EDITORIALLY S P E A K I N G
Janus-the god of the forward and backward look--has this month for his memorial. The attitudes he symbolizes are appropriate for the start of a new year. We hope indulgent readers will allow us a few comments of counting up, taking inventory and anticipating on this page one of volume 40. Volume 39 is the fattest set of twelve issues THIS JOURNAL has produced. Readers who enjoy counting things (and we get about twenty manuscripts a year from people who have counted something chemical!) will discover that their 1962 issues contained nearly 50 pages more editorial material than in previous years! The Tables of Contents listed about 250 article titles in addition to the regular monthly features: Instrumentation, TOPS, Tested Demonstrations and Projects. About 200 books were reviewed. Four symposia were presented. The ongoing series of Textbook Errors added its annual quota of six; eleven items in the newly introduced Flash of Genius series appeared. Advertising in the JOURNAL showed a healthy growth during last year. Readers do not need a complicated economic analysis to realize that the only way they can see their same 1958 subscription price buy more JOURNAL in spite of increased production costs is to maintain a fairly consistent ad-to-ed-content, balance. What readers apparently do need to be told is that advertisers want to know where their message is read. Adding the phrase, "I note from your ad in J. CHEM.Eouc.," when writing for information would be an excellent and most helpful resolution for friends of THIS JOURNAL in 1963. We are encouraged by the growth of our list of subscribers in 1962. More than 1,700 new names were added to bring the total to a high of 16,300. We earnestly hope that these new friends will not be dis-
appointed. Keeping readers interested in the content is the editor's major concern and of THE JOURNAL problem. There are bound to be disappointments. Especially is this becoming increasingly true among the authors of papers submitted. In the past year, the editor's office received about 500 manuscripts. The only possible answers to the inevitable arithmetic are a higher rejection rate, and regrettably longer delays before publication of accepted papers. Readers may be interested in looking ahead to features planned for 1963. The issue next month will contain articles discussing Ionic Crystal Structures, Titration Errors, Recent Developments in Glass, and the Gmelin Institute. March will be an inorganic issue. Reviews will treat Graphite, Superoxides, Phosphorous Halides, Organometallics, Electronic Spectra of Transition Metal Complexes, and other themes. April is shaping up with emphasis on organic chemistry: Diene Iron Tricarbonyl Complexes, Multicenter Mechanistic Pathways, Ribonucleic Acid and others. Further in the future but definitely planned for the coming year are: Lasers-Potential Chemical Tools (including a description of experiments for the undergraduate laboratory); HOz-The Furtive, Unobservable Theoretical Necessity; and more physical chemistry laboratory experiments on interpretation of spectra. Materials prepared under the aegis of the NSF sponsored Advisory Council on College Chemistry should start to appear in 1963. The "Living Textbook of Chemistry" thus attains its forties. The famous-or infamous--39 has been passed. We thank readers for the confidence of their support and hope that the volume we now begin will deserve it too.
Volume 40, Number
I,
January 1963
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1
