EDITORIAL

With this issue, the Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society starts another year, its twenty-first. Again, the results from the last year are positive and the perspectives are encouraging. Looking backwards, we see that the impact factor for this journal has increased from 0.44 in 1996 to 1.43 for 2008. The number of manuscripts submitted has gone from 304 in 2004 to 889 in 2009. This is a number that puts JBCS on the level with other important chemistry journals. This significant increase has led to a change in the periodicity of JBCS. The first volume of JBCS, in 1990, published 138 pages in three issues. Volume 10, published in 1999, had 511 pages in six issues. Finally, volume 20, in 2009, published 1944 pages in 10 issues. For 2010, considering that the number of submissions continues to increase, 12 issues will be published. This is, certainly, a great step for our journal, but it will permit better agility in publication of already accepted manuscripts and will contribute to a desired reduction in processing time.

The significant efforts of the JBCS Office permitted the publication on a much reduced time scale of two special issues in 2009, one related to the 20 years of JBCS and the other on the theme of Amazonia, which was divulged during the SBPC meeting in Manaus. For these, it was possible to reduce considerably the interval between acceptance and processing of the manuscripts for publication. For the next year, we would like to continue processing the manuscripts as soon as they are accepted. Publishing twelve issues during the year will permit divulging the final form of the accepted manuscripts as rapidly as possible.

The complete statistics for 2009 are available on the JBCS site (http://jbcs.sbq.org.br/stats/10/index.php). They also show that the increase in the number of submissions resulted principally from manuscripts coming from outside Brazil, so that such papers are the majority of those published in JBCS. Unfortunately, there is also an increase in the number of rejected manuscripts. This larger number of rejections has resulted in an overloading of the system, due to their processing and evaluation. The Editors are trying to carry out a pre-evaluation of the manuscripts before they are sent out to reviewers so that manuscripts clearly out of the scope of the journal or not respecting the standards of JBCS are returned to their authors. Another important point is that it is important to attract manuscripts of better quality. Here the Editors consider that there is still a lot of room for improvement among our Brazilian colleagues.

In November of 2009, as part of the commemorations of the twenty years of the journal and taking advantage of the inauguration of the new JBCS office at the Institute of Chemistry of Unicamp, a seminar was presented to better describe the journal to the community. The reception to this presentation was a gratifying surprise with many colleagues emphasizing the importance of being informed about the complexity of the process of evaluating the manuscripts and of publishing the journal, about the financial costs involved and about the importance of the community in answering these challenges. Based on this experience, in 2010 the Editors plan to organize similar events at other universities, sharing with the community the details of how our journal is produced. Perhaps experiences like this might aid us to gain other colleagues to contribute to the journal, principally with articles of the quality level of JBCS.

For the year 2010, within the planned twelve issues, the publication of two special issues is programmed: one in tribute to Prof. Ícaro Moreira and the other with contributions from the presentations at the III Selenium and-Tellurium Meeting.

Without doubt, the consolidation of the Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society is a result of the efforts, dedication and commitment of its ex-editors, of its actual editors and associate editors, of its authors, of its reviewers, and of the employees of JBCS and SBQ. To all of these, many thanks.

Summarizing, much work awaits us, but also the sensation that we can count on the aid of many colleagues. We have confidence that we are on the correct path, in the continuing search for excellence for JBCS. The experience of these first twenty years leaves us with the certainty and the conviction that JBCS will continue to grow and evolve considerably.

An excellent 2010 for all!

Watson Loh and Luiz Carlos Dias

Editors - JBCS

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  19 Feb 2010
• Date of issue
  2010