EDITORIAL

“For Each Beginning Bears a Special Magic…”[a]

Founded as early as in 1892 by Gerhard Krüss, ZAAC �Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie (Journalof Inorganic and General Chemistry) has seen numerousbeginnings and has been a forum for inorganic and generalchemists ever since. Over the decades ZAAC has beennurtured, cultivated and supported by numerous renownedresearchers � be it as authors, referees, editors or board

Table 1. Editors of ZAAC fromthe journal’s inception in 1892.

Editorial EditorsTerm1892-1895 G. Krüss

(Founding Editor)1895-1929 R. Lorenz1904-1938 G. Tammann1930-1943 W. Biltz1939-1965 W. Klemm1939-1941 E. Zintl1941-1942 O. Hönigschmid1942-1950 R. Fricke1942-1945 W. Hieber1942-1945 U. Hofmann1942-1958 R. Schwarz1947-1988 G. Rienäcker1959-1980 J. Goubeau1966-1980 H. Schäfer1981-1997 G. Fritz1981-1997 R. Hoppe1989-1990 L. Kolditz1990-2008 W. Hanke1997-2006 W. Bronger1997-2007 K. Dehnicke

members (for the InauguralBoard, cf. Fig. 1). TheEditors’ names (cf. Table 1)read like a “who is who” inGerman inorganic chemis-try and every single personcontributed to the overalldevelopment of ZAAC; theyall left their personal marksand continued the traditionof excellence of the journal� sometimes for a fewyears, sometimes for severaldecades as in the case ofDr. habil. Werner Hanke,who contributed enor-mously to the current stateof ZAAC for forty-oneyears: as “helping hand”from 1968, as EditorialSecretary from 1972 and asEditor from 1990 onward.

He retired from his editorial responsibilities at the end of2008. His outstanding service to the inorganic communityand to ZAAC was honored with a Dedicated Issue that ap-peared as the last issue of volume 2008 and as the last of atotal of ca. 500 ZAAC issues that were published duringthe Hanke era.

Werner Hanke’s editorial tasks were twofold: On the onehand he acted as a scientific Editor together with his twoCo-editors, i.e., he guided submitted manuscripts throughthe peer-review process and decided � with the knowledge-able support of independent referees � upon their accept-ance or rejection. On the other hand, he signed responsiblefor the technical editing and the proofs corrections of allmanuscripts � no matter whether accepted by his scientificCo-editors or by himself. The challenging questions for usin the last months, therefore, were: How to continue WernerHanke’s tradition of excellence? How to warrant the bestpossible personalized service to all ZAAC contributors?How to benefit from Wiley-VCH’s state-of-the-art pub-

[a] The title of the Editorial is a quotation from the poem “Stufen”(“Steps”) by Hermann Hesse: “Und jedem Anfang wohnt einZauber inne…”.

Z. Anorg. Allg. Chem. 2009, 9�11 © 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.zaac.wiley-vch.de 9

lishing tools and workflows? How to further the positivescientific and international development of ZAAC? Wewould like to take this opportunity to present someanswers.

Figure 1. The first international Advisory Board of ZAAC in 1892(masthead page of issue 1/1892).

How to Continue the Tradition of Excellence? We arepleased to welcome Professor Christian Limberg as the thirdscientific Editor of ZAAC. He holds doctorate degrees fromboth Bochum, Germany, and Oxford, UK; he received hishabilitation from Heidelberg, Germany, acted as DeputyLeader of the chair of inorganic chemistry at the TechnicalUniversity of Munich, and has built his own research groupat the Humboldt University of Berlin since 2003. His re-search focuses on metaloxo complexes with emphasis on the

EDITORIALclarification of the mechanisms inherent to their reactionswith hydrocarbons and on the synthesis of novel oxygen-ation reagents and catalysts, as well as on basic and generalfundamental problems in organometallic and coordinationchemistry. Together, the editorial triumvirate will cover thewhole spectrum of inorganic research: Professor MartinJansen (Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research,Stuttgart, Germany) and Professor Thomas M. Klapötke(Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, Germany) willcontinue dedicating their expertise and time to all articlesdealing with solid-state science and the chemistry of main-group compounds, respectively, whereas Christian Limbergwill offer his broad knowledge in coordination chemistry.All three will be responsible for the scientific assessment ofthe articles submitted to ZAAC. This will include a rigorousscreening of submitted manuscripts prior to the peer-reviewprocess which may lead to rejection of an article directlyafter submission. As for all other Wiley-VCH journals themain criterion for accepting articles for publication inZAAC is “quality first”.

