ACS Publications turned in an impressive performance in 2008. Our journals published 33,695 articles, exceeding more than 30,000 articles published for the second consecutive year. This represents a 7.3 percent increase from 2007.
By year-end, researchers downloaded more than 63 million HTML or PDF full text articles, a 10.5 percent increase in just 12 months. This rate of growth reinforces the Society's commitment to present our online journals as the versions of record and to support a new Value-Based Pricing plan.
For the year, our peer-reviewed journals ranked first in Thomson Reuters ISI© Impact Factors and/or Total Citations, for 15 of the 26 ISI subjects in which ACS journals are indexed. Among the highlights in this area:
- The Journal of the American Chemical Society reached new heights with the most recent Thomson Reuters ISI Impact Factors reported in mid-2008 for the period ending the prior year. In 2007, JACS posted a record 295,465 total citations and its highest ISI© Impact Factor ever (7.885).
- In total, ACS journals exceeded 1.36 million total citations in 2007 – a 10.3 percent increase from 2006.
- ACS titles garnered 15.3 percent of the 8.9 million total citations from across the 26 ISI© categories that cover ACS journals. (ACS journals represent just 2 percent of the total 1,924 chemistry titles within those same ISI subject categories.)
- ACS journals accounted for 36 percent of the 3.06 million total citations across the seven core chemistry categories. (ACS journals represent just 6 percent or 27 of 446 titles indexed in those core chemistry categories.)
Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) launched an electronic edition of the magazine for ACS members living outside of North America. The electronic edition is a complete, cover-to-cover facsimile of the print edition delivered over the Web. ACS will make the electronic edition an environmentally friendly option for all ACS members in 2009.
ACS Publications also developed new dynamic online features to improve its Web presence. These include new home pages for all ACS journals, enriched tables of contents and advanced search features. This new resource was recognized as the Best eProduct/Website or Platform by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.
In addition, the Association of American Publishers recognized ACS Nano as the Best New Journal in the science/technology/medicine category.
The Society also finalized plans for the launch of two new publications — ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces and ACS e-Books — in 2009, as well as the debut of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters in 2010.