IJVS Volume 3 Edition 1 - editorial

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This edition starts Vol III and we are already thinking about Ed I, Vol IV to be dated very early in the New Millienium. More news of this as plans gel.

Now we have two volumes in the archive, all of us need to start thinking about citations. We have several on our books now and no-doubt people are thinking about citing work in hard copy publications. Citing in the form J.R. Bloggs, Internet J Vibr Spect.,Vol. Ed. Pg looks fine, but it isn’t very useful because the Journal is not ‘taken’ by libraries. We are about to invite libraries to download the material and hold it on their shelves, if they wish, but this will take time. Although not the traditional citation, the most useful to a reader would be J.R. Bloggs, Internet. J. Vib. Spect.,[www.ijvs.com] Vol. Ed. Pg. What do you, the readers and contributors think? Once we have some responses we will start negotiations with the Citation Index so we can get a rating. A decent rating is essential as I am sure you will all agree.

With two volumes complete and nearly a thousand registered readers, now is the time for you folks to tell us how the Journal is going. You will note the increased level of colour, the large number of pictures and diagrams and the evolutions in format. Are they acceptable? Have you any ideas where improvements can be made? We have had one edition assembled by a guest editor and are negotiating for another. Is this a good idea from your prespective? What keynote subjects should we be considering in the next twelve months?

This Edition, the first of Vol III breaks much new ground. This time we feature a subject – Bio applications of infrared spectroscopy in our submitted rather than feature papers. AND it includes our first review. Submitted by Kai Griebenow, Angelica Santos and Karen Carrasquillo from the University of Puerto Rica, the review discusses knowledge on the use of FTIR in studying the secondary structures in proteins. Even if you are not into this science just scan it – the quality and breadth is superb. Get some idea of the detail available from the infrared and note too that these measurements are new – the subject has expanded dramatically in the last 5 years and Kai and his colleagues have picked this up wonderfully.

Our second contributed offering describes Raman microscopy mapping applied to sub cellular structure – again biology and biochemistry. Many feel that these are real growth areas in current science. Dave Batchelder and his colleagues from a whole range of Departments at the University of Leeds in the UK show that Raman is valuable in supporting Photodynamic Therapy, a rapidly developing method for the treatment of cancer.

Now everyone needs to keep warm and wool is the textile par excellence. The CSIRO Wool Technology Laboratory at Belmont in Victoria, Australia is an internationally regarded centre of excellence in this field so we are honoured to publish Church and O’Niells paper on the use of NIR and chemometric applied to raw wool analysis – almost our first NIR paper and almost our first mention of chemometric data processing. Both subjects will be picked up on and featured later in this volume.

Your Editor (poor soul) is getting fed up with writing rubbish for the first part of our Journal! Pressed to write a piece to support an introductory talk to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society one-day discussion forum on the value of Raman in pharmaceutical analysis and the attitude of the drug regulators I thought – dammit I’ll submit it to myself. Louise sent it off to a referee and won’t show me what he said except – accept subject to some edits to the English. I have to admit his comments about incomprehensible sentences were quite correct – so, here it is – the last of our submitted pieces.

Returning to the News & Review section of this edition, we have two pieces – the first from a colleague of mine Allan Morris on Synchrotron Radiation. Why this subject? Well, last edition we highlighted infrared microscopy, this edition includes Nicole Guilhaumou’s superb paper on the application of mid IR to petrography (part of geology) in the submitted section. In infrared microscopy there is a severe problem with the intensity of the source and this is where Synchrotron radiation comes in. An alternative (but a very expensive one and a method still in its infancy is to use m.i.r. diode arrays coupled with interferometry – see the article by Norman Wright on the BioRad Stingray in the last edition [ijvs.com/volume2/edition4/section1.htm#Article5]. Since I thought many readers might not be familiar with Synchrotron radiation I asked Allan to help.

The second article describes the way near infrared is progressing – the complete analyser. Near infrared milk or wheat or flour or …….. analysers have been around for years but the n.i.r. folks are becoming clever. The article describes an analytical system offered by our sponsors Perkin Elmer called the Brewers Assistant.

Now I don’t like Beer (I drink too much wine) and hence could be suspected of yielding to sponsor pressure – not so. I insist in these cases that the article is scientifically sound and balanced not an advertisement. Remember, we have published articles like this before from instrument makers, but never yet from Perkin Elmer [Specialist CCD Raman from Kaiser – see M.J. Pelletier ijvs.com/volume1/edition3/section1.html, IR microscope from BioRad – see ijvs.com/volume2/edition4/section1.htm#Article5 and the Diamond ATR from Graseby Specac – see David Coombs ijvs.com/volume2/edition2/section1.htm].

Enthusiastic readers will remember that several editions ago I promised to write more pieces on the theory and practice of Raman Spectroscopy. Mindful of the fact some of you folk must be suffering from frustration Anne De Paepe and I have written a piece on the use of polarised light. We hope you find it interesting.

Assistant Editorial

Happy New Year! I realise that it’s March now, but this is the first edition this year – 1999. Plus a new Volume! This year we aim be more organised as we are supposed to produce 6 editions in each Volume and only managed 4 in Volume II – mind you 5 were produced, but one edition was stopped for reasons beyond our control (Oh the joys of publishing!?). So I have put my foot down and devised definite deadlines for copy and publishing for this Volume. So far so good!

My only problem is Patrick – always ever with the ‘good’ ideas – but who’s the one who has to sort it out I wonder? – has decided that we will produce an edition (Edition 6) to be published as close to midnight on the 31st December this year! We can then boast to be the first journal published in the New Millennium. I have two concerns (a) who is going to pull me away from whatever party/celebration I’m at, so I can do this and (b) is which of you will be sat ready at your computer waiting to read IJVS as you will be either getting ready to celebrate/celebrating/or recovering from celebrating this great occasion wherever you are in the world!!

My thanks to vigilant readers who pick up any crossed or broken links (Thanks Jerry Childers in Florida). I appreciate the messages so I can ensure that the web site runs smoothly, it’s so easy to miss things when there’s so much going into each edition. I did also get a comment from Paul Sayers from Gwynedd Wales, asking for PDF or PS version of the journal as he’s having a problem with page breaks when printing out the journal.

Now I wasn’t sure about this, even if I print down the journal (in Explorer) figures get cut off at the bottom of pages. I asked the design agency who originally produced IJVS and they said that the problem of page breaks was just one of those things as we don’t all use the same browser / printer etc. There was an alternative solution such as using Adobe Acrobat Reader software, but you have to buy the whole Acrobat package which is, as far as I am aware, about £500 (UK sterling). Any ideas anyone?

As far as using PDF files for images, well everyone now seems to be supplying gif, tif or jpeg files now anyway which means the information is already in a digital form good enough for the web. Patrick tells me that there is a very good argument for NOT publishing PDF files of spectra as authors may not be too happy if readers copy down accurate spectra and manipulate the data for their own use. Can’t say I blame them. Even as a non-scientist I thought that the idea of IJVS was to give readers operational information on vibrational spectroscopy with all it’s technqiues, applications etc, then readers may try it for themselves and even come up with better results!? – Oh and then of course write their own papers and submit to IJVS!.

One thing I will endeavour to do now that we receive most things in colour is to improve the presentation. If you don’t have a colour printer yet you’ll know that some colours just don’t reproduce very well in monochrome. Diagrams are supplied to me in varying sizes and the max width we use for IJVS is 520 pixels wide. We plan to place them as full size on separate pages so you can click to view and then print down full size if wished. In fact I’ve done this in our first feature on Synchrotron Radiation. Let me know what you think of this idea?

Louise Martin