How to Warrant the Best Possible Personalized Service?As soon as a manuscript � usually after peer review andrevision � has been finally accepted for publication by oneof the three Editors, it will enter the editing stage. For thispart of the ZAAC editorial workflows, we welcome a further“new face”: Dr. Sabrina Turba who received her doctoratedegree in inorganic chemistry from the University of Giessen,Germany, under the supervision of Professor SiegfriedSchindler and next door to Professor em. Rudolf Hoppe. InJuly 2008 she started as an Assistant Editor for ZAAC withWiley-VCH where she was trained by and worked closelywith the Editorial Offices of the European Journal of InorganicChemistry and Angewandte Chemie; she was also trained byWerner Hanke to learn all the special features that makeZAAC a unique and service-oriented publishing forum(cf. Fig. 2). Sabrina Turba will be located in Weinheim at theWiley-VCH offices and will dedicate her time to managingthe scientific and technical editing of all ZAAC manuscripts,to finalizing the page proofs once they have been returnedby the authors, as well as to overseeing and schedulingthe publication of articles in both print and electronicformats. So please watch out for e-mails from her (ZAAC-Office@wiley-vch.de) � she might have an urgent questionor some important information on your manuscript.

How to Benefit from Wiley-VCH’s State-of-the-ArtPublishing Tools and Workflows? Since 2007 authors andreferees have been invited to submit manuscripts and refereereports, respectively, online by using an electronic editorialoffice system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/zaac/). Suchsystems are asked for by the majority of the authors andrepresent a “must have” these days for several reasons: theycan be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anycomputer with internet access, they reduce response timesand thus contribute to shorter publication times. We willexpand this service and as of immediately, all three Editors

www.zaac.wiley-vch.de © 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Z. Anorg. Allg. Chem. 2009, 9�1110

Figure 2. Werner Hanke trains Sabrina Turba in his Berlin office inOctober 2008.

will be ready to receive manuscripts and referee reports inthis way. We ask you to please make use of the system andsubmit all your future manuscripts and referee reports toZAAC online (please also refer to the new Author Guide-lines at the back of this issue).

Not only has Sabrina Turba worked closely with theEditorial Offices of the European Journal of InorganicChemistry and Angewandte Chemie in her training period,she will also implement their state-of-the-art editorial andproduction workflows, which have been developed based onWiley-VCH’s expertise and experience in scientific pub-lishing, for ZAAC: “behind the scenes” all articles will beprocessed via an electronic XML workflow, the proofs willbe sent to the authors via e-mail, and the authors’ proofscorrections will be handled electronically from Weinheim.Altogether this will allow the online publication of individ-ual articles prior to the publication of a complete issue.These individual online articles will be published on theZAAC homepage at www.zaac.wiley-vch.de in the so-calledEarlyView mode; each EarlyView article will have itsDigital Object Identifier (DOI) and can be fully cited.

How to Further the Positive Scientific and InternationalDevelopment of ZAAC? Throughout the years and notwith-standing its German title ZAAC has developed seamlesslyfrom an all-German scientific journal into an internationalone; 82% of all articles published in 2008 were written inEnglish, coming from only 10% in 1990 (cf. Fig. 3), whichclearly mirrors the increasing importance of English as thescientific language. We will certainly continue to publisharticles in German, but will nevertheless support the ongo-ing development toward English as ZAAC’s publicationlanguage and, thus, toward the further internationalizationand best possible visibility of ZAAC articles the world over.Figure 4 supports the above and visualizes the fact that thereadership of ZAAC � based on the regional origin of thefull-text downloads to ZAAC articles � is truly inter-

EDITORIAL

Figure 3. Development of the percentage of ZAAC articles publishedin English (each year represents a volume); the difference between thegiven percentage and 100% represents the portion of articles publishedin German.

national: 55% came from Europe, 16% from North Amer-ica, 16% from China, 8% from Japan, 1% from Australiaand 4% from other countries.

Besides all the plans and achievements mentioned abovethe most important goal for the future of ZAAC will be theacquisition and publication of top-quality articles, nomatter whether for regular issues or the established andwell-received Dedicated Issues. The Editorial Team willstick with this tradition and invite to special issues on

Prof. Dr. Christian LimbergProf. Dr. Dr. h.c. Martin Jansen Prof. Dr. Thomas M. KlapötkeEditor, ZAACEditor, ZAAC Editor, ZAAC

Dr. Carina S. KniepDr. Sabrina TurbaPublisher (Wiley-VCH)Assistant Editor, ZAAC (Wiley-VCH)

Z. Anorg. Allg. Chem. 2009, 9�11 © 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.zaac.wiley-vch.de 11

Figure 4. Regional origin of the full-text downloads to all ZAACarticles available in Wiley InterScience (Europe: Germany (70%),France (5%), Switzerland (4%), UK (4%), Spain (2%), The Nether-lands (2%), Turkey (2%), and other (11%)).

the occasion of the 60th birthdays of inorganic chemistswho contributed substantially to the development of thefield. Suggestions for such birthday issues are certainlywelcome.

We are looking forward to the special magic of thisbeginning, hope for your continuous support and, mostimportantly, the submission of your next excellent manu-script to ZAAC � perhaps featured by a cover picture onthe face-lifted cover page!