Sixty years of Radiochimica Acta: a brief overview with emphasis on the last 10 years

1 Introduction

The journal Radiochimica Acta (RCA) was founded in 1962, under the patronage of the Nobel Laureate Otto Hahn, to cater for the publishing needs of the then fast expanding field of radiochemistry. In those days radiochemists published their work in several different chemistry and physics journals and had no platform of their own for technical communications. With the introduction of RCA a new era dawned for radiochemistry. Although published in Germany, right from its inception the journal aimed to inculcate an international character and flavour. In its very first issue, contributions were published from München, Karlsruhe, Köln, Jülich (Germany), Orsay (France), Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Yale (USA), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Tokai (Japan).

The journal’s international character has been maintained, continuously nurtured and further developed over its lifetime of 60 years. Manuscripts could be written, during the journal’s early years in any of three international languages, viz, English, French and German; however, over the years the trend has completely shifted, so that today they are all published in the English language. A detailed review of the development over the first 50 years was given in 2012 while celebrating the Golden Anniversary of the journal [1]. The names of all Editors and Advisors were listed and the excellent management of the production process by the staff of the Oldenbourg Verlag was eulogised. The present article written on the occasion of the diamond jubilee of the journal concentrates on a description of the progress made during the last 10 years.

2 Present status of publishing

Soon after the launch of RCA, competition also appeared, and a few other journals dealing with some specific aspects of radiochemistry and radioactivity came into existence. However, RCA maintained its broad-based character. The refereeing procedure became stricter and the publishing process started shifting to electronic systems. A big change came in 2014 when the publishing responsibility of the journal was taken over by Walter De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston. It became a great privilege to this journal because the new Publisher has had a strong tradition of publishing scientific material for the last 270 years. Radiochimica Acta thus continues to maintain its traditional high-quality publishing. Today, all manuscripts are handled completely electronically. After acceptance, the article first appears electronically as AOP (ahead of print) and then, within about four months, it is published in both electronic and printed formats. An issue appears every month and the whole volume per year covers about 1000 pages.

In recent years, traditional high-quality journals have encountered some difficulties due to the strong propagation of “open access” publishing. Although the idea to present all research results at the disposal of all interested persons is commendable, it risks preventing scientists from the Third World countries from disseminating their knowledge properly because of their inability to pay large APCs (article processing charges) to fully “open access” journals. Regarding this matter, a great concern has been recently expressed by the World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS). The editors of RCA support “open access” publishing with some limitations and so do not reject manuscripts from developing countries on financial reasons. Walter De Gruyter also provides discounted or waived APC schemes for some countries. According to IAEA reports, in many of those countries, new nuclear reactors and, above all, accelerators are being built, and excellent radiochemical research is emerging. Consequently, RCA encourages new results from those countries. There is no compromise in the review process, but publication of results follows without any charges. As a result of this compassionate approach, the contributions to RCA from countries with weaker economies are increasing to some extent. Radiochimica Acta is currently a hybrid journal in that most of the content is paid for on a subscription basis, but it does also carry Open Access papers should the author require it to do so. Any paper – whether Open Access or not – is accepted for publication purely on the merits of the written research.

3 Editors and advisors

With change of Publisher of RCA, a restructuring of the Editorial Board occurred in the beginning of 2014; Syed M. Qaim was appointed as the Editor-in-Chief and five other expert radiochemists from various parts of the world (J. V. Kratz, E. Simoni, H. Nitsche, S. S. Jurisson and A. Shinohara) were appointed as co-editors. The journal suffered a setback due to the sad an untimely demise of H. Nitsche in 2014. The Editorial Board was then extended to include Z. Chai, P. K. Mohapatra and T. E. Albrecht-Schmitt. In recent years, three of the co-editors have retired (J. V. Kratz, E. Simoni, A. Shinohara). Their contributions are highly acknowledged. They have been replaced by younger colleagues from the respective regions. The names of present Editors are given in Table 1. Some replacements and additions were also made to the wider Editorial Advisory Board. The journal has presently 18 advisors, representing the international radiochemistry community. They are also listed in Table 1.

