Editorial: Molecular Informatics Gaining Impact
Knut Baumann, Gerhard Franz Ecker, Jordi Mestres, Gisbert Schneider · Molecular Informatics · 2012
The 2011 Journal Citation Reports1 recently published the first impact factor for Molecular Informatics, and it is a very encouraging value of 2.39. Since Molecular Informatics only commenced publication in 2010, the journal’s 2011 impact factor represents a “one-year value” based on 59 articles that were published in 2010 and a total of 141 citations made throughout 2011.2 With this first impact factor at hand Molecular Informatics jumps right into the first quartile of “Mathematical & Computational Biology” journals and is placed in the second quartile within the broad category “Medicinal Chemistry”. This success does not come without a great team effort, and we would, therefore, like to express our gratefulness to our authors, readers, reviewers, and editorial advisory board members for their continuing support. Molecular Informatics was launched in January 2010 as the successor of QSAR & Combinatorial Science. The new journal aimed at broadening the focus from mere QSAR modeling to the emerging field of chemoinformatics and its applications. An analysis of the published material of the last two years quickly reveals that this shift has been accomplished. The majority of published papers deals with methods rather than applications. Yet, original and thoroughly validated QSAR applications are also very welcome as submissions, particularly those that experimentally validate the theoretically derived findings. Another important aspect of the new journal was to provide our readers with a unique article format, the “Methods Corner”. These review-type articles written by leading experts in the field briefly summarize important methodological concepts and advances in chemoinformatics. “Methods Corner” articles are particularly well received by the research community. The second most cited article “Bioisosteric Replacement and Scaffold Hopping in Lead Generation and Optimization” by S. R. Langdon, P. Ertl, and N. Brown was published in this category and impressively demonstrates the success of this new feature of Molecular Informatics. All “Methods Corner” articles are grouped together on the homepage of the journal within a virtual issue, so that our readers can easily access these high profile contributions. Molecular Informatics also started the publication of invited reviews written by renowned experts on a regular basis. Actually, the most cited article comes from this category. It is about “Best Practices for QSAR Model Development, Validation, and Exploitation” by A. Tropsha and confirms that even 50 years after the invention of QSAR, the design and validation of QSAR studies are very hot topics. Molecular Informatics is devoted to publish well-designed and soundly validated QSAR studies, which is why we are proud that we could publish the aforementioned article. While much has been achieved in the first two years of Molecular Informatics, it is the firm intention of the editors to further increase both the actual impact and the impact factor of the journal. With many citations to recent excellent material published in Molecular Informatics, and sustained publication of high quality articles we are confident to successfully meet this challenge.