News, thanks & greetings from NJC's Editors

“All Aboard” issue

This January issue marks the return of the “All Aboard” issue—after those of 2001, 2003 and 2005—which highlights the research of members of the NJC's Editorial Boards. Sixteen current members have contributed 5 reviews and 10 research articles that, as for all work published in NJC, have gone through the normal peer evaluation process.

Luca Prodi (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40673J), and Robert Crabtree with Odile Eisenstein as co-author (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40659D), have composed two Focus reviews on luminescent chemosensors based on nanoparticles and on hydrogenation catalysis, respectively. Perspective reviews on histidine-rich sequences, lanthanoid hydroxo clusters, and topologically complex molecules are the respective contributions of the groups of Henryk Kozlowski (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40558J), Peter Junk (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40560A) and Jean-Pierre Sauvage (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40555E).

Original research papers on a variety of topics come from Leonard Barbour (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40612H), Debbie Crans (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40524E), Odile Eisenstein (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40624A), George Gokel (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40337D), Fabrizia Grepioni (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40379J), Mir Wais Hosseini (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40657H), Takashi Kato (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40681K), J. Narasimha Moorthy (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40575J), Michael Scott (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40586E) and Jon Steed (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40401J). By considering the reviewers' comments, the editors selected two papers, those by Takashi Kato on aligned liquid crystals and by Debbie Crans, co-authored with Michael Johnson, on vanadium complexes in micelles, for highlighting on the outside and inside front covers of this issue.

In the second half of this issue, composed of spontaneous submissions, we might point out two papers having former Board members—Clément Sanchez and Michael Veith—as co-authors on the papers by Renal Backov (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40527J)and Edwin Kroke (DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ40538E).

A few words about NJC

New Journal of Chemistry is a general chemistry journal that belongs to the French national centre for scientific research (CNRS). Founded in 1977, the journal is published by contract with RSC Publishing since 1998. The main editorial office is based in Montpellier, France, under the direction of Denise Parent. Peter Junk in Australia will be continuing in 2013 as the Associate Editor in Australia. A second Associate Editor will be named shortly. The production of the journal is assured by RSC Publishing in its Cambridge office.

NJC seeks to publish high quality papers that will interest a broad cross-section of the chemistry research community. We are particularly interested in papers that marry chemistry with other disciplines, such as medicine, physics, materials, or show the applications of chemistry in other fields such as archaeology or art history.

Authors can publish their original research in two formats: short Letters and longer Papers, with no criteria regarding urgency. Two review formats are also proposed, the 6-page Focus and the longer Perspective. The October 2010 editorial (free to access at http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/C005530C) gives further details about the formats and the journal's editorial policy.

The Focus reviews were introduced in 2011. The spirit of Focuses is to present, in a concise form, a personal view of a topic that will interest a broad readership. These short reviews are strictly limited to 6 pages in length, to make them readable by all chemists and scientists in related fields. These contributions give a concise introduction of the topic covered and a personal vision, including key achievements and perspectives, drawing on a limited number of references to the most important papers. Focus reviews are not meant to be an exhaustive survey of the literature but are short, informative, useful and attractive to readers. Selected authors are invited to submit Focus reviews. So far, a number of high-profile chemists have been approached and the high percentage of acceptance indicates the attractiveness of this initiative.

The longer Perspectives are meant to provide a more detailed review of a selected area of research through a survey of the work of the author. The author's contribution is put into the context of current and past research, and the author gives a personal perspective on the future of the field. Perspectives have no length limitation, however, they are not expected to be a complete survey of a field.

Both Focus and Perspective reviews are on invitation to the author. Proposals for reviews can be sent to the editors for consideration.

2012 in review

China Symposia

2012 was an exciting year for NJC, the highlight surely being the series of NJC Symposia held in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. Nine members of the Editorial Board participated, alongside eminent local chemists. Our hosts were Vivian Yam at the University of Hong Kong, Qian Xuhong at the East China University of Science and Technology (Fig. 1), and Yao Jiannian at the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. You can find the detailed programs of these 3 days and read the editor's accounts of this trip on the NJC blog in the Conferences category (http://blogs.rsc.org/nj/category/conference/).

