Category Archives: Journal stuff

On the nature of chemistry publishing

Posted on August 28, 2016 by stu

I’ve just returned from #ACSPhilly (the 252nd ACS meeting in Philadelphia) where I got to meet some awesome chemtweeps, many for the first time. This was my first ACS meeting since March 2009 (the one in Salt Lake City) which, … Continue reading →

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Credit where credit is due

Posted on March 14, 2016 by stu

Let me just flag up to those of you who aren’t aware of my day job, I’m the Chief Editor of Nature Chemistry; best I put that at the top of this post considering the subject matter… ***See updates at … Continue reading →

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We need to talk about Twitter…

Posted on February 1, 2016 by stu

As part of Materials Week at the University of Warwick, I was asked to talk about social media and how it is used by scientists (and of course I threw in a bit about how journals use it too). Because … Continue reading →

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Chemistry journal citation distributions

Posted on December 10, 2015 by stu

Over at my day job, I recently looked at the distribution of citations that 2012 and 2013 Nature Chemistry papers (Articles, Reviews and Perspectives) received in 2014 – essentially the citations that are used to calculate the 2014 impact factor … Continue reading →

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A quantitative analysis of how often Nature gives a fuck

Posted on February 8, 2015 by stu

After seeing this tweet the other evening: Huge respect to @CSPO_ASU's Dan Sarewitz for getting the one word sentence "Bollocks" into @nature http://t.co/AQC4hdENMC — Jack Stilgoe (@Jackstilgoe) February 6, 2015 I started to wonder just how sweary Nature has been … Continue reading →

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Animal authors

Posted on July 11, 2014 by stu

Earlier today, I noticed that Sylvain Deville had taken to Twitter to point out an unusual canine co-author on a scientific paper: Does this name rings a bell ? hint: #lordoftherings Turns out, it's also the 1st author's dog! http://t.co/T7ecRgJ42E … Continue reading →

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The molecular TIE fighter

Posted on April 22, 2014 by stu

Where did the inspiration for the TIE fighters in Star Wars come from? Well, we surely can’t rule out that George Lucas read this Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie paper from 1953 and was particularly struck by the following … Continue reading →

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How the job market used to work…

Posted on April 22, 2014 by stu

For reasons that will become apparent in a few months (it’s not that exciting), I have spent a lot of today looking at papers associated with the discovery and early structural studies of ferrocene. I have come across wonderful footnotes … Continue reading →

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10 quick cover-letter tips for submitting scientific papers

Posted on November 2, 2013 by stu

This is more a list of don’ts than dos; there’s a serious blog post/editorial that needs to be written about how to write an effective cover letter, but for now, here’s a quick checklist for you all… 1. Send in … Continue reading →

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