Well, it has been a long, long time. Issue 18 of the newsletter was published on April 1st, so you readers are probably wondering what happened. Once again the reason is lack of time, what else? We have been in the middle of a turmoil in the second quarter, stablishing new collaborations, studying projects and arranging many details for the near future. And as usual, one of the first casualties has been the newsletter. We are very sorry, and we are trying to solve the problem. Keep on reading!
In fact, when by the beginning of 2008 we first issued our newsletter this is what we said: ‘We will try to provide one a bi-monthly base’. Well, we tried it very hard, and we succeeded, most of the time, at least. But simply, the workload of a bi-monthly newsletter is heavier than expected. Checking the papers, selecting them, writting down short articles, etc., is hard. So sometimes we were late. More pressing issues come always first, like answering client calls, requests, business trips and so on.
One solution to fix this problem, is changing the newsletter from bimonthly to monthly. It can sound freak, but this way we can deal with the two main reasons making the edition of each issue so time consuming. First of all, we will not have to select only five papers among more than forty. This might mean we are less selective, but also that we will open our focus a bit more. Secondly, we will not be so exhaustive on each paper. We usually put a background text explaining why we think the paper deserves special attention, praising the method and giving some more experimental details (reagents, conditions, etc.). Well, forget about that. We will write just a brief description of the paper, how many examples it covers and so. Detailed info will be reduced to a minimum.
Additionally, each issue will have only one background article in each issue, either an editorial, a comment on our R&D, a press release or whatever. The monthly review will not suffer any changes, though. Let’s see if the Chemical Reviews, Accounts of Chemical Research, Tetrahedron Reports and others can fill the gap every month.
Well, let’s see if these changes help. And please, if you think we have worsened things, just tell us. As Winston Churchill said: ‘To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.’
