Natural Product Reports 35 years on

2018 marks the 35^th year of Natural Product Reports. In this time, we have seen 258 issues published, 102 Hot off the Press articles, 20 themed issues, 5 Editorial Board Chairs, and the journal reach an impact factor above 11.

A lot of changes have happened over the last 35 years, from improvements in healthcare that help people to live longer, to the rise of the internet and technologies that are now an almost inescapable part of everyday life. In research, the omics and big data revolutions have created new areas of science and forever changed the face of natural products research to become the multidisciplinary science it is today.

Natural Product Reports is no different when it comes to such evolution. In this time, we have seen: the introduction of web-based publications, the publication of our first themed issue in 2004 on Marine Natural Products, and the launch of our Emerging Investigator Lectureships to recognise early-stage career scientists.

When I first joined the journal in 2006, Wilhelm Boland and I were the sole Editorial Board members that were not from the UK. However, today sees a very different picture, with recent representatives coming from all over the globe including China, Japan, mainland Europe and North America.

This internationalisation has mirrored the changes in the research landscape over recent decades, as have the changes in where our authors come from. Fig. 1 shows the relative contribution that countries have made to the publications, based on the country of the corresponding author, for each year from 1993 to present. This graphic is not intended to show the exact countries/numbers but offers an illuminating visual representation of how the international composition of the journal has developed, going from a small handful of colours to a much wider spread.

Fig. 1 Relative contribution to Natural Product Reports by country.

What we are publishing, and the style of these articles, has also changed.

On its inception in 1984, Natural Product Reports brought together the areas previously covered by the Specialist Periodical Reports ‘The Alkaloids’, ‘Terpenoids and Steroids’, ‘Biosynthesis’, and ‘Aliphatic and Related Natural Product Chemistry’, along with other areas related to natural products, such areas as chemotaxonomy, enzymology, and advances in techniques for structure determination. These articles tended to cover twelve-month periods giving a comprehensive and continuous overview of all the results.

Jump forward to 2018 and you will see a notable difference. Perhaps one of the first things you will realize is that we have gone from having a single article type, Reviews, to having three, Viewpoints, Highlights and Reviews. This expansion in style over the years has allowed our authors significantly more flexibility on how they can tell their stories and share some of the exciting advances within numerous areas of natural product research.

You will also notice that while there are still some excellent comprehensive articles, giving a generous overview of the developments of a specific topic over one or two year periods – such as the Marine Natural Products review article, which itself has undergone major changes in recent years – the main focus of most articles is on the key developments of a specific research topic, with their authors offering critical insight on the significance and perhaps future impact.

When the Editorial Board look at any proposed review sent to the journal, whether it is an invited contribution or an unsolicited article proposal, this critical insight is one of the key features we scrutinize. So for those interested in contributing to the journal in the future, if there is one piece of advice I would give it is that you should make this insight immediately clear within the synopsis in both the descriptive introduction about what you intend to cover and also in the breakdown of your section headings.

Connected with this is a common trend we have seen frequently over the years, where proposed Review articles included many tables and lists of reported data in the main body of the articles. While a lot of this information can be very useful, I think many of us will agree that it does not lend itself well to being an engaging read. In light of this, and our desire to ensure the utility of the articles was not lost, we now support and encourage Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI) files alongside our Reviews to allow authors to include more extensive data sets while still allowing them to focus their article on the key developments of the field.

Natural Product Reports may have evolved over the years, but in many ways it has also remained the same. It remains our continued goal to stimulate progress in all areas of natural products research by bringing the community the very best in natural product research and highlighting those fields that we feel will have a significant impact on the future direction of all natural product research. If you have a suggestion for such an informative article, we will always be happy to hear from you and the first step is to email a brief synopsis to http://npr-rsc@rsc.org detailing your idea.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of Natural Product Reports’ 35 years. Thank you to all those who have contributed articles, to those who have been part of the peer-review process, to all those who have served on its Editorial and Advisory Boards and to you our readers. You have all helped make the journal what it is today and we look forward to continuing our relationship with you for many more years to come.

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