Editorial pubs.acs.org/crystal
Recognizing, Catalyzing, and Embracing Change his issue of Crystal Growth & Design initiates our 16th year of publication, and “Wow!” and “What’s next?” seem appropriate phrases to sum up 2015. There have been some exciting new developments for CGD which brought back memories of the excitement of founding the journal in 2000. The contrast between the new projects we are starting which have their origins in the founding of the journal and the new projects we are starting because the technology only now exists has reminded me of the constant of change. Such reminisces also remind me of my own memories of our fields of science and technology. If you will forgive, let me regress to why I believe I am here writing this editorial today. I was born the year that Sputnik was launched, and in 1960 my father moved us to a small town outside of Huntsville, Alabama, so he could begin working at Redstone Arsenal. The 60s, for all their tumult around the U.S., in my pocket of Alabama, were a time of excitement and respect for science, engineering, and technology, which were destined to revolutionize they way we lived. I embraced science, and I embraced new technology as it came along, trying to project where we would be 10, 15, 30 years in the future. I would calculate how old I would be January 1, 2000 and what futuristic advances would be common place. The realities of the economy in 1982 when I was looking for my first faculty position almost brought me up short, but I was able to find a position which would allow me to continue to pursue my interest in X-ray crystallography. As a student, that field had introduced me to computers, software, programming, and yes, the Star Wars game where you actually had to calculate your own photon torpedo trajectories. I found that the field of crystallography was always ahead of the game, pushing computing and visualization software. During the 14 years or so of my first faculty position, computers, technology, and communications continued to improve dramatically. By the time I was asked by ACS in 2000 to found a new journal in the general field of crystal engineering, it was clear that electronic publishing would be the future, but also clear publishers did not yet know how to get there. Being young(er) at the time, I asked for things that were new and was willing to sacrifice things which were old. I didn’t really care if there was a print version of the journal, and I wanted crystallographic data to be available to readers of each online paper so they could create and manipulate the graphics they needed to learn what they wanted. I strongly felt the graphics and data should be for readers to decide what they needed, not just what the author wanted to show or demonstrate. In Issue 1 of Volume 1 of CGD in 2001, we unveiled a first for ACS publications: the online version would not be an exact duplicate of the print, but would have “Web Enhanced Objects” which could include rotating crystal structures. It was an advance I was and still am proud of, but it was not to be considered the end. Big Data has been a problem in the field of crystallography for much longer than many fields, and database efforts such as the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre’s Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) were making great strides to help the
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© 2016 American Chemical Society
crystallographic community. I remember in 1999 being the 200,000 structure archived in the CSD (and winning a new car (see Figure 1 below)!). Interestingly, the 800,000 structure was
Figure 1. My prize (at full scale) from the CCDC for having the 200,000 entry into the CSD (1999). Credit: Gabriela Gurau.
Figure 2. The 800,000th structure. Credit: Josh Bodman. The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), http://www.ccdc. cam.ac.uk/.
just announced (Figure 2; see http://axial.acs.org/2015/11/09/ lucky-number-800000-v2/; http://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/ Community/Blog/pages/BlogPost.aspx?bpid=58; http://www. ccdc.cam.ac.uk/NewsandEvents/News/Pages/NewsItem. aspx?newsid=42) and was from a paper in CGD. When founding the journal, I wanted ACS to form a partnership with the CCDC to have one version of record that all crystallographers could access. This unfortunately proved to be too much change too fast at that time. In the past 15 years, I have seen many journals which include crystallographic data struggle under the demands of the data load and variable data quality. There have been some efforts among the community to develop standards across all publishers. The problems were exacerbated with the rise of the discipline of crystal engineering where many more new researchers were entering the field to develop strong programs related to the development of new crystalline materials by design, and by the advent of more automated, faster diffractometers which could Published: January 6, 2016 1
DOI: 10.1021/acs.cgd.5b01801 Cryst. Growth Des. 2016, 16, 1−2
Crystal Growth & Design
Editorial
collect masterful data sets in a matter of minutes or hours. Often the researchers were new to the field of crystallography and clearly focused solely on the science rather than the techniques of crystallography. The once highly sought after low “R factor” had given way to the beauty of what we could see in larger and larger structures. Today, these problems still exist, and while I do not see the one solution yet, I am happy to report that in November of 2015 the ACS and CCDC began a joint pilot program for the verification and publication of crystallographic data. Crystallographic data will be deposited to the CCDC and access granted to referees and readers. Using free software available from the CCDC, the reader can click on the deposition number and open the crystallographic information file to freely browse, view, and study in depth the crystal structure. This single-location submission will save time, detect and prevent errors, and provide a single version of record. The data will thus be available for future researchers to access and, yes, to visualize and study in the way they want.