Appreciation is expressed to all the editors and advisors for their painstaking continuous efforts to maintain the scientific standing of the journal that it enjoys today.

4 Scope of the journal and changing trends in radiochemical research

The scope of RCA encompasses all areas of fundamental and applied radiochemistry, including radiation chemistry. Of particular interest are topics like fundamental chemistry of actinides and transactinides, chemistry of nuclear energy production, nuclear waste treatment, nuclear data for applications, radiochemical separations, use of radionuclides in all fields, especially in medicine (i.e., radiopharmaceutical chemistry), radioactive nanoparticles, effects of radiation on materials properties, etc. Thus RCA maintains its broad-based character.

The journal has played a significant role in dissemination of new knowledge in all areas of radiochemistry. Furthermore, it has always endeavoured to summarize newer knowledge by publishing authoritative review articles on topics of timely interest [cf. 1]. Over the last 10 years it has brought forth a few special issues to apprise the general readership of newer developments, e.g.

1. Speciation (2013).

2. Radiochemistry in China (2014).

3. Radiochemistry in Northern Europe (2015).

4. Separation Science in Nuclear Technology in India (2015).

5. Nuclear Materials (2017).

6. Herrmann Memorial Issue (2019).

A very special issue of the journal entitled: “International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements 2019”, covering 354 pages, was published to celebrate the recognition of Chemistry by UNESCO. It contains authoritative reviews on almost all aspects of radiochemistry (RCA 107, 767–1120, 2019) and has been hailed as a high class publication.

The topics covered by the journal reflect to a great extent the developments in the field of radiochemistry. The changing trends in articles published during the first 50 years of its existence were described in detail [1]. Over the last 10 years, the emphasis on energy-related radiochemistry has remained while management of radioactive waste is still a big challenge. Investigations to understand the chemical behaviour and mobility of actinides and fission products under various natural conditions (i.e. speciation and migration) are of fundamental significance in developing safe deep geological repositories for nuclear waste. Those studies continue and are often reported in RCA. In recent years, however, stronger efforts are being devoted to accelerator-based radiochemistry, mainly in two directions. First, studies of superheavy elements. Though the work is carried out in only a few specialized laboratories, the number of associated scientists from other institutions is large. The results obtained are very exciting, with the Periodic Table extended up to Z = 118. The collaborative efforts were so impressive that UNESCO declared the year 2019 as “International Year of the Periodic Table of Elements”. Radiochimica Acta brought out a special issue on the occasion (see above). More new information is pouring in. The second direction is the development of accelerator-based medical radionuclides. The role of short-lived organic positron emitters, (e.g., ¹¹C and ¹⁸F) is well established in Positron Emission Tomography (PET), a non-invasive organ imaging technique for in vivo study of metabolic processes. The emphasis is now growing on longer lived positron emitters and a few special therapeutic radionuclides of metallic nature. They are finding increasing applications in theranostics and radionuclide targeted therapy. Needless to say that those studies cannot be performed without radiochemistry. It is also worth pointing out that both the areas of accelerator-based radiochemistry, namely, superheavy element research and medical radionuclide development, are extremely interdisciplinary: the former overlaps heavily with physics, and the latter with pharmacy and medicine. The results are therefore dispersed in a large number of journals, but RCA receives a considerable share of contributions in both the fields.

5 Contributors, referees and review process

Over the last 10 years more than 3000 contributors from many parts of the world have contributed to RCA. About 900 articles, covering around 10,000 pages have been published. The Editors and the Publisher express their gratitude to all authors in general, and to our regular contributors in particular, for their life-time dedication to the journal and to the field of radiochemistry.

