7 Peter Stang, defender of the JACs, has decreed:
All articles forthwith to be considered as communications need not be of two pages in length but may, without beseechment, be fully a length of 3 pages and shall contain no more, but forever shall be, as it has always been our principus, that a communication shall endeavor to be concise. Since it is known, in this day of advanced reasoning, that some science must be explained with more verbage than others.
Forthwith, back-to-back publications shall also be permitted and it is fully expected that persons who publish in such a fashion shall be mocked sub rosa at the lunch tables out of pure jealousy because they have committed an act of arrogance in the science of chemistry. Hitherto, publications in such a fashion were thought to be most unlikely given the amount of awesome shittery that is communicated by this journal, but now we heed that this may not be true and have decided to relent this position. Since it is known, in this day of advanced reasoning, that one can publish two communications in JACs on related issues without resulting to the trouble of composing a full article since lazy is good and full articles don’t get read that well.
So decreed on this day, June Twenty-Seventh Two Thousand and Seven. May your reactions yield product which is not a pain in the ass to work up. Amen.
Maybe that’s not the way HE said it, but that’s the way I read those editorials.
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i laffed.
http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journ...../ja0768946
for those of us with other proxies
I have always thought that one of the biggest problems with the two-page communication is that a lot of papers that should be cited aren’t.
I snipped off a few references to make my former communication fit into the two page limit. It is a problem
When speaking as Stang’s Messenger, I think you should capitalize your Nouns more, as People in the Old Days used to.
And Stang spake, saying, “First shalt thou load the Holy Author Upload Page. Then shalt thou count to Three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be Three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou Two, excepting that thou then proceed to Three. Five is right out. Once the number Three, being the Third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Manuscript of Alchemy towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Or be scooped. Or perhaps just be left off the Holy Reference List again.”
Yeah, he does sound very ‘old-fashioned’ when he speaks… but the better explanation is that it’s because of his furriner Hungarian accent which never quite went away. Plus noun capitalization is the norm in German, and Stang speaks that too.
Strangely enough, this is the type of article singled out for awesomeness, that illustrates what it takes to get two articles in JACS in a row as a first example:
http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journ...../ja0716103
The second article is the one right after this one. I’m not risking giving more than one link due to spam filter issues. To me, this looks suspect because it is in Peter Stang’s field and this was the duo that probably led to the ‘one after the other’ rule after a lot of back and forth during the review process. The received date to the time of publication is only 3 months, but since 1/3 of the authors are from Utah, it’s probably easy to take a walk down the hall and ask what needs to be fixed than if it’s by email. But maybe the first example should have been in a field that’s not related to the main editor.
I have to say though, the pictures that took up entire pages were rather pretty, even though before the new rule they would be consigned to the dustbin of the Supporting Information. From henceforth, I shall assume that I am allowed as much freedom when I write articles for JACS…
Oh, who am I kidding? I’m still keeping the articles short and images small.
The articles read rather well though. Take a look at this choice quote:
“Following a democratic vote by the subset of authors who
initiated this project a decade ago, a speculative coupling
sequence involving alkene metathesis (E with X ) CHdCH2,
Scheme 1) and CdC hydrogenation was selected. As detailed
in the narrative below, this high-risk undertaking proved to be
remarkably successful, significantly advancing the art of organometallic
chemistry with respect to rational, directed syntheses
of new metal-containing materials.”