Top 10 in 2012

Posted on 28 Dec 2012 by Stuart Cantrill

Of those 118 articles published in volume 4 of the journal (as mentioned in the last post), I was curious to see which were the most popular. Based on the ‘page views’ (full-text article views that includes HTML views and PDF downloads) that appear on the associated article-level-metrics pages, here’s the top 10 (you’ll need to be a subscriber to access the articles). Page-view numbers are correct as of December 28th, so apart from #6 and #7 — who can slug it out to see who comes out on top by year’s end — the positions shouldn’t alter too much.

1. Integrated 3D-printed reactionware for chemical synthesis and analysis Cronin et al. MAY issue (20,004 views)

2. Quantifying the chemical beauty of drugs Hopkins et al. FEB issue (16,938 views)

3. A molecular ruthenium catalyst with water-oxidation activity comparable to that of photosystem II Privalov, Llobet, Sun et al. MAY issue (15,430 views)

4. An improved high-performance lithium–air battery Sun, Scrosati et al. JUL issue (14,085 views)

5. A two-dimensional polymer prepared by organic synthesis Sakamoto et al. APR issue (12,712 views)

6. Scalable enantioselective total synthesis of taxanes Baran et al. JAN issue (11,843 views)*

7. Reversible hydrogen storage using CO2 and a proton-switchable iridium catalyst in aqueous media under mild temperatures and pressures Hull, Himeda, Fujita et al. MAY issue (11,842 views)

8. Imparting functionality to a metal–organic framework material by controlled nanoparticle encapsulation Hupp, Huo et al. APR issue (10,490 views)

9. Rapid point-of-care detection of the tuberculosis pathogen using a BlaC-specific fluorogenic probe Rao et al. OCT issue (9,941 views)

10. A synthetic molecular pentafoil knot Leigh et al. JAN issue (9,794 views)*

* these papers were published online in 2011 in advance of print, but page views are only counted from Jan 1, 2012 (that’s where all our article-level-metrics pages start), so actual cumulative page views are most probably much higher (you could probably double them).

The next five on the list also received >9,000 views each, with Baran (#6 above) coming in at #14 with this paper.

Note that when each monthly issue goes live, we make one article free for the month, which may increase the number of page views for that article. Some of these articles above might have been free for a month — I can’t remember which with any degree of certainty. And of course, number of page views doesn’t correlate with how well cited these papers are (or will become), or even necessarily how ‘good’ readers perceive them to be. Moreover, papers published earlier in the year will typically have more page views that those published later in the year — although numbers seem to flatten off for most after a couple of months. Also, we often see a spike in traffic if a paper gets picked up by a high-profile outlet, such as New Scientist or the BBC.

With all that said, people seem to like top-ten lists, however, so here’s ours for volume 4!

Let’s see how the 2013 papers of volume 5 compare…

Happy New Year!

Stuart

Nature Chemistry by the numbers – 2012

Posted on 23 Dec 2012 by Stuart Cantrill

As 2012 is winding down, I thought I’d take a look back at volume 4 of the journal. This isn’t a terribly in-depth analysis, and it’s based on what we’ve published rather than what was submitted, but you might find it a little bit interesting. Here are the covers of the 12 issues that made up the 2012 issues.

What was behind those covers? This:

1052 pages
118 Articles (primary research papers)
67 News & Views articles
54 Research Highlights
12 In Your Element essays
12 Blogroll columns
11 Thesis articles
8 Corrections
5 Books & Arts sections
5 Reviews
4 Editorials
3 Perspectives
3 Correspondences
2 Interviews
1 Addendum
and a partridge in a pear tree*

*OK, I’m kidding about the last one.

Where did those 118 primary research papers come from? Well, based on the addresses of the corresponding (or co-corresponding) authors, here’s the answer:

And what were those 118 research papers about? Below is a Wordle made up from the titles of those Articles:

Many thanks to all of our authors, referees and readers for their contributions to the journal in 2012 — best wishes for the holiday season and we’ll see you again in 2013 for volume 5!

Stuart

Plutonium’s new horizons

Posted on 21 Dec 2012 by Anne Pichon

The piece on plutonium in the December issue (subscription req’d) marks the end of last year’s writing competition’s excitement; all winning essays have now appeared in the journal as ‘in your element’ articles — we hope you enjoyed reading them!

