Perspectives on the future of NMR, by the Associate Editors

Abstract

In September 2015, MRC launched its new Associate Editorial Board (AEB), motivated by the wish of boosting its visibility and impact, particularly among the new generation of young researchers. Officially announced in the January 2016 Editorial, this dynamic team was formed of nine highly motivated and dynamic members with complementary fields of expertise in magnetic resonance for chemistry. The initial AEB, chaired by Patrick Giraudeau (France), was composed of Maria Baias (Abu Dhabi), Laura Castañar Acedo (UK), Jean-Nicolas Dumez (France), Damien Jeannerat (Switzerland), Armando Navarro-Vázquez (Brazil), Manuel Pérez-Pacheco (Spain), Volker Schmidts (Germany) and Julien Wist (Colombia), working in close collaboration with Roberto R. Gil (Co-Editor in Chief) and Paul Trevorrow, the Managing Editor. Since the AEB was created, we all worked together in a friendly but studious atmosphere. Thanks to quarterly conference calls and regular meetings at international conferences, we tried our best to make MRC evolve towards new horizons. Our main action points have been (i) to suggest new rules for reviewers and editors, which have been integrated to the online submission and reviewing system; (ii) to develop MRC's social network activity on Facebook and Twitter; and (iii) to initiate special issues which are now in preparation. Many other points are under discussion and investigation, and we will continue to serve the broad and diverse community of chemists working with Magnetic Resonance. Moreover, the AEB is happy to welcome three new members: Donghan Lee (Louisville, Kentucky), Josep Sauri (Boston, Massachusets) and Damodaran Krishnan Achary (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) who will be our USA representatives. This special issue is the fulfillment of the first of many AEB's collective projects. It gathers nine original perspective contributions – one for each member of the initial AEB – that summarize, from the authors' point of view, the challenges and perspectives in their respective fields of research at the time of writing. These contributions cover various complementary domains matching some of the major leanings of MRC's readership. Some contributions cover essential domains of small molecule NMR such as hyperpolarization (J.-N. Dumez), pure shift NMR (L. Castañar Acedo), residual dipolar couplings for structure elucidation (V. Schmidts), quantum mechanical prediction of chemical shifts and scalar couplings (A. Navarro-Vázquez), or quantitative NMR (P. Giraudeau). Another perspective article focuses on NMR and cultural heritage (M. Baias), while three contributions by D. Jeannerat, M. Pérez and J. Wist highlight the increasing challenges and perspectives arising from the automated analysis of NMR spectra and from the associated question of databases. This special issue does not aim at being exhaustive. Its content reflects the individual opinion of each member of the board from the eyes of relatively young NMR spectroscopists. The next decades will tell us if some of the dreams described in these contributions will come true. Meanwhile, we hope that these contributions will encourage many stimulating discussions among the MRC community. We are particularly grateful to the members of the young AEB who accepted with enthusiasm to contribute to this special issue and for entrusting us with the task of editing their manuscripts.