Lab on a Chip 200th Issue

This is the 200th issue of Lab on a Chip. I thought we should mark the occasion in some small way – hence this editorial is just that.

Lab on a Chip launched with 2 issues at the end of 2001, publishing a total of 31 articles that year. This was increased to 48 articles in the four issues published in 2002; quite a difference from the 1400 or so papers received last year. Some of the young researchers that published in the first issue have now become professors themselves (Andrew de Mello, Hang Lu, Manabu Tokeshi) and many have gone on to become award winners – Tokeshi and de Mello have both won the Pioneers Award and Lu has won the ACS Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award.

Lab on a Chip was certainly not the first journal to publish microfluidics, and it was widely known that a few other journals had tried to launch in this and related areas but failed. I recall at the first ever Board Meeting for Lab on a Chip that one of the Board Members asked me why I, and the Royal Society of Chemistry, were so bold as to think that we would not go the same way as other journals had? I had no clever answer except to say that we would succeed because of the interest – the rest of the Editorial Board around that table had travelled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to be at that meeting. Of course, I also had a clear vision for the journal, and the strength and long-term commitment of the Royal Society of Chemistry behind me. There was also the minor point that Andreas Manz, the father of microfluidics, was at the head of the table.

Looking back and having recently read the original, pioneering paper by Manz¹ (the paper is truly inspiring as many of the ideas he proposed did not come to fruition until much later) it is clear how innovative this work was. Nonetheless, as brilliant as that was, the field really did not take off until Whitesides introduced the use of PDMS as chip material. PDMS put microfabrication and microfluidics within the reach of any and every type of scientist who had an interest, and the field moved from being dominated by analytical scientists and engineers to becoming truly multidisciplinary. Today, lab on a chip (both the field and the journal) covers research and technology ranging from environmental issues to circulating tumour cells – and we are open to additional areas that may not be considered at present to be within our remit; we would like to encourage scientists working with any aspect of micro or nanofluidics to give us a try.

Lab on a Chip was a pioneering journal from inception – such an unscientific name was unheard of until then. It was soon followed by “Small” and other similar titles. We have tried our best to continue in this vein and cater for the needs of the communities we serve. To enhance understanding and bring new researchers to the field LOC launched its own YouTube site (http://www.youtube.com/user/labonachipVideos) in 2008, long before anyone else made any real use of the videos in microfluidics papers. We then introduced “Chips & Tips” (http://blogs.rsc.org/chipsandtips/), with the help of David Beebe and Glen Walker, again to help the community in sharing the tips and tricks they had learned when dealing with microfluidic devices, therefore helping newcomers to the field.

“Lab on a Chip itself has had an enormous influence on the development of the field, by setting very high scientific standards, by providing a common forum and vocabulary, by highlighting significant results, and by attracting some of the best scientists to the common forum. The journal, and Harp Minhas as the spirit of the journal, have provided a coherence to LOC science and technology that have had enormous influence in channelling the direction of the field.”

Professor George Whitesides

Chair of Editorial Board

Lab on a Chip worked with Corning Incorporated and the μTAS conference to introduce the first and biggest prize in this sector in 2006 for the second generation of Pioneers of Miniaturisation (http://rsc.li/NzQEsn). We also introduced prizes with NIST for Art in Science (http://www.microtas2014.org/authors/awards/nist.html), and of course the Widmer Poster Award. This year, for the first time, we will also have a video competition, which will be judged and awarded at μTAS 2014 (http://www.microtas2014.org/). In addition, all the μTAS abstracts (2003 to 2013) are available free of charge on the Lab on a Chip website (http://rsc.li/1eYWXQs).

Lab on a Chip believes very much in community and hence sponsors and supports a variety of other conferences, workshops and meetings at an international level. We also try to have a comprehensive approach to the subject; this is why we occasionally bring you articles on education (http://rsc.li/1qv2m9M), standards,² grand challenges,³ and novel ideas/applications/games⁴ (http://youtu.be/Pdx7BkYSCq4).

LOC has a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ChipsandTips), a blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/lc/), and a Twitter account (@LabonaChip) so please like us, follow us and join in to keep up to date with new developments.

Recently we have been working with our industrial colleagues at MF5 (http://www.cfbi.com/microfluidics.htm) to develop an industry resource for companies involved with microfluidic and lab on a chip technologies. This Microfluidics Directory (http://www.microfluidicsdirectory.com/) is still at a very early (and yellow!) stage, but we will be developing this further and making it a lot more user friendly in the near future. If you would like your company listed, please do contact us.

A further note for the microfluidics and miniaturisation industry; we are currently pulling together a workshop in Dalian in connection with our Associate Editor, Professor Jianhua Qin. This will focus on the microfluidics industry in both China and elsewhere and will be held 2–3 August, 2014. If you are interested in this meeting please see the website (http://www.locchina.com/registration.php). The Directors of both Fluigent and Blacktrace Holdings will be speaking at this event, as well as local Chinese companies.

Lab on a Chip will be present at the EMBL Meeting on Microfluidics, the ISMM Meeting in Singapore, the Industry/Academia workshop in China, and of course at μTAS. We look forward to meeting our authors, reviewers and colleagues at one of these meetings.

If there are other ideas or tools that you would like Lab on a Chip to provide, we would very much like to hear from you and/or work with you to deliver these ideas to the community. Please keep in touch – email me at E-mail: loc-rsc@rsc.org.

 

Harpal Minhas

Editor

References

1. A. Manz, N. Graber and H. M. Widmer, Sens. Actuators, B, 1990, 1, 244–248.
2. H. van Heeren, Lab Chip, 2012, 12, 1022–1025.
3. J. den Toonder, Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 375–377.
4. I. H. Riedel-Kruse, A. M. Chung, B. Dura, A. L. Hamilton and B. C. Lee, Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 14–22.

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