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WHAT THE EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY EXPECT OF AUTHORS' MARSHALL GATES University of Rochester, Rochester, New York
T H E function of the Journal of the American Chemical Society as viewed by the Board of Directors of the Society is to publish all the reliable new fundamental chemical information it receives, whether from members of the Society or from nonmembers, here or abroad. In practice two easily distinguishable features of this function can be discerned. The Journal must serve as a forum in which new ideas, new theories, new results, and new speculations can he propounded, discussed, argued over, and either substantiated or refuted. Through this function it stimulates further research and speculation, and in order t o insure the free flow of new ideas and speculations it must guard against the tendency of scientific orthodoxy to suppress unconventional opinions. In short, the Journal must adequately reflect the contemporary state of chemical knowledge and point the direction in which new research is proceeding. The second and very different function performed by the Journal is the establishment of a permanent repository or archive for the recording of chemical facts. These two functions differ markedly in character, and the policy reached by the editors of the Journal is necessarily a compromise between the two. Both are important, but their importance varies with time in a completely different way. The first of them is of considerably greater current importance in that it reflects contemporary chemical thinking and stimulates new thought and experimentation, hut its value tends to decrease with time. The second, which may be considered of less current importance, acquires a permanent value which may decrease with time hut a t a very much slower rate. An example will make this clear. The chemist of today very often consults the Berichte of 1880 hut almost never for the theoretical content of the papers recorded therein. He is ordinarily interested in experimental facts and physical constants recorded. Thus the Berichte of this period has largely an archival value. Its value for the stimulation of new ideas and theories is very much lower than it was in von Baeyer's time. The problems of the editors of scientific journals differ greatly from those of ordinary editors in.that manuscripts are neither solicited nor paid for, little or no advertising, with its attendant problems, is handled, and 1 Presented as part of the Symposium on What Editors Expect of Authors and Why, st the 123rd Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Los Angeles, March, 1953.
appeal to readers is not the principal concern of the editors. Some might argue that appeal to readers should be more their concern than it now is, but from the standpoint of the two functions just described one must conclude that appeal to readers in the usual sense is of secondary importance. With this preliminary account of the function of the J o u m l and the problems of the editors a start can be made toward describing what the editors expect of authors. Foremost among the requirements of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and presumably of other comparable journals is novelty. To he acceptable for publication the work must he new and not previously published by the same or other authors. The experimentalwork, the results, the conclusions or the ideas must one or more he novel. Significant new ideas based on already published experimental work or new conclusions so based all fall within the definition of novelty used by the editorial staff of the Journal, as do new evperimental results which lead to or confirm older ideas or conclusions. The editors, however, expect authors to distinguish between really new material and material which althongh pertinent to the paper is not novel in this sense, and to introduce only enough material of the latter description to make a clear exposition of the former possible. To fill the paper with an exhaustive literature review in which the current state of knowledge of a field is discussed ordinarily violates this requirement. Only enough introductory material t o place the new results in the background of existing knowledge in the field should he given, and I am glad t o say that largely through the efforts of Professor Arthur B. Lamb over a long period of years most of the chemists in this country now writing for the Journal of the American Chemical Society have come to accept this qualification. Experimental results must be novel in some significant way over those published earlier. If the measurements or descriptions are new, well and good, but, if they are repetitions of earlier measurements or descriptions, they must represent significant and demonstrable improvement over earlier descriptions to qualify as novel in the sense demanded by the Journal. Minor variations in technique are, of course, not sufficient to justify publication of repetitious material. In addition to novelty the results should possess some significance, i. e., they should be other than trivially significant as well as novel. Significance is a very difficult
concept to assess and one that cannot even be defined accurately. Undoubtedly the editors of the Journal make many errors in attempting to assess the significance of various articles. However, it is the policy of the editors of this Journal and presumably of other scientific journals to err on the side of liberality in attempting to assess this aspect of a paper. Thus a compilation of physical properties, provided that they are new and reliably determined, would be considered significant enough to publish, even though originality and resourcefulness may be otherwise almost entirely lacking in the manuscript. It is quite obviously beyond the ability of a few individuals t o judge manuscripts from a wide variety of fields as t o novelty and significance, and therefore the editors of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and also the editors of most scientific journals make use of a board of editors selected for their knowledge and critical ability to aid in the assessment of the suitability of manuscripts for publication. In addition to the hoard of