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The Heat Is On …︁

2006; Wiley; Volume: 45; Issue: 31 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/anie.200602672

1521-3773

Peter Gölitz,

History and advancements in chemistry

…︁ for Authors: They have to publish ever more articles in “high-impact” journals just to get their grant proposals taken seriously, to position their departments among the “clusters of excellence”, or to push their universities up to “elite” status. These terms stem from the current debate in Germany, but the phenomenon is worldwide—and in some countries there is even a direct incentive: authors are rewarded financially whenever they publish a manuscript in a top journal. However, scrutiny of the quality of each individual manuscript is all too easily neglected: as long as something is found in the right journal, many take it for granted that the article has been sufficiently “evaluated” and can be appropriately “categorized”. …︁ for Referees: An ever-increasing number of articles and grant proposals, for example, for the “clusters of excellence” and “elite universities”, must however stand up against peer review—and naturally these proposals first have to be written. Lately, potential referees have been declining to review manuscripts on the grounds that they have to prepare “cluster of excellence” grant proposals! As a result, the best referees are in danger of becoming less available even though the manuscripts they evaluate represent the most important basis for secondary evaluation. The referees for Angewandte Chemie are internationally well-distributed (see Figure 1). There are, however, two points that stand out: 1) referees from Germany are more strongly represented than one would expect considering the international authorship; 2) only about 1 % of the referees come from China, though about 20 % of the manuscripts come from there. Effective immediately, we will also begin drawing on more referees from China. The referee process is quite fast: referee reports arrive on average (!) 13 days after being requested. Such a quick turnaround is especially impressive when one considers that the referees of manuscripts for Angewandte Chemie (and other top journals) devote a great deal of effort to their evaluations. This is not to say that deficiencies or errors in manuscripts are never overlooked by the referees and editors of this journal: Corrigenda, Correspondences, and even manuscript retractions also find their way every now and then into Angewandte Chemie! Country of origin of referees for Angewandte Chemie 2005. …︁ for Editors: The push for authors to publish in high-impact journals has resulted in a rapid increase in submitted manuscripts at Angewandte Chemie (Figure 2), and this growth is not limited to an individual country or region. Country or region of origin of Communications since 1995. For 2006, the values have been extrapolated on the basis of the first six months. On the Rise: Under these circumstances, is the recent increase in Impact Factor (to 9.596) and the Immediacy Index (to 2.109) a blessing or a bane? The trends in these key indices are shown in Figure 3 and 4. One argument that is frequently heard is, “The Impact Factor of Angewandte Chemie is only so high because of the Review articles.” An inspection of the corresponding journals of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) shows that this is not the case. One can easily calculate the Impact Factor of hypothetical journals with a profile very similar to that of Angewandte Chemie (Table 1); in view of these figures, we can safely assume that the Impact Factor of Angewandte Chemie would be around 9—even without Reviews. Trends in the Impact Factor (according to the Institute of Scientific Information, Philadelphia, USA) of Angew. Chem., J. Am. Chem. Soc., and Chem. Commun. from 1984 to 2005. Comparison of Immediacy Indices of Angewandte Chemie, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Chem. Commun. 2003–2005. Number of citations 2003/2004 Number of articles 2003/2004 Impact Factor J. Am. Chem. Soc. 45 707 6161 7.419 Chem. Rev. 7033 337 20.869 Acc. Chem. Res. 2694 205 13.141 J. Am. Chem. Soc.+Chem. Rev. 52 740 6498 8.116 J. Am. Chem. Soc.+Acc. Chem. Res. 48 401 6366 7.603 Chem. Commun. 11 907 2690 4.426 Chem. Soc. Rev. 1306 95 13.747 Chem. Commun.+Chem. Soc. Rev. 13 213 2785 4.744 Angew. Chem.