The standard of a primary journal is mainly dependent on the peer-review process which is followed after the submission of a manuscript. Radiochimica Acta has continually tried to maintain a hard but fair review system. To this endeavour it has built up a network of about 500 experts in various branches of radiochemistry who act as referees when requested. A very grateful acknowledgement is due to our referees who do excellent work on an honorary basis. The referees and the editors have generally a sympathetic approach to the authors and try to help them with regard to the improvement of their manuscripts, both technically and linguistically. The journal receives about 200 manuscripts per year. Most of them have to be revised, some of them several times. The rejection rate is 40–45%. Our endeavour is to complete the review process within about four months but it depends on several factors, such as delay with the referee, workload on the editor etc., but often the author does not respond to the criticism as fast as it is desired. The Publisher adheres to the policy that an accepted normal manuscript should be available online immediately after Proof correction. Thereafter it appears in printed form within about three months.

6 Impact of the journal

The importance of a scientific journal is judged today by various criteria. Needless to say that good editing, correct language, clean setting and printing, rapid appearance in print (first online, followed by the paper version) and regularity in time-schedules are still very important factors, and they are strictly observed in case of RCA. However, the citation of a paper in the literature is becoming a more important criterion. Here two aspects appear to be very relevant: firstly, the impact factor (IF), which shows how much interest an article has aroused within the considered two-year time-period, and secondly, the cited half-life (CHL) which depicts the importance of the article over a longer period. These two aspects are discussed below with respect to radiochemistry-related journals. The data were collected from the Web of Science [2].

6.1 Impact factor

The impact factors (IF) of the four radiochemistry-related journals, namely J. Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry (JRNC), J. Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals (JLCR), Applied Radiation and Isotopes (ARI), and Radiochimica Acta (RCA), are plotted in Figure 1 for the period 2005–2020. Evidently the values are not very high for all the periodicals. This reflects the size of the community which is not very large, but also to some extent the effect of not being fully “open access”. In general, the IF of RCA is comparable to those of other three journals, with fluctuations in the case of JLCR. Figure 1 also shows the IF of J. Environmental Radioactivity which has some features common to radiochemistry journals. Its IF was comparable to that of RCA till 2011. But then the Fukushima accident occurred. The size of the community interested in environmental radioactivity enhanced considerably; and with that the IF of the journal suddenly increased.

Figure 1:

Impact factors of radiochemistry-related journals.

6.2 Cited half-life

The cited half-lives of the above mentioned five radiochemistry-related journals are given for the period 2005–2020 in Figure 2. Evidently the values for RCA are by far the highest of all related journals. These numbers depict that the papers published in RCA are of long-term value, with citations extending up to 30 years or even more.

Figure 2:

Cited half-lives of radiochemistry-related journals.

7 Highly cited publications

The importance of an individual article is often judged by the number of citations it has received, though it is not necessarily always a positive index. A paper with controversial results, for example, may be highly criticized (and so highly cited). Nonetheless, looking positively at the matter, a highly cited paper adds prestige to a journal. The information available in the Web of Science [2] showed that a large number of papers published in RCA received high citations. The top 100 publications are listed in Table 2. Analysis shows that they often deal with the actinides and transactinides, speciation, adsorption and migration of radionuclides in the geosphere, nuclear data and medical radionuclide production, radiochemical separations, etc. Some of the authors are very distinguished scientists, carrying all types of national and international honours and awards. The Editors and the Publisher congratulate all authors on achieving this manifested distinction and have pleasure in thanking them for publishing excellent work in this journal.

8 Concluding remarks and acknowledgements

Radiochimica Acta is a broad-based journal, encompassing all areas of radiochemistry. All articles are published in English and the Editors take responsibility for ensuring a good linguistic standard as well. The peer-review process is strict but fair, the rejection rate amounting to 40–45%. Contributions from less developed countries are treated with sympathy: there is no concession in the review process, but no publishing charges are levied. The Publisher endeavours to serve the scientific community efficiently and is keeping pace with the on-going fast development in the publishing technology. The future prospects for the journal thus appear to be bright, provided all patrons (contributors, referees, editors, advisors, etc.) continue to support the journal with the same zeal and fervour as in the past.

A close contact has existed between the journal RCA and several research institutes around the world, the home organisations of the Editors and Advisors. The association has been particularly strong during the last 10 years with the Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine, INM-5 (Nuclear Chemistry) of the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. Thanks are due to all the concerned institutions for providing infrastructure support to the editorial work of the journal.