NATURE CHEMISTRY DEBUTS PUBLISHING: Nature Publishing Group
launches a monthly chemistry journal
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HE RANKS OF CHEMISTRY publications are again expanding: Nature Publishing Group plans to publish the first print issue of Nature Chemistry, its 16th research journal, on March 20. The first article was scheduled to appear on the new journal’s website on Feb. 22. The peer-reviewed monthly will cover chemistryrelated research in traditional core chemical fields and multidisciplinary subjects such as bioinorganic chemistry and nanotechnology. Nature Chemistry will publish research articles, reviews, correspondence, perspectives, and commentaries, as well as News & Views articles about recent research advances and analyses of issues including education, funding, and the impact of chemistry on society. On the journal’s website, readers will be able to view 3-D displays of molecules described in research papers, click on links to PubChem, and post comments. “The launch of Nature Chemistry offers authors from all of the subfields within chemistry a choice for where they wish their most significant work to be considered for publication,” Chief Editor Stuart Cantrill says. He says he intends Nature Chemistry to round out the “surprisingly small number of what can be described as general-chemistry journals.” Librarians sometimes say the journal market is already overcrowded, and Cantrill, who was formerly a senior editor at Nature Nanotechnology, doesn’t disagree. “There are too many high-cost, low-impact, narrowscope journals that divide chemistry into ever-decreas-
ing slices,” he says. But Cantrill argues that PAIR BONDING Nature Chemistry will As reported in Nature Chemistry’s first paper “offer value for money (DOI: 10.1038/nchem.100), the University in that the content will of Tokyo’s Makoto Fujita and colleagues be of the highest qualinduced short nucleotide fragments to form ity and will be relevant base pairs in water by stabilizing them inside to the vast majority of the hydrophobic pocket of a self-assembled chemists, rather than molecular cage (blue). just a few members in any given department.” University of Utah chemistry professor Peter J. Stang, editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, welcomes the new publication. “As chemistry grows, particularly as it gets into interdisciplinary areas, there is room for new journals,” he says. “There is enough good chemistry out there for everybody. And competition is good. It makes every one of us better.” For instance, JACS recently unveiled several new features, including an illustrated cover and the JACSβ website, a testing ground for chemical publishing innovations (C&EN Online Latest News, Jan. 14). ACS is also working to integrate JACS more closely with SciFinder, Chemical Abstracts Service’s search and discovery tool. Angewandte Chemie Editor Peter Gölitz agrees that the chemical community benefits from friendly competition among publishers. He notes that his journal introduced an author profiles section last month. “The leading journals in chemistry, Angewandte Chemie and JACS, are constantly challenged by other journals,” Gölitz adds. “For example, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has made great efforts to cover more top-level chemistry,” he says. “The journal has certainly had some success, but overall, the impact is still modest.”—SOPHIE ROVNER
FINANCIAL WOES LyondellBasell fails to make payments on European bonds While LyondellBasell’s U.S. operations are pledging to emerge from bankruptcy, in Europe, LyondellBasell is falling into a financial hole. When the firm filed for bankruptcy protection last month, its European operations were not included. Last week, however, LyondellBasell failed to make interest payments on two European bonds that together represent more than $1.2 billion of the company’s debt. The bonds allow a 30-day grace period, but Tobias Mock, an analyst with the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, doesn’t think the company will make the payments.
In a note to clients, Mock wrote that he believes LyondellBasell’s cash flow generation will “remain very weak in the coming months as a result of a significant decline in demand for plastics and low capacity utilization for LyondellBasell’s chemical plants across the globe.” S&P assigned a credit rating of D to LyondellBasell, indicating that the company is in default. Similarly, Fitch Ratings lowered its rating to D and then withdrew its ratings for the company altogether. The U.S. operations, largely Lyondell Chemical, recently won a temporary restraining order from the bankruptcy court
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overseeing its case that would prevent its creditors from going after the parent company. The order also prevented the owners of the two European bonds from accelerating the 2015 date of maturity. Lyondell Chemical is “doing everything possible to bring the company out of bankruptcy by the end of this year,” says a spokesman for the firm. “That is our goal.” As part of the bankruptcy, Lyondell Chemical is idling, indefinitely, its 1.2 billion-lb-per-year ethylene cracker complex in Chocolate Bayou, Texas. The plant has been under temporary shutdown since December.—ALEX TULLO
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