Outstanding Organics

Abstract

Editor-in-chief Haymo Ross summarizes the history of the journal, which is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, and highlights exciting new features that readers can look forward to in the celebratory years. Twenty years ago, in 1997, the first step was taken by the Dutch and German chemical societies (KNCV and GDCh) to amalgamate several national chemical journals into a smaller number of high-quality European journals. In the following year, the European Journal of Organic Chemistry (EurJOC) and its twin journal, the European Journal of Organic Chemistry, were launched when more European chemical societies participated in this truly European project. For one year only, in 1997, the two journals were published under the names Liebigs Annalen/Recueil and Chemische Berichte/Recueil. At that time, the three journals already had a long history; Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays-Bas was formed in 1882, Chemische Berichte in 1868, and the founding of Liebigs Annalen even dates back to 1832. Commemorating 1997 as the year of transition, EurJOC and EurJIC are celebrating their 20th anniversary over a two-year period. Our anniversary activities will concentrate on special issues, new features, as well as conferences and events. Our celebrations began in the first week of July, fittingly at the 20th European Symposium on Organic Chemistry (ESOC 2017) in Cologne, Germany. This was not the first time the symposium series and the journal that have so similar names collaborated. Actually, EurJOC's decennial celebratory issue in 2007 exclusively contained contributions from speakers and the chair Figure 1. Left to right: Anne Nijs, Albrecht Berkessel (Co-Chair, ESOC 2017), Hans-Günther Schmalz (Chair, ESOC 2017).of the local organizing committee of ESOC 2007 held in Dublin, Ireland (see issue 25/2007). From then on, we have regularly supported ESOC in various ways. At this year's ESOC meeting, the welcome reception on the first day of the conference was sponsored by EurJOC. Deputy editor Anne Nijs gave a short talk prior to the reception to present the journal and to highlight the celebratory occasion (Figure 1). As mentioned above, EurJOC is going to present new features. First off, we have introduced the “Outstanding Organics” section on our homepage. Here, you can find, immediately upon publication, papers from currently outstanding research areas in organic chemistry. The topics for this section are curated by the editors based on trends that they observe at conferences, from the manuscripts submitted, and from the papers published in EurJOC that receive increased attention. The number of sections may be increased or topics may change as time passes by. Each section will be filled continuously with a selection of excellent papers published in EurJOC to give our readers a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in each field. So far five topics have been selected: Fluorinated compounds Earth-abundant metals Iodine-mediated reactions Functional organic materials The manuscripts compiled in the Outstanding Organics section will also be featured on our Twitter page, so please check out #outstandingorganics for updates! And if you are working in one of these areas, feel encouraged to submit your next paper to us!