IJVS Volume 5 Edition 6 - editorial
This, the last edition of 2001 has been delayed. No – not because your dear Editor has been overdoing it for Christmas, but rather because we have been hit by an announcement that I suppose was inevitable – Perkin Elmer have decided to cease their support of the Journal. Their announcement is as follows –
Over its first five years, Perkin Elmer has been delighted to sponsor The Internet Journal of Vibrational Spectroscopy, but the time has come for us to hand over to others. From the end of March 2002, we regret that we will not be able to continue our support.
Currently, the Company owns the copyright on everything published in the Journal and this we will relinquish at the end of March 2002. We hope that in this way, the Editor and Production Editor will be able to arrange continuing sponsorship. We wish the Journal every good fortune in the future.
On 17th December, Perkin Elmer informed me in a phone conversation that the Company was withdrawing financial support for IJVS. A meeting between Louise, Dr Dave Clark of Perkin Elmer and myself was held on 20th at Seer Green, the UK Headquarters of Perkin Elmer and we went over the conditions of the withdrawal of support. The situation is complicated because P-E own the title and the copyright – I am the Editor but I don’t control the destiny of the Journal.
Clearly, to continue we need to obtain further financial support. Fortunately, Perkin Elmer have agreed to support the Journal until 31st March 2002 giving us some time to come up with alternatives. It is also clear that P-E will release the title and copyright so that alternative supporters can be more easily arranged.
Our most pressing concern is to protect the archive – authors who have published or edited papers or feature articles in IJVS must be sure that readers’ have the ability to down-load their article. Perkin Elmer have volunteered to cover this by placing the IJVS archive on their website, but the problem is that citations would not be useful since the www.ijvs.com website might well be closed. However, we have already been able to arrange some sponsorship so that the website will continue until 1st January 2011 whatever else happens. So – the archive is secure for 10 years.
Many different modes of support can be tapped – sole sponsorship by one manufacturer, multiple sponsorship, advertising etc, etc. Leave it to us to see what we can do and I will report in the next Editorial.
In late December we had four submitted papers being edited or going through the refereeing process. In view of the uncertainty over the future of your Journal we emailed all four sets of authors, explained the situation to them and asked them of they would like to withdraw their papers and publish them elsewhere. To our delight all four have replied enthusiastically that they want to publish in IJVS –
” I am sorry that the Journal has financial troubles and I am confident that you will manage to solve them in a satisfactory manner. It is important for the spectroscopy community to have this meeting place on the Internet, especially because it is really different from any other Journal. We don’t withdraw, of course, our article and will wait that you solve the problems.”
“I don’t wish to withdraw the recently submitted paper to IJVS and I sincerely hope that you will succeed to find an alternative source of financial support.”
“I am sorry to hear that PE may cease their sponsorship of IJVS. I do not want to withdraw my paper submitted to IJVS recently and hope this helps. I hope the negotiations go successfully to your favour.”
“As my work is in FTIR and spectroscopic area, and I like to publish it in IJVS, I will wait till you sort out the problem.”
Although it is sad that Perkin Elmer are not going to support the Journal in future, we must thank the Company for making IJVS possible and for supporting us for so long.
In late November and during December, I attended a couple of excellent meetings. One, on December 13th, was organised by the Infrared & Raman Discussion Group of the UK. This organisation has been around for the best part of 50 years and meets about 4 times a year. Every year the Christmas meeting is invariably held at King’s College in the Strand, bang in the middle of London and is organised around the lunch [Very Christmassy – very alcoholic* – very convivial]. Persuading people to give talks after the lunch has become an art-form, but this year the organisers were particularly effective and we had a full afternoon programme. Most of the members stayed awake proving that lecturing skill will prevail over all adversity!
* Invariably supplied by one of the major instrument companies.
On 20th November I caught up with a one-day conference on the use of Raman in Art History and Archaeology. I’m no artist and have to admit that I’m not particularly interested (my obsession is with music) but this was one of the most fascinating meetings I have ever attended. Please read my report.
Finally, we have had some response from you with your pictures of where you work and live, a big thank you to those who have sent us stuff.. Here are the ones we’ve had.
Now there’s a view. This photo was sent in by Dr Michael Martin. It is the view from the Advanced Light Source Synchroton facility in Berkeley, California, overlooking Sam Francisco Bay area.
This pic was sent in from Eva Horn Møller from Denmark. She says ” The Royal Danish School of Pharmacy in Copenhagen, Denmark dates from 1892 and moved to the present address in 1942. The newest building (shown right) was added in 1998. It offers state-of-the-art labs, an integrated art solution and a large spectroscopy cellar under that vividly green lawn”
Our mate down under Ian Wesley sent in loads of pictures. Here’s the place where he works – BRI Australia Ltd, and independent company that provides research to the Australian grain industry. Its also the home of the Grain Industries Centre for NIR Spectroscopy.
The other picture is a small bridge in his ‘home’ town Sydney. We can see it’s another miserable day ‘down under’!
Finally in our latest selection, our great friend Professor Z.Q. Tian has sent us photos of his office (where hopefully he’s writing us another paper!?) and his apartment block in Beijing.
Please keep the photos coming in. They really cheer me up seeing where some of you are and mostly blue skies, its certainly not ‘blue skies’ here in the UK at the moment, being the usual dark and dreary English wintertime – Louise.