EDITORIAL
Good times ahead - enjoy the New Year!
It seems like it each year goes by faster and faster. We still remember the lights of Christmas and it is time to celebrate it again. As usual, here at the JBCS we think about what we have done and we put lots of expectations about what we want to do.
One of our expectations for 2013 was the launching of the Scholar One Platform for the Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society.1 We made it! Together with all of you, we were successful and we do think that authors, reviewers, editors and staff are enjoying and benefiting from it. It is always challenging to move from solid ground to a new platform, but we should not resist to progress. In a short time we are seeing the average time of publication going down to around 4 months from submission to online publication. We are also moving fast for a record number of submissions around 750 in a year. We do thank all of you for your hard work to help us! Of course, there is no way to reach this or even doing better without concentrated efforts of all authors and reviewers. Efforts towards improving the JBCS ought to be also associated with a strict assessment of the submissions received. In this respect, our rejection rate continues above 50%. We are aware that a negative reply is always bad news, but we must keep striving for improving our quality and impact. Most rejections are due to lack of novelty in terms of chemical information, incomplete publications in which no clear effort was devoted to extract all the information due to a shallow approach and papers out of our scope, either by presenting a too narrow or too specific approach or for manuscripts in which Chemistry does not not play a central role. It is also worth to remember that in the modern digital age Supplementary Information is becoming mandatory for highlighting experimental achievements. In the first four-month period of Scholar One implementation we received around 240 submissions and they were split in 50% from Brazil and 50% from abroad with most of the external contributions coming from China, Iran, and India. During this period, authors from 26 countries have submitted manuscripts to the JBCS.
This brings us to another target: we want to move ahead with internationalization. Science has no borders and so does the JBCS. Nowadays our Advisory Board is composed by 2 members from Brazil, 2 from the USA, 3 from Europe, 1 from Cuba, 1 from Mexico and 1 from India. We also have one Associate Editor from Argentina and another one from Portugal. We are recognized as one of the Brazilian periodicals with higher number of published papers from abroad. We want to increase our visibility and we are discussing on how we could reach that. Ideas and feedbacks are always welcome. By the way, it was a pleasure to have received you in our booth during the Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Chemical Society in Águas de Lindóia, SP. We are looking forward to meeting you again in May, 2014 in Natal, RN. Please, mark it in your agenda.
Recently we also discussed about JBCS impact factor.2 IF values remain at 1.3 ± 0.1 range and we emphasized a great point: "we reached this impact with only 8% of self-citations. It is a good indication of our health, and eventually it may be even considered as too low."
The New Year will also see changes in SBQ publications. These were recently announced in an editorial3 and we are again strengthening our digital communication with full online open access. The Brazilian Chemical Society was pioneer in this strategy and it is clearly devoted to keep it.
We will also have changes in the team of Editors running the Journal. This year three colleagues have asked to be replaced due to overburden of parallel activities. We have no words to express our gratitude to Prof. Luiz Carlos Dias, who along with his activities as Senior Editor for Organic Chemistry played a vital role in the organization of the JBCS and its internal affairs as our Executive Editor, and Profs. Francisco Radler de Aquino Neto and Koiti Araki, who so competently have contributed to keep the JBCS high standards as Associate Editors for Analytical and Inorganic Chemistry, respectively. Thank you very much for your time and devotion to the JBCS and we are sure to keep couting on you as part of the JBCS family of supporters. These colleagues will be replaced by Prof. Adriano Lisboa Monteiro, who is already an Associate Editor and will now resume as Senior Editor for Organic Chemistry, and by Profs. Humberto Osório Stumpf and Eduardo Carasek da Rocha as new Associate Editors for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, respectively. Finally, Prof. Solange Cadore will combine her activities as Associate Editor in Analytical Chemistry with new duties as Executive Editor. Welcome aboard and we look forward to working with you and receiving your healthy input of new ideas.
Our permanent target is to work with you for enlarging and disseminating chemical knowledge. We are seeing a new generation of chemists in Brazilian academies and certainly abroad and we would like to invite them all to keep in touch and to count with us to publish their latest achievements.
Finally, we wish that you all enjoy the New Year as a refreshing starting point for keeping moving ahead with your endeavors and for having fun with amazing learning opportunities that life always brings to us.
Joaquim A. Nóbrega
JBCS Editor
Watson Loh
JBCS Editor
- 1. Nóbrega, J. A.; Hatje, V.; J. Braz. Chem. Soc 2013,24,1.
- 2. Nóbrega, J. A.; Loh, W.; J. Braz. Chem. Soc 2013,24,1213.
- 3. Editors; J. Braz. Chem. Soc 2013,24,1707.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
28 Jan 2014 -
Date of issue
Jan 2014
