The Canadian Journal of Chemistry.

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The Canadian Journal off Chemistry (CJC) has a long and distinguished history in the evolution and growth of chemistry in Canada and in the dissemination of top research to the international community. In recent years, the reputation of the journal has been eroded for a number of reasons, some of which are based on legitimate concerns, but some of which are based on erroneous perceptions regarding the value of publishing in CJC. Let's begin a discussion within the Canadian chemistry community on the future and viability of our journal.

The reality

This is the Internet age. All professional chemists and students realize that print publications no longer dominate the way scientists transmit, obtain, or share information. The National Research Council Canada (NRC)'s Research Press also recognizes this fact and has responded to the growing competitive nature of the electronic publishing business. Over the last two years, NRC Research Press has introduced OSPREY, an on-line submission and peer review system that mediates all correspondences between authors and CJC, and between CJC and referees. While there were initial teething pains when this program was introduced, most of those problems have now been solved. With ongoing constructive feedback from authors, reviewers, and editors, it will only continue to improve. Our goal is to deliver a paperless environment that is user-friendly, fast, and rapidly aggregated by primary information providers such as CbemPort and Google Scholar.

Three years ago when hard copy submissions were the norm, the risk of a slow turn around time was often realized. This turned many authors off CJC at that time, but things have improved dramatically. Our latest statistics indicate that since 2005, the average number of days from manuscript submission to the final editorial decision has dropped from 104 to 60. The average number of days from manuscript submission to Web publication (after copy editing) has dropped from 241 to 90 days. Our current records for the number of days from submission to acceptance and from submission to Web publication are 22 and 65 days, respectively. This is competitive with the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and commercial publishers such as Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons. The Word template that CJC has introduced to assist authors has been well received.

The complete back issues of CJC have been digitized and are now available on the Web at www.canjchem.nrc.ca. While the PDFs of the back issues serve a purpose, NRC Research Press will be converting new papers over to a full HTML format by 2008. Full-text HTML will add many new features and functions to the journal including an enhanced capability to search the material and links to articles referenced.

The myths

If you keep your ears open long enough you will hear many things about CJC, some of which are unfounded. I wish to address two important ones here.

"Few people outside of Canada read CJC." This may have once been the case, but it is simply not true anymore. CJC is currently indexed in Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts, CAB Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, Current Contents, EMBASE, Engineering Index, ETDE Energy Database, General Science Index and Abstracts, GeoRef, Index Medicus, Life Sciences Collection, PASCAL Database, Physics Abstracts, and Science Citation Index. There is worldwide access to the CJC table of contents on the NRC Research Press Web site, and anyone can register for "Publication Alerts," an e-mail notification that lets you know when an issue has been completed.

More importantly, we recognize that authors not only peruse CJC's tables of content, but also seek papers by subject key words or by author using on-line services such as SciFinder Scholar and Google Scholar. CJC papers are currently aggregated on a paper-by-paper basis by Google Scholar and on an issue-by-issue basis by SciFinder Scholar. The Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) is currently working with the ACS and the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) to have CJC articles aggregated on a paper-by-paper basis as they appear on the CJC Web site. When realized, this will mean that CJC articles will be found as quickly as ACS ASAP articles. Furthermore, CJC will be the only non-ACS journal to be afforded this consideration. This will be a great step forward because the Web is a great leveller between journals. When print journals were the norm, many universities outside of Canada did not receive CJC because of shrinking library budgets. Today, almost any paper in any journal can be found because journal collections are often bundled through consortia arrangements.

"Publishing in CJC will adversely affect my NSERC Discovery Grant."

Other members of the CJC editorial board and I have served on the NSERC Chemistry Grant Selection Committees (024 and 026). We are not aware of any case where a grant was cut or an applicant penalized for publishing papers in CJC. On the other hand, we also accept that it probably would be perceived as unusual by a Grant Selection Committee if every paper published by an applicant appeared in CJC, and this will undoubtedly remain the case until the impact factor of the journal improves. Science is internationally competitive and therefore, everyone benefits from publishing in venues that are widely read. As noted above, the Web makes this possible. As a community, we have an opportunity to raise CJC's profile by publishing some of our best research in CJC while being assured that the work will be accessible.

The challenge

Despite the technical accomplishments outlined above, the impact factor for CJC continues to hover around 1.2. Many chemists argue that this is unacceptably low. As senior editor, I completely agree. However, it is important to understand how impact factors are calculated. A journal impact factor is the ratio of the number of citations to recent articles to the number of recent articles published, averaged over a two-year period. Two things are therefore important in determining what a journal impact factor will be. First, it is essential that journal papers be available to the worldwide community in a timely fashion so that they can receive the maximum number of citations in the time period being considered. In the last few years, CJC was not successful in this regard. Long publication delays were the norm for a number of reasons, which led to low citation numbers. This problem has been solved by the introduction of OSPREY and by a commitment from NRC Research Press to give more resources and higher priority to CJC.

The second factor is that CJC must publish papers that will be cited. While the quality of the papers appearing in CJC is high (due to rigorous peer review), the harsh reality is that not enough Canadian scientists are submitting papers to the journal. In 2006, the percentage of Canadian submission was a meagre 15 percent, and many of the papers were targeted for special issues. Academic chemistry is one of the strongest disciplines in Canada. The number of papers published by these groups annually is very large and the research is world-class. The bottom line is that the impact factor of CJC will never increase unless the community begins to support the Journal again by making a conscious decision to publish there. I challenge each researcher in the chemistry community to submit one paper of every five that they publish to CJC. This will not change CJC's impact factor overnight, but if the challenge is accepted, it won't be long before CJC emerges as required reading by the international community and a source of national pride. The choice is ours.

Robert Lipson, MCIC, is senior editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry and professor of chemistry at The University of Western Ontario.