A new look for a New Year
Welcome to issue 1, 2014 of Analyst, and we wish you a very Happy New Year from the Analyst team! As you have probably noticed, Analyst has a new look this year. With a wonderful new style and logo, Analyst has changed as part of the new visual identity for the Royal Society of Chemistry. We are the oldest chemical society publisher in the world, publishing our first paper in 1841. Since then the world has changed significantly but chemistry and the chemical sciences are as fundamental as ever. Looking at how we are seen in the chemistry community gave us a chance to refresh our brand and identity. As an organisation we have ambitious goals, to be the leading voice and trusted partner for science and humanity, and in order to do this we need to build a greater awareness of the Royal Society of Chemistry. We undertook large-scale research to help us understand how we could develop our brand, communicating with 7000+ individuals from our community. You may have taken part in this research: through our online survey, one of the focus groups or a telephone interview? This research helped us to clearly define how we can build on our strengths, such as our international readership, fast publication times and a high-quality editorial service. Moving forward, all articles will be printed with free full colour with our refreshed layout. We are very proud of our heritage and even more excited about our future. We hope you enjoy the new look!2014 is also a significant year for Analyst as it sees Duncan Graham, from the University of Strathclyde, UK, start his term as Chair of the Editorial Board. Specialising in biological chemistry and surface enhanced Raman scattering for analysis, he is currently working on functionalised metallic nanoparticles that can be used for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. We look forward to working with Duncan, and developing the journal, building on the work of the previous Chair.
After four years, Paul Bohn, University of Notre Dame, USA, steps down as the Chair of our Editorial Board and we thank him for all his dedication and contributions to the journal. We have seen a remarkable growth in submissions and publications in this time, with an almost 250% increase in articles published, and Analyst moving from 12 issues a year to 24. In this time we also saw our Impact Factor rise to above 4 [2011 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters)] and remain one of the top placed general analytical science journals. In his time as Chair, Paul introduced the role of Associate Editors which has been very successful in providing authors with the choice of submitting to an Editor in their own geographical region. We are pleased to say that Paul will continue to be involved with Analyst as a member of the Advisory Board.
We are delighted to welcome Lanqun Mao, from the Institute of Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to the Editorial Board as a new Associate Editor for Asia. He will be helping to handle the increasing number of high-quality papers in the area of electroanalytical chemistry. In addition to this we now offer authors the choice of submitting to an Associate Editor in their region or working in the area of their research.
The Royal Society of Chemistry is happy to announce the appointment of Hiromitsu Urakami as the Royal Society of Chemistry representative in Japan. He is looking forward to working with Analyst authors, readers and referees on non-editorial matters.
We would also like to offer a warm welcome to several new Advisory Board members to the Analyst journal team: Roy Goodacre, University of Manchester, UK; Takeaki Ozawa, University of Tokyo, Japan; Nick Stone, University of Exeter, UK; Xinrong Zhang, Tsinghua University, China; and Chaoyong James Yang, Xiamen University, China.
We thank our existing Associate Editors, Editorial and Advisory Board members for their very much appreciated hard work and dedication to the journal over this past year, and look forward to working with them in 2014.
We had a number of excellent themed issues last year, starting with one on Optical Diagnosis1 which highlighted papers from the SPEC 2012 conference – Shedding New Light on Disease, which was held in Thailand at the end of 2012. In it the latest thinking and developments from around the world in the use of optical spectroscopy for the diagnosis of disease were reported. We also saw two exciting cross-journal web themed issues, in partnership with Analytical Methods. The first, on Security and Forensics,2 highlighted a collection of papers on a range of new developments within the field of forensic science. The second, Molecular Analysis for Art, Archaeometry and Conservation,3 showcased a collection of papers at the cutting edge of analytical research from academia, national laboratories and museums showing the most recent analytical breakthroughs in the field of cultural heritage. The articles described those techniques recently employed to study art and cultural objects at the molecular level, characterising their structure, properties and chemistry.
Coming up for 2014 we have a selection of exciting topics including: Analytical Toxicology of Nanoparticles; Analysis in Gases and Liquids with Quantum Cascade Lasers; Probe and Chip Approaches to Cell Analysis; and another cross-journal web themed issue with Analytical Methods looking at Analytical Science in Brazil. Please do get in touch with us if you are interested in contributing to any of these issues.
Members of the Editorial team will be out and about at a range of conferences throughout the upcoming year, including Pittcon, HTC-13, GRC Bioanalytical Sensors, SPEC 2014, SCIX 2014, and the 65th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry among others. Please do get in touch with us if you will also be attending, we would be delighted to talk with you about the journal and future developments.
Reaching the right audience is key, and Analyst editors will continue to work together with Analytical Methods to provide authors with the best possible home for their research. We will continue to highlight Hot Articles published in the journal on the Analyst blog with the help of our blog writers from around the world; communicating the most exciting research, news and opinions from the analytical chemistry community.
The Royal Society of Chemistry is also supporting Open Access with authors able to choose between Gold and Green Open Access routes. To support the funder-led evolution to Gold OA, our Gold for Gold4 initiative rewards all institutions that subscribe to the Royal Society of Chemistry Gold journal package with voucher codes to make papers available via OA, free of charge. We are also delighted to announce that we are developing a new subject-based repository that will make it easier for researchers to find and share relevant journal articles and data from a single point of access. The Chemical Sciences Repository5 will offer free-to-access chemistry publications and integrated data in a single place. The article repository is a central point through which users can access the Royal Society of Chemistry's open access articles, whether they are funded immediate open access articles, or articles that must be made open access after an embargo period, such as those funded by RCUK, the Wellcome Trust or NIH.
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our authors, referees and readers for your continued support and to wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year!
References
- Analyst, 2013, 138, 3861–3862 10.1039/c3an90052e.
- Anal. Methods, 2013, 5, 5375–5375 10.1039/c3ay90068a.
- Analyst, 2013, 138, 7276–7278 10.1039/c3an90096g.
- rsc.li/goldforgold .
- http://www.rsc.org/Chemical-Sciences-Repository/articles .
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