Figure 4. Crystal Growth and Design is Crystallizing the Community with the Fluidity of Social Media. Credit: Natalie Taylor, based on visualized results by Bhushan Vartak, Andrew Yeckel, and Jeffrey J. Derby, Department Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota.
our contributors. In addition, we would like to explore the breadth of researchers’ expertise and interests in creating and investigating solids. Ironically, in many ways the fluidity of social media will help CGD in “Crystallizing the Community.” To further this effort, CGD has brought on board four new Topic Editors for 2016 who will not only handle editorial duties, but will represent CGD to the next generation of scientists at meetings and particularly on social media. It is my pleasure to welcome Prof. Kreso Bucar of University College London, Prof. Jie-Peng Zhang of Sun Yat-Sen University, Prof. Junhua Luo of the CAS Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, and Prof. Binoy Krishna Saha of Pondicherry University. I hope you will join me in welcoming them to the next exciting phase of the history of Crystal Growth & Design. So what’s next? I can honestly say, I don’t know. I do know that our science is growing, society is calling us, and we must continue to find new and better ways to work together and communicate our findings. Standing still and always doing things the same way are not really an option. I want to end with a personal note on my own professional changes. I recently accepted a position at McGill University as Canada Excellence Research Chair in Green Chemistry and Green Chemicals (http://www.mcgill.ca/chemistry/). The opportunities to affect positive changes in our profession and for our profession to provide solutions to many of society’s current problems were the big challenges that prompted this move. I invite you to join me in recognizing, catalyzing, and embracing change. Those exciting futuristic advances in how we live are still out there, but we will have to chase them.
Figure 3. ACS and CCDC joint program. Credit: Josh Bodman. The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), http://www.ccdc. cam.ac.uk/.
I applaud both the ACS and the CCDC for the many personnel and many hours of effort both organizations devoted to this project. This is an example where cooperation will lead to a tremendous benefit for the scientific community. That brings us to the end of the projects envisioned at the founding of the journal, so what is next? While I have been working on goals that now seem very old, technology and science communication have continued to evolve. Where I was taught the power of the individual, social media today is bringing about the power of the collective. ACS has in many ways been leading the way in the utilization of social media to provide the science content we need in an almost instantaneous manner. I do see the ability to instantly communicate and analyze data and events as yet another exciting development in the evolution of science. In order to help CGD enter this phase of its growth, I have asked Prof. Tomislav Friscic of McGill University to become CGD’s Social Media Editor. We have kick-started two online social networks to capture the highly interdisciplinary nature of research in solid-state and materials sciencethe cornerstone topics of CGD. So, like us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ CrystalGrowthDesign) and Follow us on Twitter (https:// twitter.com/cgd_acs)! Our goal is to bring together the wide and growing community of researchers involved, directly or indirectly, in solid-state and materials chemistry through opinions and discussions on research topics, as well as paper and conference highlights by
Robin D. Rogers, Editor-in-Chief
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McGill University
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.cgd.5b01801 Cryst. Growth Des. 2016, 16, 1−2
