Editorial Cite This: Anal. Chem. 2018, 90, 1−1
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The 2018 Review Issue ach spring the editorial team at Analytical Chemistry identifies 25−30 topics for review articles to be published in the first January issue of the journal. We seek to not repeat review topics each year, although especially broad and enduring topics may be repeated biannually. Appropriate authors for the selected topics are then identified and invited to write. They are given several months to craft a review that critically highlights the important trends, directions, and needs for their topic. The authors are asked to restrict their reviews to the past 2 years of work so that articles provide a current view of how the field is moving. The result of this process is a collection of articles that provides an imperfect and incomplete window into the world of measurement science. The reviews topics cannot be comprehensive but instead reflect areas that have caught the attention of our editors because of their importance, rapid advances, or exciting innovations. The individual review articles themselves are intentionally not comprehensive but rather reflect the authors’ expert opinion about the most notable aspects of the field. Therefore, the topics represent the taste of the editors and the articles represent the taste of the authors. Despite these limitations, the result of this process is reliably a fascinating set of articles. Indeed reading the group of 30 articles that we present in this issue will undoubtedly give one a great feel for many of the exciting areas of analytical chemistry today. Mass spectrometry is well-represented as it continues to glow red-hot with impacts in environmental and biological science through clever advances in sample preparation, ionization, instruments, and data analysis methods. Mass spectrometry-based work on aerosols, lipids, metabolites, biomarkers, protein−protein complexes, modified proteins, and DNA damage are highlighted in this review. New chemicals and materials continue to emerge for sensors, array methods, and imaging. This dynamic research area, which draws in chemists of all types, is covered in the reviews issue with articles on nanomaterials for sensing, aptamers, fluorescent probes, polymeric sensors and supports, nanopores, and surface chemistry for measurements. Traditional research areas like separations, spectroscopy, and electrochemistry are also represented as these techniques continue to tackle ever more challenging topics. For example, the separation of proteoforms, miniaturization of LC systems, and the amazing power of 2-dimensional GC are highly topical for chemical separations and covered in this issue. Advances in SERS, imaging, and SPR represent spectroscopic topics that are covered. Finally, advances in voltammetry, especially for neurochemistry, and photoelectrochemical sensors represent exciting areas of electrochemistry that are reviewed. Microfluidics is a topic that we frequently include in the reviews issue as it touches on so many aspects of chemical analysis and continues a steady growth with contributions from both the chemistry and engineering communities. For possibly the first time, the reviews issue includes a focus on solid-phase microextraction. Inclusion of SPME is long overdue as it has become widely used due to an ever expanding array chemistries that can be used and the extreme simplicity of using the
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method. Another new topic for our reviews issue is clinical monitoring. The review provides an excellent insight into the rewards and challenges of this important work. As always, we are grateful to the authors of this issue. It is no small task to write these large review articles. Our community greatly benefits from the authors sharing their expertise in this way.
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Robert T. Kennedy AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Special Issue: Fundamental and Applied Reviews in Analytical Chemistry 2018 Published: January 2, 2018 1
DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b05154 Anal. Chem. 2018, 90, 1−1
