Editorial pubs.acs.org/OPRD
Editor-in-Chief to Retire in Dec 2014. A New Era for OPRD Begins in 2015
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I
have decided to step down from the role of Editor-in-Chief of Organic Process Research & Development (OPRD) when my contract expires at the end of December 2014 and not to seek a further extension, as had been my original intention. I have been serving the journal for about 18 years, ever since the journal was founded in the mid 1990s, and I was heavily involved in the decision by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to launch the journal, with the first issues in 1997. The journal has, I believe, been responsible for bringing together process research and development (R&D) chemists, chemical engineers, and other disciplines and highlighting the important science and technology needed to convert a discovery into a manufactured product. The pharmaceutical industry has contributed many of the papers published in OPRD, and for the future it would be good to see more publications from agrochemicals, flavours and fragrances, colour chemicals, electronics chemicals, etc. Over recent years we have seen ever more submissions from the generic pharmaceutical industry, where process R&D plays such a key role in producing a high-quality product at a low price. In the future it would be good to see more generic companies focusing on de novo innovative synthetic routes rather than simply circumventing patents by minor changes to an existing route. ACS will now begin a search procedure for a new editor-inchief who can, with the help of the Editorial Advisory Board, move the journal forward with new ideas to encourage chemists and engineers to write up their work for publication. I know there is much good science and technology in the industry, but much of it remains unpublished. While this may be for confidentiality reasons, there are many cases where the work is presented in some form at a conference, but no subsequent manuscript appears. I realise that writing manuscripts is very time consuming, and in this pressured industrial climate I understand that manuscript writing will often take place at the weekend rather than in core working time. It is rewarding, however, to see one’s work in print or on the screen, and by sharing ideas we move the subject of process R&D forward as we learn from each other. If you have any suggestions for a possible successor to me, please let me know, and I will pass these along to the search committee. Ideally the person will currently have an active role in process R&D or in teaching and will not be retired. One of the great things about the last 18 years has been meeting lots of talented people from many different countries, all of whom are passionate about process R&D. After my retirement from the editorship (I am not retiring from working for a few years yet and will continue to consult!), I hope to continue to meet process R&D professionals at scientific meetings and to serve the process R&D community in other ways. I have enjoyed helping to build the journal into the publication it is today, admired by industrialists and academics alike all over the world. The new editor can hopefully build on this and create an even more impressive OPRD in the future.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Trevor Laird
Published: April 7, 2014 © 2014 American Chemical Society
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/op500081d | Org. Process Res. Dev. 2014, 18, 455−455
