the inter- and multi-disciplinary nature of the journal, we hope to continue to provide an exciting new forum that overcomes the split into different disciplines, and that will lead to a wider recognition of the field in the biological sciences.

Another key element that we consider to be important for the journal is to provide support for the young and up-and-coming scientists in the field of biometal science. Therefore this year we published our first Emerging Investigators themed issue, which was Guest Edited by Rachel Austin.³ This issue highlights the work of eight exciting young researchers and we hope to be able to continue to support them as their research and the field develops.

Another exciting issue that was published in 2012 was the Metals and Genetics themed issue, Guest Edited by Bibudhendra Sarkar. This issue gathers together a collection of articles from the conference of the same name held in Kobe, Japan in September 2011.⁴ The series of International Conferences on Metals and Genetics brings together a diverse group of scientists and clinician-investigators to promote multi-disciplinary translational research in the exciting field of metals and genetics. It is envisaged that the themed issue from the fifth in this series of conferences will expand the horizons of this field even further.

Coming up in 2013, we have some more exciting issues, including a themed issue on Microbial Metallomics, a focus on Metallomics in China, Metallomics in Plants and the next in the series of issues on the developments in Metallomics from Japanese authors.

Members of the Editorial team will be also be out and about at a range of conferences throughout 2013, including Experimental Biology, the 4th International Symposium on Metallomics 2013 to be held in Oviedo, Spain in July, the rapidly developing Zinc-UK meetings, the International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry (ICBIC), Metals in Cell Biology GRC, SCIX 2013, JASIS 2013 (Japanese Analytical Scientific Instruments Show) and the Beijing Conference and Exhibition on Instrumental Analysis (BCEIA). Metallomics will also be supporting the Metals in Biology GRC and the Bioinorganic session at the Canadian Chemistry Conference. Please do get in touch if you are also attending, as we would be very happy to meet up and discuss the journal, future developments and any aspect of publishing in Metallomics.

New faces for 2013

Alongside the appointment of Wolfgang as the new Chair of the Metallomics Editorial Board, we also have the pleasure of announcing that Chris Orvig from the University of British Columbia, Deborah Zamble, University of Toronto and Mike Adams at the University of Georgia will also be joining the Editorial Board in 2013. They will all bring additional welcome expertise to the Board and we are looking forward to working with them in the future. The Editorial team in Cambridge has also seen some changes, with Rebecca Brodie taking over as Deputy Editor for Metallomics, and Paola Quattroni joining the team as Development Editor.

We would also like to sincerely thank all our Editorial and Advisory Board members for their much appreciated input and support this past year, and we look forward to working with them again in 2013.

Would you like to be involved?

For our authors and readers, we will continue to highlight the Hot Articles and the monthly most-read articles on the Metallomics blog. We also welcome Dipanwita Batabyal, UC Irvine, USA who has joined us as a blog writer in 2012. We look forward to working with her in communicating some of our most exciting research, news and opinions from the community. The Metallomics blog is also a great place for finding information about upcoming conferences, conference reports, themed issues and general news from the community. Developing our online community is extremely important to us, and so please do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like to be involved.

Your comments and suggestions for the journal are also very welcome at any time, so please do contact us at metallomics-rsc@rsc.org.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the continued support from all our authors and referees, and to wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year!

May Copsey

Editor, Metallomics

References

1. R. H. Holm and M. J. Maroney, Metallomics, 2012, 4, 401–402.
2. W. Maret and M. Copsey, Metallomics, 2012, 4, 1017–1019.
3. R. Austin, Metallomics, 2012, 4, 863–865.
4. B. Sarkar, Metallomics, 2012, 4, 589–592.

---