EDITORIAL - Macromolecules (ACS Publications)

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Editorial pubs.acs.org/Macromolecules

EDITORIAL The 50th anniversary of Macromolecules will be recognized in several ways. There will be a series of commemorative 50th Anniversary Perspectives, focusing on broad topics that have undergone considerable development during the life of the journal and that are still of contemporary interest. The first of these concerns a topic close to my heart, block copolymers, and I am delighted that Chris and Frank Bates have teamed up to get the series off to a flying start. Please read this fascinating article, and for bonus points you can try to guess which author designed the associated cover art! There will also be special symposia at polymer conferences around the world, including the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Society of Polymer Science of India (January, Trivandrum, http://www. macroindia2017.org/), the 66th Meeting of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (May, Chiba, http://main.spsj.or.jp/ nenkai-e.html), the 41st Meeting of the Polymer Society of Korea (October, Jeju Island, http://www.polymer.or.kr/ english/), and the 15th Pacific Polymer Congress (December, Xiamen, http://www.ppc15.org/cinfo.php). There will be a one-day gala symposium at the ACS National Meeting in San Francisco, featuring distinguished leaders in the field from around the globe, and a second symposium at the ACS National Meeting in Washington, DC, focusing more on emerging leaders in the community. I hope to meet as many of you as possible at one or more of these events! On a more prosaic level, Macromolecules now requires the inclusion of article titles in the references. This change has been widely appreciated, especially for the way it helps guide interested readers to the most useful prior contributions. Another new development across the ACS Publications portfolio is the requirement that every corresponding author register their unique ORCID identifier; this is easily obtained if you do not already have one (https://orcid.org/signin). We celebrated the fourth year of the partnership among the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry (POLY), and ACS Macro Letters, Macromolecules, and Biomacromolecules, by honoring the contributions of two individuals who have made a major impact on the field of polymer science early in their careers. The 2016 Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Investigator Award recipients were Cyrille Boyer, University of New South Wales, and Andrew Dove, University of Warwick. They presented lectures in a joint symposium at the Fall 2016 ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia and received their awards at the ensuing POLY/PMSE Awards reception. The call for nominations for the 2017 award may be found at http:// connect.acspubs.org/lectureship with a deadline of January 15, 2017, and we encourage you to nominate deserving young colleagues. I am delighted to welcome our newest Associate Editor, Professor Moon Jeong Park from the Department of Chemistry, Pohang Institute of Science and Technology (Postech). Moon received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University,

he year 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of Macromoleculestruly a milestone to be celebrated! From modest beginnings, Macromolecules has grown to be consistently the most cited journal in the field by a large margin and the unofficial “journal of record” for the field of polymer science. According to Chemical & Engineering News (Aug 28, 1967), “The great increase in the number of chemists involved in polymer research and the growing importance of polymers in the chemical world convinced the Society for the need for a modestly priced ACS journal in this area”. (Interestingly, from the same article: “ACS members residing in the US may receive Macromolecules for $12 per year”). The inaugural Editor was Field “Stretch” Winslow, with three Associate Editors: Frank Bovey, John Stille, and Walter Stockmayer. The journal was intended to cover polymer synthesis, polymerization mechanisms and kinetics, chemical reactions of polymers, solution characteristics and their dependence on structure, and bulk properties of rubbers, glasses, and semicrystalline polymers. Broadly speaking, this scope still applies, although the emphasis has naturally evolved. In fact, it is remarkable to consider the many “mainstream” aspects of contemporary polymer science that were unheard of in 1968. These include powerful controlled polymerization strategies such as RAFT, ATRP, and ROMP; photoresponsive and electronically conducting polymers; self-assembly of block copolymers in solution and bulk; micelles for drug delivery and other applications; polymer nanocomposites; functional thin films for lithography, patterning, sensing, and antimicrobial action; the reptation model of entangled chain dynamics; the random phase approximation for polymer blends; and polymer brushes of all kinds. Experimental tools that we rely on today were not routinely available, if at all. Examples in this category include size exclusion chromatography, MALDI mass spectrometry, dynamic light scattering, neutron scattering and reflectivity, AFM, and cryogenic transmission electron microscopy. Progress and strong growth in the field, and the success of the journal, inspired two “spinoffs”: Biomacromolecules in 2000 and ACS Macro Letters in 2012. Under the expert guidance of Ann-Christine Albertsson and Stuart Rowan, respectively, both have also quickly established preeminence in the field. The focus of fundamental work in polymer science has also shifted quite dramatically in the past 50 years. For example, in Volume 1, 54 of 116 papers (47%) came from industrial laboratories, representing 21 different companies. While AT&T Bell Laboratories led the way with 12 papers, most readers might be surprised to know which company came in second: the Ford Motor Company, with eight contributions. The percentage of papers in recent volumes from the commercial sector, by contrast, has fallen to around 5%. In the academic sector, Volume 1 included only one paper from the University of California, Berkeley, two from the University of Illinois, and one from Northwestern; MIT, Caltech, Cornell, and UCLA were not represented at all. Volume 48 included a collective total of 64 papers from these highly regarded institutions.

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© 2017 American Chemical Society

Published: January 10, 2017 1

DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.6b02686 Macromolecules 2017, 50, 1−2

Macromolecules

Editorial

Notes

where she completed her thesis under the direction of Professor Kookheon Char. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Nitash Balsara at Berkeley, she joined the faculty at Postech in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013. Although relatively early in her career, Moon is already internationally recognized for her work on ion transport in polymer nanostructuresshe was selected to receive the 2016 IUPAC Young Polymer Scientist Award. Previously, she was named the 15th Female Scientist and Engineer of the Year by the Ministry of Science, Korea (2015), and received the POSCO Technology Award, in the same year; in 2013, she was selected for the Young Scientist Award granted jointly by John Wiley & Sons and The Korean Polymer Society. In March 2017, she will receive the John H. Dillon Medal from the American Physical Society. We are delighted that Moon agreed to join the editorial team at Macromolecules, starting in July 2016, and particularly as she is the first Korean scientist to serve the journal in this capacity.

Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.

Throughout its 50 year history, Macromolecules has only had three Editors; it was my privilege to succeed Bob Lenz, who took over from Stretch Winslow in 1995. Volume 51 will see a fourth, as I have informed ACS Publications of my intention to step down at the end of 2017. It has truly been an honor to serve in this role for 17 years. I have worked with a dedicated and talented team of Associate Editors, and a highly professional, responsive staff from ACS Publications, all of whom deserve my heartfelt thanks. Most of all, the smooth operation of the journal would not have been possible without the expert and dedicated assistance of Mingjen Chen and Janis Bates at the University of Minnesota on a daily basis, including phone and Skype conferences at all hours and from three continents. From the outset it was clear to me that the community holds the journal in the highest regard, with a reputation for peer review that is consistently rigorous, constructive, and fair. I hope we have been able to maintain that reputation because even in the face of so many changes in the world of scientific publication, those attributes remain timeless and invaluable. To all of you who have generously given your time as reviewers, you are the bedrock of the journal. I know you will all join me in supporting the new Editor.

Timothy P. Lodge, Editor

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AUTHOR INFORMATION

ORCID

Timothy P. Lodge: 0000-0001-5916-8834 2

DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.6b02686 Macromolecules 2017, 50, 1−2