Polymer Chemistry: 5 years on

Polymer Chemistry is five years old this year and, looking back, everybody involved with the Journal is delighted with the progress and impact that the Journal has made in this time. Five years is not a long time in publishing but already the Journal has established itself as one of the leading journals in polymer science. The 2013 Impact Factor came out at 5.368, which is our highest to date, with the quality of Polymer Chemistry continuing to improve. Increasingly, polymer scientists think of Polymer Chemistry as a natural home for their best work. In particular, it seems that the Journal is becoming a forum for the most topical and urgent work in the field; our immediacy index, which is the average number of times that papers published in a particular year are cited in that year, is currently 1.713 – #1 out of all primary research polymer science journals. This success is owed to the polymer community who have supported us by submitting and reviewing manuscripts, ensuring that we publish the highest quality papers. Thanks to the diligent work of our referees and Associate Editors, we are disseminating this exciting science as rapidly as possible.

We are always trying to find exciting areas of polymer chemistry to highlight, and one way we do this is through the publication of themed issues. Last year saw the publication of two more themed issues: one on ‘Sustainable polymers: replacing polymers derived from fossil fuels’ guest edited by Stephen A. Miller (University of Florida, USA), and a second entitled ‘Synthesis of polymeric nanomaterials for medicine’ with Cyrille Boyer (The University of New South Wales, Australia) and Thomas Davis (Monash University, Australia) as Guest Editors.

Journal growth has prompted some personnel changes over the last year, with Bin Liu (National University Singapore) joining the Polymer Chemistry team as an Associate Editor. Bin brings expertise in developing conjugated polymers for applications such as nano-biotechnology and clean energy, as well as previous editorial experience. We are very pleased to have her on board. In the Cambridge Editorial office, there have also been some changes, with Nicola Wise taking over from Liz Dunn as Executive Editor and Pete Livermore joining the team as Deputy Editor. Both Nicola and Pete look forward to meeting as many authors and reviewers as possible at upcoming meetings and symposia in 2015 – please do come and say hello!

Looking forward, there is some great news for avid readers of Polymer Chemistry – you'll be able to read the Journal every week from the beginning of 2015, as we are moving from 24 biweekly issues to 48 weekly issues. This is due to the success and growth of the Journal and should allow us to bring you the latest research even more rapidly than before. We also will be publishing a 2015 Emerging Investigators themed issue to showcase some of the exciting work being carried out by the next generation of polymer scientists.

To celebrate the Journal's 5th birthday, we will be hosting a Symposium at the ACS National Meeting in Denver (March 22 to 26, 2015) entitled “Celebrating the Five-Year Anniversary of Polymer Chemistry”. The event is organised by our Associate Editors Brent Summerlin (University of Florida) and Wei You (UNC Chapel Hill) and boasts a stellar line-up of speakers, including a number of our Editorial and Advisory board members. We are very excited about this event, which promises to be very stimulating and enjoyable.

We finish by wishing you all an exciting 2015 and we hope you prosper in your polymer and personal lives. We hope you will continue to enjoy being part of this community and we look forward to receiving your manuscripts.

Nicola Wise, Executive Editor; Pete Livermore, Deputy Editor; David Haddleton, Editor-in-Chief.

---