Happy New Year from Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry

On behalf of the OBC Editorial Board and Editorial Team, we welcome you to this first issue of 2013.

Looking back on 2012

2012 was another exciting year for OBC. The journal saw continuing growth in high quality published articles, with more authors than ever before choosing to submit their research to OBC. We would like to thank all of our authors and referees for their continued contribution to the success of the journal.

2012 was OBC's 10th year of publication. To mark this we published a celebratory issue, which brought together 68 research and review articles from the breadth of OBC's scope by leaders in the field, some of whom have served on OBC's Editorial or Advisory Boards. Also in 2012 we published themed issues on Organocatalysis (in conjunction with ChemComm) and Foldamers. Look out for more themed issues in 2013, including one on Nucleic Acids due for publication in the Spring.

Quality, consistency and service

OBC's mission is to provide a journal for the community which offers high quality author service and a rigorous, fair and consistent peer review process, with all articles receiving the same level of consideration no matter the topic or the location or experience of the authors.

OBC continues to evolve in order to meet these goals, and this year the journal has introduced a new submission requirement for authors in order to assist Editors in maintaining the high standard of service and consistency. OBC now requests authors on submission to supply references to the two published papers most closely related to the submitted article – one from the author's own laboratory and one from another group. This is to assist referees and Editors in assessing the contribution that each submitted article makes to its field.

Editorial and Advisory Board

At the beginning of 2013 Margaret Brimble will become OBC's third Associate Editor. Margaret has been a member of the OBC Editorial Board for six years and we are delighted that she will be continuing with OBC in this new role. Margaret joins current Associate Editors Jin-Quan Yu and Andrei Yudin in handling submissions to the journal. Of course, submissions can still be made to the Cambridge Editorial Office, as OBC continues to offer authors the choice of either Associate Editor or Editorial Office submission.

The end of 2012 sees Veronique Gouverneur retire from the OBC Editorial Board. Veronique joined the board in 2007 and amongst her many contributions she guest edited the Fluorine Chemistry themed issue in 2011. We would like to thank Veronique for her work on OBC and wish her well for the future.

In 2012 we welcomed several new members to OBC's Advisory Board. Our Advisory Board members play a key role in advising Editors about developments in their field and they also make a strong contribution to the peer review process to help maintain the consistent level of quality of articles published in OBC. 2012 also saw the retirement of a number of OBC Advisory Board members, and we would like to thank them for their service.

Meet the Editorial Team

As always members of the OBC Editorial Team will be travelling to a number of conferences in 2013 to meet members of the community. As a society journal it is vitally important to us to represent the views of the community and we welcome all suggestions and comments about the journal.

We hope that you enjoy reading this first issue of 2013.

Professor Jeffrey Bode

Chair, Editorial Board

Dr Richard Kelly

Editor

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