Chemical Education Today
News from Journal House Colorful Issues
Our Reviewers and the Missing Pencils
You have probably noticed that we are using more color in Journal issues. We enjoy being able to put color into our issues, and many readers are very enthusiastic about this, too. Some of you are submitting color material with manuscripts, others are inquiring about possibilities, a few want a guarantee that we will use their material in color. What we need is a policy! We have taken a stab at that here. JCE publishes a few pages in color each month, usually the first 16 pages. This has been done for many years because these have been the pages on which advertisements appear, and many advertisers want to use color and are willing to pay for it. Since these pages are in color anyway, we have recently made more extensive use of the possibilities— adding photos, color versions of graphics from the back of the book, dust covers of books, molecular structures, etc. Occasionally we have run additional color pages at the front in order that articles whose graphics needed color to convey their meaning could be accommodated; this was true in both the June and July issues. However, for reasons of cost, almost all papers have to be printed in monochrome. There may now seem a contradiction—do we print in color or don’t we? Well, we first consider whether a color image is essential to the content of a paper. If it is, we make a strong effort to arrange to print it in color. We may do this by enlarging the color section at the front; or we may simply use the color image in In This Issue or the Table of Contents and the monochrome version with the paper farther back in an issue. However, if a color image could be printed in monochrome with no loss of information, we may use only monochrome. We hope you will submit color images, because they have the potential to liven our pages considerably. Color images are sent to our reviewers when they are available but their presence or absence is not a criterion for selection of manuscripts for publication. Since we can and do publish color material on the World Wide Web via JCE Online and on our annual CD-ROM, we encourage you to submit both monochrome and color versions of graphics. A couple of good examples of the use of color images appear on this page and the next.
We have just switched to a new, faster, more powerful database of reviewers. In concert with that move, we are sending letters to those currently in the reviewer database asking them to update all the information in their file— from address and preferred mode of communication to specific scientific categories. Each letter was to have included a JCE pencil as a token of our appreciation, but the U.S. Postal Service, grinches all, intervened! Therefore we will be sending the pencils along with manuscripts for review, so you will still get one eventually. If you are not a Journal reviewer but would like to be, just get in touch with us. We will be happy to send you the appropriate forms and then add you to the list. (The reviewer forms can also be found on JCE Online.) Reviewing is an extremely important part of the Journal operation, one that we hope all readers will take part in.
New Face at Journal House This issue is being put together with help from a new person on board at Journal House: Randall J. Wildman. Randy is our newest assistant editor, replacing Amanda Reinert, who has moved to Rochester, New York with her fiancé. Randy will be the first to handle manuscripts after their acceptance, trying to read into our computer systems the many word processing and computer graphic programs that are used by our authors from around the world. As Mandy certainly knew, this is the Tower of Babel job. Randy brings to the position a master’s degree in chemistry, experience in the chemistry classroom, adeptness with computer graphics and HTML documents, and a great willingness to learn and explore. Welcome Randy!
Stop by Booth 149 Remember to stop by the Journal booth if you are attending the Fall ACS Meeting in Las Vegas: Booth 149. You know you will find the Journal staff as well as copies of and information about our printed publications and software, but there will be other treats as well. While supplies last, those who renew their subscription or subscribe for the first time will receive a complimentary copy of JCE CD 1996. In addition, we will have extra copies of the refrigerator magnets shown on page 1038, and some spare copies of JCE Classroom Activities #1 (see pages 1032A and 1032B). We look forward to seeing you.
Book Buyers Guide This September 1997 issue of the Journal has as a supplement the most recent Book Buyers Guide. We now publish the Book Buyers Guide twice each year. It is again a separate publication so that it can be used separately— loaned to a colleague, taken to a department meeting, read on the bus, used at the bookstore. If you know someone who needs a copy, there will be extras at our booth at the Las Vegas ACS Meeting (see above). The Journal has information about textbooks and other media available every day, 24 hours a day, not just twice a year; it is updated regularly. It is called the Chemical Education Resource Shelf and is edited by Hal Harris. It is one of the many useful things to be found on JCE Online: http:/ /jchemed.chem.wisc.edu.
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Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 9 September 1997
