A Chemical Century

editorial A chemical century

The launch of Nature Chemistry in 2009 prompted some criticism of journal proliferation, but 100 issues later this young offender has matured into an accepted part of the publishing landscape.

The very first issue ofNature Chemistry was literature; even with the most carefully Article on page 667 of this issue that features published on 19 March 2009. Each month organized RSS feeds, efforts to stay on top researchers from the UK, USA, Portugal and since then a new issue of the journal has of the latest research can easily be ruined the Republic of Korea. been delivered to mailboxes (both real and in a day. But just as publishers eventually Our 100th issue also features the electronic) around the globe, and now, embraced the rise of the internet to put 1,000th research Article to appear in the just over eight years later, we’ve reached their journals online, many of them are printed journal — and in a somewhat a special milestone — the July 2017 issue now investigating other ways to make their spooky coincidence, it includes the words is the 100th. content stand out from the crowd — notably ‘One-thousand’ in the title (see page 676). Of course, times change and so do through sharing on social-media sites such And it seems only fitting that the In Your editorial teams — the current members are as Twitter and Facebook. Element essay in this issue tackles fermium, shown at the bottom of this Editorial. Two Moreover, the battle for online attention the element with an atomic number of 100. of the original editors have moved on to is also now an integral part of research When we published issue 1 of the journal, pastures new: Neil Withers is the Features assessment. Citation-based measures remain there were 111 officially recognized (and Editor at Chemistry World (Royal Society one of the most prominent indicators of named) elements on the periodic table. of Chemistry, RSC) and Stephen Davey how much a paper is valued, but alternative There are now 118, so the In Your Element moved within Springer Nature to become metrics are growing in popularity. The only feature has a little longer to run. the founding Chief Editor of Nature Reviews way to truly get a sense of whether a paper Finalizing the journal each month Chemistry. In addition, both Claire Hansell is important is to read it, but it is easier involves more than choosing which Articles (now an editor at Nature) and Thomas Faust to count numbers and so proxies (often and associated content to include. Hardcopies (now an editorial community manager at the poor ones) are usually invoked: the Impact mean covers, and covers mean cover lines — open-access publisher Hindawi) have been Factor of the journal in which the work short snippets of text highlighting four papers locum editors at Nature Chemistry. was published, the number of article page inside each issue. Our content focuses on When Nature Chemistry debuted views or downloads, the number of citations serious scientific matters, but this is where we there weren’t very many high-profile (irrespective of context), the attention the sometimes try to have a little fun. Although general chemistry journals — some paper is getting online and so on. Science the puns that appear on the table of contents of the best known examples were the should not be driven by these statistics, and of Angewandte Chemie are often hard to beat, Journal of the American Chemical Society besides, even a bad liar probably knows that we occasionally manage to slip in a song- (ACS), Angewandte Chemie (Wiley) and there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies based cover line — ‘Every MOF you make’ ChemComm (RSC). Our launch in 2009 was and statistics. is one of our favourites, but we don’t regret arguably the first of a new order of highly We appreciate that chemistry is incredibly any of them! selective chemistry journals that publish diverse in the real world, both in terms of The musical theme has extended into relatively few papers each year, including its practitioners and also how the science other parts of the journal from time to time: Chemical Science (RSC, 2010), ACS Central itself is defined and undertaken, and not all ‘Ice ice maybe’ was a Research Highlight in Science (ACS, 2015) and Chem (Elsevier, of our content will be of interest to everyone the April 2010 issue and ‘Shake it off’ was 2016). Other high-volume journals covering everywhere. Nevertheless we aim to cover a News and Views title in September 2015. the breadth of chemistry have also emerged, as broad a range of topics as possible, Maybe we’ll get a whole album’s worth of such as RSC Advances and ACS Omega. whether it’s single-author papers using song titles into an Editorial one day. We The number of chemistry journals computational methods to study unusual hope you enjoy our 100th issue and we look continues to increase and readers are chemical bonding, or global collaborations forward to having some fun while bringing faced with an ever-growing avalanche of on synthetic ion transporters such as the you the next 100. ❐

The Nature Chemistry editorial team — (L to R) Stuart Cantrill, Gavin Armstrong, Anne Pichon and Russell Johnson, based in London; Marshall Brennan in New York; and Xin Su in Shanghai.