LTOR: © GL ARCHIVE/ALAMY; © IVY CLOSE IMAGES/ALAMY; © DENNIS HALLINAN/ALAMY

The last word goes to Jan Hartmann, graduate student at RWTH Aachen University, who acknowledges the history of plutonium yet highlights that nuclear weapons, and nuclear energy, are not all there is to this intriguing element.

Whether it counts as a naturally occurring element is pretty much a matter of opinion — some plutonium has been isolated from uranium ore, but only traces, and all the plutonium in nature makes up about 2 x 10^–19 weight% (minus nineteen!) of the lithosphere so you’re free to consider that the heaviest naturally-occurring element is really uranium.

Hartmann’s article describes why element 94 is referred to as “a physicist’s dream but an engineer’s nightmare”, and also discusses the rich redox and coordination chemistries of this element. But one anecdote I’m particularly fond of is that, “of all the elements named after celestial objects, plutonium is the only one so far to be sent to its astronomical namesake”.

Anne

Anne Pichon (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Not making tea

Posted on 07 Dec 2012 by Stuart Cantrill

[This is a guest post from Hannah Moody, a third year undergraduate student at The University of Oxford, who has spent the week seeing what we do in the Nature Chemistry office. Hannah is the second undergraduate student to spend a week with us this year; back in April we had Heather from York. On Heather’s last day we asked her to write a blog post about her time with us and we wanted Hannah to do the same. So that it didn’t end up being a very similar post, Hannah had a great idea — she decided to write in verse. As we know, rhymes do have their place in chemistry (see the comments)! And yes, the one thing Hannah didn’t have to do, was make tea! – Stuart]

Trying to stay away
From that age-old cliché,
Of work experience students like me,
Spending their days making tea.
This was not to be,
At Nature Chemistry.

On my first day
I began work straight away.
Finding a paper on which I could write,
An interesting research highlight.
I was given lots of advice –
This was very nice.
330 words and 3 paragraphs,
And a title designed to give a few laughs.
The most difficult part,
Finding where to start?
What paper would be best?
And what would be easily expressed?
I found a paper and started writing,
At the start it was quite frightening.
But I was able to do it alright,
And it was edited so that it might,
Be good enough to be
Published in Nature Chemistry.

My next task on Tuesday,
Was for me to have my say
And edit an ‘In Your element’
Article that I had been sent.
Again I was given advice,
And again this was very nice.
I saw how to edit News and Views,
This gave me skills that I could use.
So I started reading and suggested improvements
Involving word changes and sentence movements.
To the editor I sent what I had,
Hoping it wasn’t too bad.
It was hard to do it alone,
So the next day I spoke on the phone
To the editor in Japan,
And we made it better than when we began.
This made it suitable to be,
Given a place in Nature Chemistry.

Next I learnt about paper reviewing,
And was given a paper to start viewing.
I read it right though
To try to get a clue
Of what it was about,
And tried to figure out,
Who should be the referee?
I needed someone more able than me!
To tell us whether the content
To the journal could be sent.
I had learnt about the criteria,
That makes a paper far superior.
I saw how many papers are sent in,
And how hard it is to see where to begin
And tell whether a paper should be
Sent out to a referee.
For only the best quality,
Get into Nature Chemistry.

The next day was a Thursday,
From chemistry I moved away.
Off to the Nature News team,
Current affairs are their theme.
Here I leant about,
How they choose what goes out.
Which stories are most interesting?
So every reader will enjoy something.
They look at a huge variety,
Of potential stories that may be
News in Brief or put online,
From spikes of a porcupine
To a crocodile escapee,
And changes in science policy.
This is science journalism at its best,
And puts journalists to the test.
With the news team I was able to see,
Something different to Nature Chemistry.

Later on in the day,
I went for a brief stay,
With the Open Access crew,
To see what it is that they do.
They only publish papers online,
And get them out in far less time
Than many other publications,
And require less strict justifications
To publish scientific reports
And so get research of all sorts.
I helped to go through a quality check,
This enables the editors to get
Each paper in the right form
For external reviewers to perform,
The necessary extra review
Before the paper can be viewed.
This was an opportunity for me,
To see something other than Nature Chemistry.