editors, however, a great many external referees are relied on, and almost all manuscripts are examined by a t least one external referee, who is also chosen for his knowledge and critical ability in a given field. In addition to novelty and significance, to be acceptable to the Journal of the American Chemical Society the material must be presented concisely. Several reasons for this exist. This Journal, in common with almost every other scientific and technical journal, has had for the past few years increasingly heavy demands for its space and has a t the same time faced rapidly rising production costs. I t is clear that it is the editor's responsibility toward the society he represents and toward his subscribers to use the space allowed him in the most economical and efficient way, and this, of course, demands conciseness in the preparation of articles. An equally important reason for conciseness is, however, the fact that if important material is buried in a welter of verbiage and irrelevant material its significance is very much more difficult to recognize. There are many examples of a scientific work being delayed in general acceptance by disorganized and overly long presentation. An author owes it to himself, if not to his colleagues, to present his material as clearly and as concisely as possible. Unfortunately this is a point of view that is very difficult to impress on authors who, once having set pen to paper, somehow feel that the particular description they have written is immortal and should not be altered so much as one iota. A constantly recurring criticism of the Journal is that its insistence on brevity is such as to make thepapers unintelligibleand to force the deletion of essential portions of manuscripts. Perhaps I have acquired an unhealthy point of view in this respect in three years with the Journal of the American Chemical Society, but it is my firm conviction that in a high percentage of the cases in which we have asked an author to condense his material, an improved manuscript has resulted from this condensation. We have in fact often received letters from authors in which this
improvement is acknowledged. Apropos a t this point is the classic comment of one of our referees to the effect that the manuscript he had reviewed for us should either he reduced considerably or oxidized completely. Editors have a right to expect from authors copy that is prepared according to the form customarily used by that journal, that is legible in all copies submitted, and that is prepared according to generally accepted standards of English usage. Typesetters must work from legible copy, and it is the responsibility of the author and not the editors to supply such copy. On the whole, authors recognize and accept this responsibility, and it is rare that we return a manuscript to an author because of its poor preparation, although this has been done. Not all methods of manifolding are suitable for the preparation of printers' copy. Mimeograph is notoriously bad for this purpose. Multilith is better, although the color is a disadvantage. However, several manifolding processes do give copy which is quite as acceptable as original typescript, and we are happy to receive well done manifolding. The position of an editor would he very much simpler if all contributors were adept in the organization of suhject matter and in its exposition in the English language. Unfortunately this is not the case. Our manuscripts vary greatly in quality from this point of view. Unfortunately the editors of scientific journals are ordinarily themselves not professional writers but scientists. The result of this is that the articles appearing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and in many other scientific journals vary greatly in the skill with which the material is prepared. We are told by Dr. R. S. Cahn, editor of the Journal ofthe Chemical Society, that he and his assistants do a great deal of rewriting in order to assure a certain standard of exposition and a certain conformity to good usage in this British journal. Our office is unable to undertake a similar task for our Journal, and we make little attempt to, although in the occasional manuscript that is very bad in this respect or in the case of manuscripts from scientists whose native tongue may not be English, we do have some facilities for rewriting. Unfortunately it is ordinarily not sufficient merely to tell the author of a poorly written manuscript that the manuscript is unsatisfactorily written and should he rendered more orderly, clear, concise, and grammatical, since the manuscript as first submitted probably represented a fair sample of the author's ahility to carry out such a writing assignment. Occasionally the editorial staff will attempt to rewrite a given paragraph or two as an illustration of what can he done, or occasionally a referee will undertake the same task, hut this is as far as efforts in this direction are ordinarily carried. The foregoing requirements apply to the articles and notes received by the Journal. In addition, a further category, with special requirements of its own, exists. I refer to the Communications to the Editor. The purpose of this section is to provide rapid publication of preliminary announcements judged to he of special
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timeliness and significance, and the editors of the Journal expect authors to use this section only when their results meet this requirement. There is a tendency to regard the establishment of priority as enough t o render a manuscript timely. This view is not shared by the editors. Manuscripts submitted for this section pose special problems to the editorial staff, who must make not only an objective decision as to the novelty of the material,
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
but a more difficult subjective decision as to its special qualities. As can be imagined, the rejection rate is high for Communications. I n closing, it seems worth while to mention that editors have a right to expect whole-hearted cooperation from authors in the revision of manuscripts t o meet constructive criticism. This cooperation is freely given by most authors, but quite reluctantly by some, fort,unately few in number.
