Chemical Education Today
Editorial: Everyone Counts! Everyone Should Participate! January is a good time to think about what is really important and what can be achieved in the year to come. I have been reflecting on the importance to the Journal and its readers of each and every one of its many constituencies. Your editorial staff aims to provide you and all other readers with useful, interesting, accurate, and timely information every month. Not everything that is published in a given month will meet these criteria for you (or any other individual reader), but we intend that a significant portion of each issue will meet these criteria for every reader. How can we make that happen? As I see it, this must be a cooperative venture involving all of the Journal’s readers, its authors and reviewers, and its editorial staff. You count very heavily in our equation for success, and so I ask you to reflect on what you can do for your Journal, and for chemical education, this year. First and foremost, you can continue to read, use, and subscribe to the Journal, and you can suggest that others do so as well. In addition, you can send us your ideas and comments on how you like what we are doing, or what you think we ought to be doing. We need input from all of our constituencies and on all aspects of chemical education. It is my aim that the Journal should represent everyone in chemical education, and we can only achieve that aim with your help and input—and the help and input of many others as well. If you would like a higher level of involvement, please consider being a reviewer of manuscripts, software, or both. Throughout this issue you will see thank-yous to some of our many reviewers. the Journal should Careful, critical, and prompt represent everyone in peer review is a major reason for the Journal’s high chemical education quality and its usefulness to readers. We need more reviewers, and we need more areas of expertise to call on to make certain that what we publish is the best it possibly can be. In 1997 we will be recruiting new reviewers and surveying those already with us so that we can make the most effective use of everyone’s talents. If you are not already on our list of reviewers, or are not sure whether you are, let us know that you would like to help. If you think there are areas that do not receive enough attention in the Journal, then think about becoming a feature column editor and working with authors to develop manuscripts in such an area. On pages 24–28, we list statements from current feature editors regarding the aims of their columns and the types of manuscripts they would like to receive. Look at these and see whether there is an important area in which you could contribute. You may want to contact a feature editor to volunteer your services as an author or reviewer, or you may want to contact me with an idea for a new feature column. (In the next few months we will introduce at least two new feature columns, and we expect to add more in the future.) The feature editors and I would be happy to hear from you. It is also very important to me that authors of Journal papers be representative of the readership as a whole. I believe that we all have a lot to learn from each other. As a college-level teacher, I know I have learned a great deal from high school teachers and two-year college teachers, as well as from my colleagues in colleges and univer-
sities, and I am certain that the same applies to teachers in other areas. For this reason the Journal solicits and publishes manuscripts from teachers at all levels. For college teachers there are strong incentives to publish because career advancement depends on it. At other levels publication …volunteer to join us in of a paper is often merely tolerated and sometimes the exciting task of actively discouraged. If encouraging and you are a potential author who is in such a situ- disseminating excellence ation, please be aware in chemical education… that the Journal is willing to work with you to help develop an article. Many feature editors spend a good portion of their time working with authors to transform a good idea into an excellent published paper. This is especially true in the area of software, where the editorial office staff stands ready to help you upgrade an initial programming effort into a much more polished and effective published form. Another area where the Journal has made a continuing commitment to working with authors is the Secondary School Chemistry Section. During her 17-year tenure as editor of the section, Mickey Sarquis and her many feature editors have worked with countless authors to bring to the Journal a broad range of articles written by and for high school teachers—but not just for high school teachers. Three examples of the many that could be cited are the papers on pages 51–61. These will be of interest to a great many college teachers, although their genesis was in the high school section. Of special interest in this issue is Mickey’s article beginning on page 17, in which she describes many of her goals and achievements with the Secondary School Chemistry Section and gives appropriate credit to the many feature column editors who have helped her make the section so very successful. Mickey also presents challenges and ideas that all of us would do well to address and ponder. The time you devote to reading her article will be very well spent. This issue marks the transfer of the Secondary School Chemistry Section editorship from Mickey Sarquis to Emory Howell. We are, of course, sorry to lose Mickey’s contributions to the Journal, but her decision to move on to other things after 17 years as editor is quite understandable. We have been fortunate to be able to find a replacement with the skills and energy that Emory brings to this position. Emory is just as enthusiastic about the contributions that high school teachers can make to the Journal as Mickey has always been, and he invites your comments, suggestions, and submissions of articles. This is your Journal. The editorial staff and the many volunteers who make it what it is count on your interest, support, and constructive criticism. At the beginning of this new year, the Journal’s 74th, we invite you to think about what we are doing and what you would like us to be doing. Then send us your thoughts and ideas, or volunteer to join us in the exciting task of encouraging and disseminating excellence in chemical education to the widest possible audience. Everyone counts! Everyone should participate!
Vol. 74 No. 1 January 1997 • Journal of Chemical Education
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