Editorial
A New Beginning for the Journal
“All beginnings are hopeful.” Those were the words used by the
principal at Somerville College of Oxford University, England, to
greet the arriving students in 1944. While times have changed, the
same sentiment applies now as the editorship of this journal passes to
new hands.
First, it would perhaps be worthwhile reviewing the important
association between the journal and the Computers in Chemistry
Division (COMP) of the American Chemical Society (ACS). This
association has been a key driver in the rejuvenation of the journal.
For well over 20 years, some computational chemists in ACS have
felt the need for a scientific journal dedicated to fulfilling their pub-
lication needs. Under the leadership of Dr. Charles Reynolds, the 1997
chairman of the division, the COMP Executive Committee initiated the
process of finding a suitable journal for the 2000 plus members of
COMP. This goal came to realization in February 1998 when, on
behalf of the COMP Executive Committee, Dr. Frank Brown, then
chairman of COMP, signed an arrangement with Elsevier Science to
establish an affiliation between COMP and this journal published by
Elsevier Science. The journal was already affiliated with the Molecular
Graphics and Modelling Society (MGMS), an affiliation that dates
back to the journal’s launch in 1983. However, by the mid-1990s the
journal was struggling, being about a year behind in producing issues.
The COMP Executive Committee offered me the editor’s job in March
1998, and I agreed to serve for a limited time. I have stayed long
enough to assure that the journal is on a strong upward course.
However, it is now time for me to move on to other responsibilities.
In close collaboration with Professor Roderick E. Hubbard, the
MGMS’s editorial representative, the process of reinventing the jour-
nal was begun in 1998. Here are some highlights of progress in the last
three years.
As of 1998, the editorial board of the journal had not changed
significantly in 15 years. In the summer of 1998, the journal’s Editorial
Board was enlarged and invigorated with new appointments. Appoint-
ments to the Editorial Board were put on a rotating basis similar to
what is done for journals of the American Chemical Society. Further
Editorial Board appointments were made in December 2000. Some of
the appointments cemented the tie between the journal and COMP.
Others are investments in scientific leaders who invest in the journal.
The scope of the journal was modernized. For too long, the journal
had the reputation, albeit undeserved, of being about no more than
graphics algorithms. Development of graphics algorithms was a novel
and important area of research in the 1980s, but by the 1990s the
implementation and use of molecular visualizations was routine. Al-
ready by 1998 the scope of the journal had started to change: 70% of
the papers were on subjects other than graphics algorithms. Neverthe-
less, the community of computational chemists had to be made cog-
nizant of the reinvented journal. By 2000, modernization of the jour-
nal’s scope had reached the point where nearly all of the papers were
on subjects other than graphics algorithms.
To emphasize the changing scope of the journal, several important
thematic issues were organized by Guest Editors. These issues have
played a key role in the reinvention and rejuvenation of the journal
(see below).
Over the last three years, the geographic distribution of the papers
submitted to the journal has broadened. The percentage of papers
coming from authors in the Americas and the Pacific Rim is increas-
ing.
Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling 19, 479–480, 2001
© 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc.
655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010
In 1998 the papers in the journal were good, but there is always
room for improvement. Naturally, authors want their papers to be read
and appreciated. The impact factor is a metric of the Institute of
Scientific Information (ISI), (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) that attempts
to quantitate interest in the papers published by different journals. The
impact factor measures the number of citations a paper receives in the
two year period following its publication. For the most recently re-
ported time period, the ISI determined the impact factor of the Journal
of Molecular Graphics and Modelling to be 4.206, which ranks it at
the top of all journals in computational and theoretical chemistry.
In 1998 the journal was, as mentioned, about a year behind in filling
its issues because not enough papers were being submitted. Reflective
of this dire situation, only 5 manuscripts came into the United States
editorial offices in 1998. In 1999, the number increased to 45. In 2000,
90 arrived. More manuscripts were submitted to the journal in 2000
than in any previous year of its entire 17-year history. Issue 6 of Vol.
18 (2000) was the first “on-time” issue in almost 4 years. When my
tenure in office was completed in the spring of 2001, the journal was
six issues ahead of schedule in filling issues.
It is now my great honor to provide some background about
COMP’s new editorial representative. The publisher and COMP Ex-
ecutive Committee carefully made their selection and picked someone
with exceptionally strong credentials. The new editor is Professor
Andrew J. Holder of the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Andy is
from the Gulf Coast of the United States, having obtained his B.S. in
chemistry and mathematics at Mobile College in Alabama. His Ph.D.
was awarded in 1987 at the University of Southern Mississippi, where
his thesis topic involved X-ray scattering and semiempirical molecular
orbital calculations. Andy then spent two years doing postdoctoral
research at the University of Texas at Austin. He worked with the
preeminent developer of semiempirical MO methods, Professor Mi-
chael J. S. Dewar. This appointment was a case of being in the right
place at the right time. Professor Dewar was retiring and needed
someone to carry on his development of semiempirical methods. Andy
was the right man.
In 1989 Andy accepted a tenure track faculty appointment at the
University of Missouri–Kansas City. Despite a heavy teaching load,
Andy made time to found one of the best known computational
chemistry software companies, Semichem, Inc. (Shawnee, Kansas).
The company initially marketed AMPAC and assumed responsibility
for continuing the parameterization for additional elements. A graphic
user interface (GUI), like those modern users have come to expect for
computational chemistry software, was built for AMPAC. AMPAC’s
GUI was so good it became the basis for GaussView, the GUI for the
widely used Gaussian series of ab initio programs. In addition, Semi-
chem markets CODESSA, a program for computing descriptors useful
for quantitative structure-activity relationships. Thus, Andy brings to
the journal important entrepreneurial skills. After all, a journal is a
product, and the product must meet the needs and expectations of its
customers. Customers include not just the subscribers, but also—and
perhaps more importantly—the authors.
Andy’s research interests include development and applications of
quantum chemistry methods. He has about 40 publications, including
six articles in the highly lauded Encyclopedia of Computational Chem-
istry (Wiley, 1998). Andy is committed to the ACS and has been a
regular participant at ACS national meetings. He organized a “Sym-
posium on Semi-Empirical Methods: Is There a Future?” at the 211th
1093-3263/01/$–see front matter
PII S1093-3263(01)00130-9