[a] 22 004 2293 9.596 Heat Regulation: The rate of rejection increased from 68 % in the previous year to 70 % in the first four months of 2006. We published about 10 % more Communications in the first six months, and we are stepping up our requests to authors to shorten their manuscripts and to make more use of the option of presenting details of their work in the Supporting Information, which is published in electronic format only. For manuscripts that are deemed too specialized or much too long for Angewandte Chemie it is also extremely important to assure a smooth transfer to the likewise-prestigious sister journals, which target a more specific audience and/or publish Full Papers. On the Decline: Where there is pressure, there are also sometimes dishonest tactics: poor citation behavior, multiple publication of the same article, plagiarism to the point of outright fraud—it's all been seen before! However, “where there's danger, a source of salvation is also at hand.” The ACS has the “Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research” (see http://pubs.acs.org/instruct/ethic.html), and now the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS) has issued the “Ethical Guidelines for Publication in Journals and Reviews” (see www.euchems.org). Every editor of Angewandte Chemie and its sister journals has a copy of these guidelines on their desk—guidelines which rightly begin with guidelines for editors! It is, however, not part of the editors' duties to “bawl out” authors for their misconduct, as one referee recently asked me to do as he wanted to have an author rebuked for an alleged misdeed. A Boost: The EuCheMS is organizing the First European Chemistry Congress from August 27th to 31st in Budapest (see the announcement on the back cover of this issue as well as www.euchems-budapest2006.hu). The program, which was admirably assembled by a team led by Jean-Marie Lehn and Peter Kündig, promises an excellent conference which will surely give an enormous boost to the European chemistry scene. Highlights of the conference will be the presentations of several Nobel Prize laureates (P. J. Crutzen, J.-M. Lehn, G. A. Olah, K. Wüthrich, A. H. Zewail); moreover, the EuCheMS Lecture will be given (D. Seebach), and for the first time the European Young Chemists Award will be presented. For Angewandte Chemie, it is an especially joyful occasion as its Editoral Board Chairman, François Diederich (Figure 5), will receive the August Wilhem von Hofmann Commemorative Medal at the conference. This issue of Angewandte Chemie will be distributed in Budapest, and it is thus fitting that it includes an Essay from Jürgen Hambrecht which sheds light on the challenges facing young chemists who are trying to enter the chemical industry—in a world in which even the European perspective is much too narrow. As CEO of BASF (and himself a chemist) Jürgen Hambrecht is predestined as no other to impart his stance on this matter. François Diederich will receive the August Wilhem von Hofmann Commemorative Medal at the 1st European Chemistry Congress in Budapest. Moving Forward: With the “1st European Chemistry Congress”1 Europe is a late bloomer. America has for a long time held the outstanding ACS Meetings as well as an American Chemical Congress every five years. And Asia already held the 11th Asian Chemical Congress (ACC) in Seoul last year, and the 12th will be held in September 2007 in Kuala Lumpur. By then, Chemistry—An Asian Journal will already be one year old, as the first issue has recently appeared! It has surely surpassed the expectations of all the scientific societies and people that were involved with its founding. In line with the demand for an international top journal for Full Papers and Focus Reviews from all areas of chemistry, a solid 60 % of accepted manuscripts come from Asia and a further 20 % each from America and Europe. Institutional subscribers of Angewandte Chemie will receive Chemistry—An Asian Journal this year and next year as part of their subscriptions (electronic and printed versions). This complimentary distribution makes a thorough survey of the journal possible for readers and librarians, and it essentially guarantees authors an equally broad readership as in Angewandte Chemie itself. The pressure is high to make Chemistry—An Asian Journal1 a success. All signs are positive, and it will perhaps even help a little toward reducing the pressure on other fronts. 1 Peter Gölitz Stop the presses! Another bit of good news at the last minute: ChemMedChem will be incorporated into MEDLINE/PubMed retroactively from the first issue, which is essential for a journal at the interface of chemistry, biology, and medicine and is sure to give it further momentum. Incidentally, in Issues 7 and 8 of ChemMedChem are presented the Nobel Lectures from J. R. Warren and B. J. Marshall, in which they describe in an extraordinarily riveting account their discovery of Helicobacter pylori. No less interesting, naturally, are the Nobel Lectures from Y. Chauvin, R. H. Grubbs, and R. R. Schrock in Issue 23 of Angewandte Chemie.