Editorial: A Natural Balance: Communications and Full Papers

Abstract

As we have witnessed over the past several years, research in Asia is growing at an exciting pace and is making an ever-increasing impact in the global scientific community. This is evidenced, for example, by the astonishing increase in published articles from Asia in top international journals such as Angewandte Chemie, Chemistry—A European Journal, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and, of course, Chemistry—An Asian Journal. I am pleased to see that the initial vision of Chemistry—An Asian Journal has come to fruition. Thanks to the joint efforts of its Editorial Board, International Advisory Board, and editorial staff, as well as the individual Asian Chemical Editorial Society (ACES) members and the publisher Wiley-VCH, Chemistry—An Asian Journal has quickly established itself as a leading “full paper venue” for disseminating the best of both Asian and international research. Over its first two years, our journal has published a constant flow of high-quality Full Papers and timely Focus Reviews while maintaining the highest scientific standards with a rejection rate of about 60%. Submissions to Chemistry—An Asian Journal have been steadily climbing over the journal's first two years, particularly from ACES member countries, and ever more authors in general are opting to publish their results as Communications with Supporting Information. In response to these upward trends as well as considerable feedback from the chemistry community and unified support from the owner societies, it is time for the journal to take the next step and offer a broader range of article types. In January 2009, Chemistry—An Asian Journal will launch a Communication section in addition to its Full Paper and Focus Review sections. Submissions of Communications are already being accepted, and guidelines for the preparation of manuscripts can be found at the journal homepage (www.chemasianj.org). The combination of a Communication and Full Paper section is a natural balance: Chemistry—A European Journal, our sister journal, began publishing Communications in January 2008 to complement its highly successful Full Paper section, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society also has a combination of Full Papers and Communications. With this new addition, Chemistry—An Asian Journal will be able to offer rapid dissemination of urgent results while still publishing comprehensive original articles. Everyone would surely agree that Communications in general are crucial for the scientific literature to keep pace with rapid developments in research, but I would like to take this opportunity to emphasize the vital importance of also writing Full Papers particularly for Asian chemists. From my own personal observations, I would say that although the Asian chemical community has recently made tremendous strides, it is still not yet fully matured as a whole. In some countries, under the pressure of governmental or other evaluation agencies, young researchers often concentrate too much on publishing papers that are too easy, just for the purpose of “scoring points” on their publication list. I am very much disappointed at this situation. Their papers are too technical and do not offer enough conceptual insight or detail. Such robotic production of cheap, technical notes should be avoided. Furthermore, no benefit is gained by the overuse of catchy titles and self-promotional buzz terms such as “new paradigm”, “strategy”, “innovation”, “novel”, or “remarkably efficient”. Scientific journals should be attractive for researchers, but they should also be readable. These days, far too many journals exist only for the sake of their authors and publishers and seem to have lost sight of the real target of their publishing activities: their readers who are engaged in serious scientific research! Chemistry—An Asian Journal has a role to play in nurturing talented chemists in Asia, but this can only be achieved through the cooperation of our scientific community and the publishing house. There is an overriding tendency for Asian chemists to submit Communications rather than Full Papers, owing in part to linguistic limitations. But with the availability of editing services as well as assistance from multinational colleagues and the help of editorial staff at the publisher, language should not be used as an excuse. I strongly encourage young Asians to make a habit of writing well-thought-out scholarly Full Papers that tell a scientific “story”. Only by providing such depth in conveying their results will young researchers ever gain a solid reputation and become influential in the community. A short Communication with tables, figures, schemes, and a few brief sentences is not sufficient to disclose an author's important scientific philosophy. Supporting Information does not help either. For the sake of their own professional development, researchers should be judicious in deciding which results to publish as short Communications, and it is essential to keep these in a proper balance with more-comprehensive Full Paper submissions. I am encouraged that Chemistry – An Asian Journal is continuing in its role as the best arena for nurturing thoughtful young chemists. 1 1