Open Access News

Chemistry Central Journal, a revolutionary open access peer-reviewed, online chemistry journal, was announced today at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco. Chemistry Central Journal is the first international open access journal that covers all of chemistry....

Expected to publish its first articles in early 2007, Chemistry Central Journal is part of Chemistry Central, a new initiative from the team that created BioMed Central, the leading biomedical open access publisher.

Drawn from academia and industry, Chemistry Central Journal's distinguished Editorial Advisory Board is made up of senior chemistry researchers from all over the world, including four Nobel Laureates....

"I think open access journals are a great idea and am delighted to join you in this venture as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board," said Professor Robert Curl (Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1996).

[Bryan Vickery, Deputy Publisher at BioMed Central and a chemist by training] continues, "Open communication of research results in physics and biomedicine has evolved rapidly over the last few years. Many believe Chemistry has lagged behind, with access to chemistry-related journals and databases still predominantly limited to subscribers only." ...

Chemistry Central Journal will offer a home for research in areas where there has previously been no open access journal available. In his new blog Peter Murray-Rust, commenting on the recent launch of Chemistry Central, noted "Before Chemistry Central there were no open journals that supported chemoinformatics." Vickery adds, "Chemistry Central Journal aims to change all that, by offering an open access publishing option to scientists worldwide. The journal will cover all areas of chemistry...."

Comment. Congratulations to all at Chemistry Central.  This is a long-need breakthrough for the field of chemistry.

I have a minor problem that I hesitate it to bring it up on the same occasion as this major announcement.  Today's press release doesn't name of the publisher this journal --and therefore doesn't give guidance to people like me who want to write complete sentences in the active voice that attribute actions to actors.  I know that Chemistry Central is produced by the same team that brought us BioMed Central, that the team is called the Science Navigation Group, and the CC-SNG connection was openly announced last month.  The problem isn't secrecy but diction.  It may be inaccurate to call SNG the "publisher" of CCJ.  But it may be more inaccurate to say that the publisher is BioMed Central or Open Access Central, the new umbrella organization to coordinate Chemistry Central, BioMed Central, and other sibling initiatives still to come.  Is Chemistry Central the publisher of Chemistry Central Journal? (If so, then is SNG launching multiple publishers, not just multiple publishing projects?) I'm not trying to get to the bottom of a mystery so much as avoid the passive voice.  SNG-BMC-OAC-CC:  Help me say "x launched y" rather than "y was launched [by launcher unknown]".