Fig. 1 ECUST President Xuhong Qian (in the middle of the front row) and his colleagues, Bozhong Mu (at the left in the back row) and Chunyan Bao (at the right end of the front row), welcome members of the NJC Editorial Board to Shanghai during the NJC China Symposia. (Back row, starting 2nd from the left: Board members J. N. Moorthy, Debbie Crans, Helen Hailes, Peter Junk, Len Barbour. Front row, starting 3rd from the left: Board members Odile Eisenstein and Mir Wais Hosseini, Managing Editor Denise Parent.)

Conferences

NJC continued its active conference program, with sponsorship or participation in 24 conferences in 2012. NJC poster prizes were awarded at 8 of these conferences to 12 younger chemists. (The complete list of all NJC poster prize winners since their inception can be found at http://www.njc.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article20&lang=en).

At the 40th International Conference on Coordination Chemistry held in Valencia, Spain, NJC sponsored the Metals in Medicine microsymposium, which included Debbie Crans, a NJC Board member, as one of the invited speakers.

Most recently, Ben Feringa was the NJC Plenary Lecturer at the ERC Grantees Conference held in Strasbourg, France.

Content

Following on the very successful Dendrimers issue published in 2007, February's Dendrimers II themed issue (Fig. 2) was once again guest-edited by former NJC Editor-in-Chief Jean-Pierre Majoral. The issue collected 31 contributions from many of the world's top experts in the field, with a particular focus this time on biomedical applications of dendrimers. You can find the table of contents of this issue at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/journals/journalissues/nj#!issueid=nj036002&type=current.

Fig. 2 Outside front cover for the Dendrimers II February 2012 themed issue.

A number of the short Focus and the longer Perspective reviews were published in 2012. Three of these reviews figure on the list of most downloaded papers (Table 1). Other topics of high interest last year were quantum dots, graphene, and sensors. Congratulations to all of these authors!

Table 1 Most downloaded 2012 New Journal of Chemistry articles (as of November 19, 2012)

DOI (Format)	Title	Authors	NJC vol 36, issue #
10.1039/c1nj20658c (Paper)	One-pot hydrothermal synthesis of graphene quantum dots surface-passivated by polyethylene glycol and their photoelectric conversion under near-infrared light	Jianhua Shen, Yihua Zhu, Xiaoling Yang, Jie Zong, Jianmei Zhang and Chunzhong Li	1
10.1039/c2nj20942j (Letter)	One-step ultrasonic synthesis of fluorescent N-doped carbon dots from glucose and their visible-light sensitive photocatalytic ability	Zheng Ma, Hai Ming, Hui Huang, Yang Liu and Zhenhui Kang	4
10.1039/c2nj40068e (Paper)	Nitrogen and boron doped monolayer graphene by chemical vapor deposition using polystyrene, urea and boric acid	Tianru Wu, Honglie Shen, Lei Sun, Bin Cheng, Bin Liu and Jiancang Shen	6
10.1039/c2nj20943h (Paper)	Thiophene-substituted aza-bodipy as a strategic synthon for the design of near-infrared dyes	Quentin Bellier, Fabrice Dalier, Erwann Jeanneau, Olivier Maury and Chantal Andraud	3
10.1039/c2nj20879b (Perspective)	Stimuli sensitive amphiphilic dendrimers	Rajasekhar R. Ramireddy, Krishna R. Raghupathi, Diego Amado Torres and S. Thayumanavan	2
10.1039/c2nj20849k (Focus)	PEG-dendritic block copolymers for biomedical applications	Ana Sousa-Herves, Ricardo Riguera and Eduardo Fernandez-Megia	2
10.1039/c1nj20458k (Perspective)	“Janus” dendrimers: syntheses and properties	Anne-Marie Caminade, Régis Laurent, Béatrice Delavaux-Nicot and Jean-Pierre Majoral	2
10.1039/c2nj20959d (Paper)	ZnO/carbon quantum dots nanocomposites: one-step fabrication and superior photocatalytic ability for toxic gas degradation under visible light at room temperature	Hang Yu, Hengchao Zhang, Hui Huang, Yang Liu, Haitao Li, Hai Ming and Zhenhui Kang	4
10.1039/c2nj20587d (Paper)	Towards efficient polyoxometalate encapsulation in MIL-100(Cr): influence of synthesis conditions	Jana Juan-Alcañiz, Maarten G. Goesten, Enrique V. Ramos-Fernandez, Jorge Gascon and Freek Kapteijn	4
10.1039/c2nj20904g (Paper)	Cation-induced fluorescent excimer emission in calix[4]arene-chemosensors bearing quinoline as a fluorogenic unit: experimental, molecular modeling and crystallographic studies	Subrata Patra, Ravi Gunupuru, Rabindranath Lo, E. Suresh, Bishwajit Ganguly and Parimal Paul	4

