Acta E meeting Euroforum Infantes, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain 20 August, 15:00-18:00 CHAIR: Jim Simpson Attendees: Section Editors: Jim Simpson, Matthias Weil, Helen Stoeckli-Evans, Edward Tiekink Co-editors: Dmitry Albov, Ricardo Baggio, Kumar Biradha, David Brown, Vladimir Chernyshev, Jean-Claud Daran, Parthasarathi Dastidar, Laszlo Fabian, Jan Fabry, Karla Fejfarova, John Gallagher, Maria Gdaniec, Tayur N. Guru Row, Ken Haller, Owen Johnson, Biserka Kojic-Prodic, Sergey Lindeman, Gary Nichol, Masood Parvez, Georgina Rosair, Victor Rybakov, Arie van der Lee, Matthias Zeller IUCr staff attending: Gillian Holmes Introduction Jim Simpson opened the meeting by reporting that he was retiring as a Section Editor and would be replaced by Helen Stoeckli-Evans and Edward Tiekink. Editing guidelines Jim Simpson then gave a presentation on ?The Acta E from Hell?, an invented paper including problems commonly encountered in Acta E submissions that was intended to illustrate the detailed editing guidelines circulated earlier in the year. He highlighted the various problems with this paper and detailed the changes that needed to be made at the review stage to make it suitable for publication. The powerpoint will be made available online. Matthias Weil then gave details of specific requirments for metalorganic structures. The Abstract should include details of any disorder (including occupancies with s.u.'s) along with details of special positions or symmetry (PLATON and Mercury are useful for this). Coordination numbers and polyhedra should also be given in the Abstract, supplemented by respective bond lengths in Table 1 (don't report symmetry-related distances; angles are normally of no great insight). Matthias commented that coordination numbers are a very good measure of the correctness of a metal, as are bond lengths. Crystallographic directions should be given in the Abstract. The crystal colour should be consistent between publ_section_exptl_prep and exptl_crystal_colour. If the colour itslef seems wrong, it may be a warning sign that the metal is incorrect. Matthias then indicated possible problems with rare earth metals and recommended rerefining structures with PLATON as a check. Other useful tools are publCIF and Mercury and chemical intuition and knowledge. The powerpoint will be made available online. David Brown recommended that anyone handling inorganic structures should do a bond-valence check as this technique supplies the crystal chemistry and gives warnings that can indicate an incorrect structure. He offered to put together some notes on this valuable tool. A short discussion on the treatment of disorder followed. SQUEEZE should be used only as a last resort. PLATON is useful in the case of disorder as it does a complete analysis of the coordination and defines the complete polyhedron. Jim commented that Co-editors should encourage authors to look at the Comment section. They need to spend a little more time and effort to make sure that it is either tidied up or dispensed with altogether as we do not wish to present the readership with material that isn't appropriate. The problem of very quick and unimproved resubmission of poor articles was mentioned by Vladimir Chernyshev who suggested that authors should not be allowed to resubmit within a certain time limit. Some authors require rapid publication for their students and the time threat may be a good way of preventing this. Some authors, including experienced ones, are getting lazy and submit papers without adequate preparation. Jim Simpson said he could understand the frustration Co-editors felt. They could reject papers that came back in as bad a state and papers can be rejected without right of resubmission if it happens again (Co-editors should ask Chester whi wil lconsult the Section Editors if they require a paper to be permanetly rejected). He commented that there are experienced authors who get students to write their papers. The senior authors don't check them and rely on Co-editors to tidy the paper up but this is not their job. Matthias Weil commented that it was difficult to set deadlined and that there have been cases of more or less identical papers being resubmitted months later. Co-editors were happy to help authors with their first submission but got angry when subsequent articles were just as bad. Matthias Zeller commented that he rejected papers if they weren't done properly after the third revision and that if you consistently reject papers that are not up to standard, you get fewer of these problems. The difference between rejection and withdrawal was discussed. Withdrawal could be more diplomatic and a slightly softer option. Authos can be invited to withdraw their paper but rejection is the Co-editor's option. Ricardo Baggio picked up on Jim's comment in his ?Acta E from Hell? presentation that the Abstract shouldn't be repeated in the Comment. He said that many authors don't realise that the Abstract is the core of the paper. Sometimes the Co-editor picks the good stuff from the Comment to put into the Abstract, leading to the situation where the Abstract is very similar to the Comment. Jim replied that in an Acta E paper, the Abstract is the primary vehicle of communicating the structure to readers. If minimal, authors should be given the opportunity to amend it, pointing out that if it is not suitable, they can adapt the Comment. David Brown commented that he finds it useful to recommend that authors look at published Acta E papers. Jim agreed that the mantra should be look at Notes for Authors and read some other E papers. Some authors have done neither and it shows! Report of Section E Editors meeting Jim Simpson then reported that the Section Editors had met the week before in Chester. This had mainly been baton-changing as he was retiring. They had welcomed Helen and Edward to the team and had an interesting discussion on the role of Section Editors. He was also pleased to welcome a considerable cohort of new Co-editors to the team. They are in placeand getting up to speed. There were sadly some retirees, including Jean-Claud Daran who was present at the Jcomm meeting. Jim thanked him and everyone else who was retiring or who had done so over the past couple of years for all their efforts as without Co-editors, the journal would just not survive. The journal publishes over 4000 structures and he thanked everyone very much for all their time, effort and commitment. Journal growth Jim reported that Acta E was still growing although this appeared to have plateaued. As we will be losing some experenced Co-editors, we will probably need to recruit some new ones soon. He therefore asked everyone to pass on their recommendations of any colleagues or friends to one of the Section Editors. Journal development He said that it was not envisaged there would be any major changes to the design of the journal over the next year or so but they were always opento comments and suggestions. He also reiterated that if any of the Co-editors had problems or were unsure, theyshould ask the Section Editors as it was one of their tasks to provide support and feedback. Gary Nichol commented that he had asked by several people why the ellipsoid plot does not provide part of the published paper. Matthias Weil replied that it was difficult to extract for poymeric structures and inorganics. Notes for Authors Masood Parvez said he felt the use of SQUEEZE should be clarified. Matthias Weil proposed that a VRF should be required for SQUEEZE. Matthias Zeller suggested detailed instructions were needed regarding fcf files and Sergey Lindeman commented that SQUEEZE was often used when it was not necessary because the author could not handle the disorder and that it was easy to make mistakes. David Brown agreed that SQUEZZE should be a last resort and that its use should be justified. Authors should supply both the origina and the SQUUEZED structure factors and include all solvents as far as they are known in the formula. Ken Haller said that if PLATON generates a file, we should require it and commented that you can't go back from SQUEEZED structure factors. Promotions The Acta E promotion leaflet was circulated. Summary In conclusion, Jim thanked everyone for coming and for all their work for the journal.