Happy New Year from Analytical Methods

Welcome to issue 1, 2015 of Analytical Methods, and we wish you a very Happy New Year from the Analytical Methods team! We have seen a remarkable growth in high impact submissions and publications, with the number of articles published in the journal more than doubling over the past three years. The journal also increased its Impact Factor to 1.938 last year (2013 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters)), and Analytical Methods remains one of the fastest growing general analytical science journals. We continue to expect great things from this young journal.

We are delighted to welcome a new Associate Editor to the Editorial Board. Jailson de Andrade joins us from the Institute of Chemistry, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Bahia, Brazil, and will be helping us to handle the increasing number of high quality papers in the area of environmental chemistry. We are excited about the experience and expertise he will bring to the Board. In addition to our increased geographical diversity, we now offer authors the choice of submitting to an Associate Editor working in the area of their research.

Jailson de Andrade, Associate Editor, Analytical Methods.

Alongside this the Royal Society of Chemistry is happy to announce our USA office is growing in size. Lauren Graham and Jenny Lee have been appointed as Assistant Editorial Development managers for North America, and will be helping Editorial Development Manager Jennifer Griffiths to strengthen our international presence in the USA.

We would also like to warmly welcome several new Advisory Board members to the Analytical Methods journal team: Anthony Gachanja, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya; Chris Le, University of Alberta, Canada; Susheel Mittal, Thapar University, India.

We thank our existing Associate Editors, Editorial and Advisory Board members for their very much appreciated hard work and dedication to the journal this past year, and look forward to working with them in 2015.

We had a number of wonderful themed issues last year, starting with a web theme on Food & Packaging,¹ describing the latest developments in food analysis and analytical research on food components arising from changes during food processing, packaging and storage. Emerging analytical methods for global energy and climate issues² contained a collection of papers on important developments and novel applications in the area of analytical methods related to energy research, climate change and environmental issues. We also had an exciting cross-journal web themed issue in partnership with Analyst. Analytical Sciences in Brazil³ highlighted the growth of the field of analytical science in this country with the aim to provide a showcase for some of the best researchers in this area.

Coming up for 2015 we have a number of exciting topics: Emerging Investigators, showcasing prominent analytical scientists whose work has the potential to influence future directions in their field; and another cross-journal web themed issue with Analyst looking at Analytical Science in the UK. Please do get in touch with us if you are interested in contributing to any of these issues.

Members of the Editorial team were out and about at a range of conferences throughout the previous year, including HTC-13, Pittcon, Metabolomics, GRC Bioanalytical Sensors, IMSC 2014, SCIX 2014, and the 65^th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry among others. Maybe we saw you there, if not we hope to see you at some point in 2015, we would be delighted to talk with you about the journal and future developments.

The Editorial staff has seen some changes too. May Copsey went on maternity leave in the spring of 2014, and will be returning in December. In her absence, Anna Simpson has taken over the role of Editor, and we thank her for her enthusiasm and contributions to the journal. We also have a new Development Editor, as we welcomed Matt Cude to the team at the beginning of 2014. We would like to take this chance to thank all those in the Editorial office for their commitment and hard work to the journal, the team are pictured in Fig. 1.

Susan Lunte, Editor-in-Chief, Analytical Methods.

Reaching the right audience is key, and Analytical Methods editors will continue to work together with Analyst to provide authors with the best possible home for their research. We will continue to highlight Hot Articles published in the journal on the Analytical Methods 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 Gold initiative rewards all institutions that subscribe to the RSC Gold journal package with voucher codes to make papers available via OA, free of charge. In addition to this, Chemical Science is set to become the world's first high-quality Open Access chemistry journal. From the first issue in January 2015, our flagship journal will move to Gold Open Access. All content published from that date will be free to every reader. Plus, unlike other Gold Open Access journals, we will waive all Article Processing Charges (APCs) for at least two years, so it will be free for authors too.

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!

May Copsey, Editor, Analytical Methods.

Fig. 1 The Editorial office team: L–R back row: Matt Cude, Rebecca Brodie, Anna Simpson, Lucy Gilbert, Mary MacLeod, Charlotte Rowley, Hamish Crawford, front row: Ziva Whitelock, Harriet Brewerton, Andrea Whiteside, Sarah Farley, Susan Askey.

References

1. http://rsc.li/1BLssrq .
2. http://rsc.li/1koPPQy .
3. Analyst, 2014, 139, 4399–4400,  10.1039/c4an90061h.

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