NPG Press Office was my next stop,
And this I enjoyed a lot.
The members of this group,
Keep the public in the loop.
Through meetings with journal teams,
They highlight current themes.
Then they prepare a press release
Of topics that make a good news piece.
I also spent time with Art and Design,
This team make the journal look fine.
And make sure that every page
Is beautiful at every stage.
I also had a talk on how to get in
To a career in publishing.
Next I was given some time,
To enable me to write this rhyme.
Overall my week was a great opportunity,
To see what goes on at Nature Chemistry.

Today it is my last day,
And I take this chance to say:
A very big thank you!
To all the people who,
Succeeded in making me
Feel so welcome at Nature Chemistry!

Reactions: Jun Chen

Posted on 07 Dec 2012 by Anne Pichon

Jun Chen is in the Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education) at Nankai University, and works on nanomaterials chemistry and high-energy batteries.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Partly my interest in the abundant and beautiful chemical reactions, and partly my recognization of the key role that chemistry plays in modern society.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Perhaps a general manager of a company that manufactures advanced batteries, because there is an increasing need for batteries to power our daily life.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

I’m working on nanomaterials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion and hope to develop some new materials and/or structures for constructing rechargeable batteries with larger energy and power density, longer cycling life, lower cost, and higher safety.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Michael Faraday. Learn his experience on anode, cathode, electrode and ion, carry out further creative research, and see his response and view if I told him the scientific development in the 21^st century.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

Yesterday, I performed the structural analysis of three pieces of metal nanoparticles using FEI transsion electron microscope.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

Book: The Wealth of Nations (by Adam Smith). Music album: The Crescent Moon (A Chinese pop music).

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Prof. John B. Goodenough. He is a respectable, prominent scientist with accomplished leading research in the field of solid-state chemistry and energy materials chemistry.

Chemistry for Christmas

Posted on 05 Dec 2012 by Stuart Cantrill

For those of you who haven’t noticed yet, this year’s Christmas Lectures at The Royal Institution are about chemistry! Yay! They are being given by Dr Peter Wothers from the University of Cambridge, who is also one of the authors of my favourite organic chemistry textbook.

Related to this, the RI has a chemistry-themed advent calendar where each day there is a video of someone talking about their favourite element(s). So far, Mark Miodownik (Dec 1), Liz Bonnin (Dec 2), Dara O Briain (Dec 3), Andrea Sella (Dec 4) and Helen Czerski (Dec 5) have revealed their picks. I won’t spoil it by telling you what they chose; go and check out the videos for yourselves!

The trailer for the ‘My favourite element’ videos is embedded below.

Osmium weighs in

Posted on 05 Dec 2012 by Anne Pichon

It was while studying another transition metal, platinum, that chemists came across osmium: a black residue would always appear when platinum-containing ores were dissolved in aqua regia. Naturally, they wouldn’t rest until they had found out what exactly that residue was — but the amounts available were too small to allow for its full characterization. It was Smithson Tennant who obtained sufficient quantities (while in a business selling platinum metal), and discovered it to be a mixture of two new elements — one with striking and diverse colours, the other possessing a strong and distinctive smell. He named them iridium and osmium, after the goddess Iris (represented by a rainbow) and the Greek word for smell (osme), respectively.

In last month’s ‘in your element’ article (subscription required), Gregory Girolami recounted how the fate of these two elements, discovered together and neighbours in the periodic table, was to be further intertwined: their densities are so close that for decades different techniques gave a different answer as to which one was the densest of the two — a prestigious claim that would also make the winner the densest of all metals. The title of the article might give you a hint as to which one eventually won, by a very small margin.

Osmium has a few other claims to fame; read the article to discover in what way it rivals diamond, and what urban legend it’s involved in. It also exists in eleven oxidation states, up to a (+8) state rather rarely encountered — OsO4 has a few applications, but is most famous (amongst chemists at least) for its involvement in the Nobel Prize work of K. Barry Sharpless.

Yet, as attractive as alkene dihydroxylations are, especially asymmetric ones, osmium tetroxide is both highly volatile and highly toxic so don’t play Nobel-chemistry at home.

Anne

Anne Pichon (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

The Sceptical Chymist

a blog from Nature Chemistry

Monthly Archives: December 2012