Anal Bioanal Chem (2002) 372 : 2–3 DOI 10.1007/s00216-001-1165-y

E D I TO R I A L

Heindirk tom Dieck

A ‘synthesis for analytics’ – creation of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry

Published online: 14 December 2001 © Springer-Verlag 2001

Some years ago, in 1997, several European Chemical Societies decided on a very important step: They agreed to join forces, to sacrifice their national general chemistry journals and to create the commonly owned and edited European Journals. This was decades after the Rome Treaty establishing the European Community (1958), and even the more difficult step of bringing about the European Union was achieved earlier in 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty. So, politics was more courageous than science? Yes and No. Yes, in the sense of supporting a necessary development to overcome too weak and small-scale structures. No, if one compares the irreversible and complete merger of the old, traditional journals with the small quanta of sovereignty transferred by individual nations to the central European authorities. The concept of natural sciences lies in the search for truth, objectivity and reproducibility. Thus science should develop along lines which do not depend on national borders and similar barriers. In reality, progress in science has unfolded in parallel to societies, sometimes in a national direction and sometimes à la mode. Once born and realised, the idea of creating European Journals set further steps in motion. The British Royal Society of Chemistry built bridges to the continent with their offer to form the journal ‘Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics’. From the very beginning it was evident that the field of analytical chemistry needed a corresponding initiative, although this most important scientific domain is already weakened by so many specialised journals. At the world’s largest book fair in October 2000 in Frankfurt the idea was presented to publishing colleagues at SpringerVerlag. It took only a few weeks to develop the outline for a publishing project in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. Thereafter, the merger of the French journal ‘Analusis’ and the German journal ‘Fresenius’ Journal of Analytical Chemistry’ was agreed on by the French Chemical H. tom Dieck (✉) Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, Postfach 900440, 60444 Frankfurt, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

Society (SFC), the German Chemical Society (GDCh) and Springer-Verlag. At the moment of writing I know that our Spanish colleagues, also, will very soon become a member of the owners’ group and will merge their journal ‘Química Analítica’. And many others, with no own national journal to merge, will be invited to become partners of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. European cooperation and European ownership have nothing to do with a geographic delimitation: the authorship, readership and the visibility of science published in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry will be world-wide. During the 20th century the art of synthesis occupied a premier position in chemistry. Analytical chemists in Germany frequently complained about ever lesser impact of their field in the university curricula or about the low esteem of their work in chemical companies. This was the situation yesterday; synthesis may still dominate as long as mass products and commodities are profitable for classical chemical industries and craftsmen’s techniques prevail in education. But tomorrow added value will largely depend on analytical science. Product liability and quality management, GLP and GMP, accreditation and certification – all these are terms that demonstrate the leading role of the analytical sciences and their great impact on synthesis and production. Health, safety, and environmental care are fields that relate to qualities, quantities, properties and effects, which can only be defined, determined and judged with analytical tools. Modern chemical biology is a striking example of the dominance of analytical science. The syntheses were developed and optimised by nature. Synthetic tools to prepare GMOs are nature-borne. And it is a mere analytical task to decipher the letters, the words and the entire script of life. Genomics, proteomics and forthcoming even more complex “omics” are chemical and bioanalytical challenges. The efforts of mankind to influence the cellular game, for example, in drug development, from combinatorial chemistry to clinical testing – how much of this is synthesis, how dominant is analysis! Even the world of economics will soon comprehend that innovative value creation depends more on the analytical sciences than on chemical synthesis.

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Thus, the prospects for our new journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, the result of a synthesis from a manifold of components – the merged journals, the co-operating societies, the experienced publisher – are excellent.

Heindirk tom Dieck is the Managing Director of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, Frankfurt, Germany, since 1991. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry (1966) after studies at the Universities of Göttingen and München. After his Habilitation early in 1971 he became an Associate Professor of Organometallic and Coordination Chemistry at the Goethe University of Frankfurt/ Main and, in 1977, Full Professor and Director of the Institute of Inorganic and Applied Chemistry, University of Hamburg.