---

Some metrics

RSC Publishing prides itself on fast publication of your research articles. For NJC authors, during the 6 months ending September 30, 2012, the average receipt-to-acceptance time was 66 days, with web publication as an Advance Article 24 days later. This gives an average receipt-to-publication time of 92 days. With the introduction of the “just accepted manuscript” option (which has been chosen by 87% of authors), the receipt-to-first-publication time drops to 72 days!

More and more authors are choosing NJC to publish their work. For the 4th year in a row, the number of submissions has increased, growing by over 50% in 4 years. Since the late 1990s, the number of submissions to the journal has grown about 6-fold and we are attracting authors from around the world (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Geographical origin of the corresponding author of articles published in NJC in 2012.

Coming up in 2013

Editorial Boards

With several retirements from the board at the end of 2012, replacements will be appointed for 2013, including a new Co-Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor. These new members will be presented in an upcoming editorial.

The International Advisory Board will also be expanded, with a number of new appointments to be announced in the near future.

Conferences

The Editors are looking forward to another full year of conference presence. One focus in 2013 will be the 96th Canadian Chemistry Conference, to be held in Québec city (http://www.csc2013.ca/). The list of 2013 conferences that Editors will be attending will be posted in the coming weeks on the NJC blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/nj/). Please let us know if you will be attending any of the listed meetings. We always look forward to meeting our public in person rather than just electronically!

We've made it a priority since 2005 to recognise and reward outstanding young chemists. If you are organising a conference in 2013 or 2014 and would like for NJC to offer support for young chemists, in the form of poster prizes or invited lectureships, then please contact the Editorial Office.

Themed issues

In mid-2013 NJC will publish a themed issue arising from the NJC China Symposia, with contributions from Chinese chemists from the 3 cities visited by the NJC Editors and Board members.

Another issue later in the year will honour Bernard Meunier, an eminent French chemist and former president of the CNRS. He is known for his work on catalytic oxidation, heme and non-heme enzyme chemistry and the development of various medications (against tuberculosis, malaria, and Alzheimer's disease, among others). The guest editor, Azzedine Bousseksou (LCC, Toulouse, France), has invited colleagues of Prof. Meunier to contribute to this issue. If you would like to submit an article dedicated to Bernard Meunier for this issue, please contact the Editorial Office (NJC@univ-montp2.fr), since the issue size is not unlimited.

Thanks and best wishes for 2013

As a “small” journal—we publish about 350 articles per year—we have the possibility and the desire to offer a personalised service to our authors. Specific editorial suggestions and targeted publicity of accepted manuscripts are just two of our efforts on behalf of our authors.

Readers are critically important to us as well. We encourage you to sign up for the e-alerts (http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/forms/V5profile.asp) so as not to miss a single issue of NJC, to send us your feedback on how we can make the journal better, and to cite NJC articles when relevant to your work.

We wish to thank all of those who contribute to the continuing success of NJC: Editors and Board members, reviewers, authors, and our readers. We wish you all the best in 2013!

 

Looking forward by looking further—beyond the traditional boundaries—NJC presents chemistry as the central science.

 

Mir Wais Hosseini

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Denise Parent (CNRS; NJC@univ-montp2.fr) and Jamie Humphrey (RSC Publishing; NJC@rsc.org)

Editors

Plate1 Denise Parent and Mir Wais Hosseini

---