Preface to the 30th Anniversary Volume: A Brief History of the Journal

Abstract

Volume 30 is a landmark for the Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials. We have been publishing original research full-papers, shorter communications and review articles in the title area for almost three decades. How did this journal get started? In the spring of 1987, Dr. Martel Zeldin (MZ) was asked by the American Chemical Society’s Divisions of Polymer Chemistry, Polymer Science and Engineering, and Inorganic Chemistry to organize a symposium on inorganic and organometallic polymers for the Fall 1989 National Meeting of the A.C.S. The timing seemed expedient given the accelerating pace of research activity and published research in a wide variety of areas that included polysiloxanes, polysilanes, polyphosphazenes, coordination polymers, and other relevant areas that were driven by useful applications as well as interesting and unusual technological properties. The multiday symposium was an outstanding success. As a result, the A.C.S. publications office suggested that a symposium series book on the topic be considered. The Petroleum Research Fund of A.C.S., the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the abovenamed A.C.S Divisions encourage the production of such a tome and offered logistical and financial support to accomplish this task. Indeed, the book, “Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers, ACS Symposium 360,” which was co-edited with Harry Allcock (Pennsylvania State University), Ken Wynne (ONR) and MZ, was published in 1988. The book too was quite successful with two printings. Shortly after the appearance of the book, MZ was approached by the Plenum Publishing Company of New York with the offer to sponsor a new journal in this research area. With the advice and encouragement from a number of distinguished inorganic and organometallic polymer scientists worldwide, the peerreviewed Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers was created as a quarterly periodical. The maiden issue of Volume 1 appeared in March of 1991 with nine research papers. Over the next decade, the journal had modest success. It was then clear that the journal needed to expand in order to prosper. To help achieve this goal, Dr. Alaa S. Abd-El-Aziz joined our staff as a co-Editor-in-Chief in 2005. Since that time the journal has undergone significant changes. For example, it underwent a physical change from a small size to a large format (i.e., to 8.5′′ × 11′′) with two-column printing. Soon thereafter, Plenum was merged with the Kluwer Publishing Company, which was subsequently purchased by Springer Nature, the current publisher. Throughout this period, there has been substantial acceleration in the number of submitted manuscripts (to more than 1200 in 2018), an increase in the number of published original research papers, shorter communications and topical reviews papers (283 in 2018; see Figure 1), an expansion of topics to include more inorganic and organometallic nanoand other macro-molecular materials, and a change in the title of the journal to reflect the areas of expansion; i.e., to the Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials (JIOPM). In 2012 (Volume 22), the journal transitioned again from a quarterly to a bimonthly periodical to accommodate better the increased number of papers accepted for publication. During this period, we also expanded the Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) to include outstanding inorganic/materials scientists from the United States, Canada and abroad. We are still in the process of EAB expansion. Handling over a thousand manuscripts annually has been a labor of love for the co-editors. To help with managing the manuscript load and to maintain high quality peer-review, we sought and this year (2019) appointed an associate editor, Dr. * Martel Zeldin [email protected]