Editor's Page pubs.acs.org/Organometallics
Celebrating Organometallics at 35 Years, and the Advancement of Learning at 400+ Deryn Fogg
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s the chemistry world knows, Dietmar Seyferth established Organometallics as a forum for leading work in organometallic chemistry in 1982. I can claim to be an early adopter, having published my first Organometallics paper in 1987. However, my relationship with the journal was transformed when I began my independent research career. Organometallics gained my devotion with consistently marvelous reviewer reportsthoughtful, constructive, sometimes tough criticism, with a depth that always enriched my perspective. Indeed, it was my gratitude for this blend of kindness and rigor, and my desire to help preserve it, that led me to accept when John Gladysz honored me with the invitation to serve as Associate Editor in 2013. I now appreciate the role of the editorial team in safeguarding these standards of excellence, which, in a time of proliferating journals, still identify Organometallics as the journal of record in the field. Above all other duties, the Editors seek to identify the most relevant and thoughtful reviewers to aid us in assessing the work we receive. So in part, this editorial is written to publicly acknowledge my deep appreciation for the generosity and high standards of the community. More generally, however, there is something I want to share, as both scholar and Editor: a famously tough analysis by Francis Bacon, one of the minds that shaped modern scientific inquiry. I take the liberty of translating it into the vernacular, but for those who share my weakness for the English of Elizabeth I, I append the original (with modernized spelling) in ref 1. As knowledge is currently delivered (in, let us say, journal articles), the author and the reader make an implicit deal. The author seeks to present information in a way that will most convince, and most certainly not in a way that exposes remaining doubts about the arguments. And the reader wants CLEAR ANSWERS NOW, uncluttered by ambiguities. That is, clarity trumps accuracy, and kindly get to the point. Thus, the desire for esteem and rapid publication cause the author to minimize or omit data that do not support the argument, while sloth dissuades the reader from mulling too long or thinking too hard. Phew. I suspect few of us can read that without feeling an unwelcome little twinge of recognition. With the reader’s demand for clarity, however, I wholeheartedly sympathize. One of our primary duties as authors is to extract the relevant from the irrelevant. We will sometimes get it wrongbut a clear wrong interpretation opens the way for correction, where a mass of undifferentiated detail does not. And the other enduring truths? We have always been human, science has always had dimensions of self-interest, and we have always had to struggle to transcend our limitations. Bacon exhorts us to do so. Remember posterity, he says. We are building the future. To Organometallics and its community: felicitations on 35 years of aspiration and excellence. May curiosity and the joy of discovery continue to inspire us, and may we continue to strive. © XXXX American Chemical Society
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Centre for Catalysis Research & Innovation, and Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5
AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Deryn Fogg: 0000-0002-4528-1139 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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REFERENCES
(1) For as knowledges are now delivered, there is a kind of contract of error between the deliverer and the receiver: for he that delivereth knowledge, desireth to deliver it in such form as may be best believed, and not as may be best examined; and he that receiveth knowledge, desireth rather present satisfaction than expectant inquiry; and so rather not to doubt than not to err: glory making the author not to lay open his weakness, and sloth making the disciple not to know his strength.Francis Bacon, Of the Advancement of Learning, 1605 (Everyman Library edition, G. W. Kitchin, Ed., J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1915).
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.organomet.6b00917 Organometallics XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
