Dear colleagues: Thanks for the concern regarding my trouble from Springer. In answering many requests, I would like to put the open letter to Springer's "Molecules Online" editor here, where I have presented some simple facts. I already contacted with Springer's "Molecules Online" editor before. But he never gave me a reply. I am very busy and do not really have time to bother anyone or to prepare such long letter to anybody. Thanks again. Shu-Kun Lin --------- Open letter to the editor of Springer's "Molecules Online" http://www.mdpi.org/molecules/protest/indexp.htm Dear Dr. Stephen Hanessian: In order to protect the basic freedom of press and information exchange of so many of our fellow scientists who are the authors, the subscribers, and the supporters of our journal Molecules (vol.3, 1998, http://www.mdpi.org/molecules/) from further damage by Springer Verlag, on a very basic ethical ground and in light of the following reason, please consider whether you resign from the editor-in-chief position of Springer's "Molecules Online". MDPI's Molecules and Springer's "Molecules Online" could have been published separately as two independent journals. However, Springer created the problem by insisting that "Molecules Online" is not a separate journal, and started this year to launch it as a "continuation" of our journal Molecules. Springer claimed in a hegemonic manner that MDPI's Molecules is not allowed to publish and only its journal can publish. The fact is that Molecules is not Springer's trademark of publication. (History will witness that Springer will finally loss this case generated by itself because it violated the basic human rights of free press.) Please also be reminded another simple fact that the founding editor (Dr. Shu-Kun Lin) of Molecules is still alive, active and has been continuously and successfully editing this journal and has never invited anybody to replace him. It has been demonstrated that I have credit to run Molecules, even though I never pretended to have any great achievement in organic synthesis (I only imagined a little bit to have chance to win a Nobel prize, I mean Nobel Peace Prize, due to my novel theoretical work on diversity assessment, my practical work on diversity preservation of both substance sample and information, and my strong advocacy on press freedom). Molecules is started as the first journal to support the preservation of molecular diversity by samples deposit. It has been treated as MDPI's official journal since 1995 as you may find from MDPI paid advertisement published in scientific journals in 1995, including several issues of "Synthesis" in 1995. We also used MDPI fund to pay all the editorial work, including paying a guest editor. Springer never paid me a penny during the whole year of 1996. Springer only provided publication service for the journal edited by me and for vol.1 publication only, before Springer unilaterally and suddenly terminated the contract of publication service at the end of 1996. Because of the ruthless harassment from Springer, we cannot make our papers published by MDPI in 1997 and 1998 available to the public for months and cannot publish any of the recently accepted manuscripts. During recent six months, Springer even insisted on deleting all of our papers published already in Molecules vol.2, 1997 and vol.3, 1998. Published papers are very much like born babies. Can you put them back into their mother's body? From this case, as you might have also realized, Springer's present executive in this division of publication has no respect on our scientists' basic rights. Like many of your colleagues in Basel, Switzerland, I have attended your lectures and I like them very much. You are a good scientist. You should have no difficulty to launch your own new journal successfully. To our scientists in organic chemistry, Springer might be a great company because it was the publisher of Beilstein database (This database is definitely no longer published by Springer now). However, it is not so great as to risk one's reputation and to let Springer continue to use your name and to put you on a position only to try to destroy your fellow scientists' established journal Molecules. The case of Molecules already caused public anger against Springer. My colleagues and I will greatly appreciate it if you support our Molecules instead of collaborating with Springer to destroy it. We want to go on with our unique publication policy of Molecules and continue our great efforts to preserve and exchange chemical samples and experimental data. With best regards, Sincerely, Dr. Shu-Kun Lin Editor-in-Chief, Molecules (ISSN 1420 3049) http://www.mdpi.org/lin/ Basel, 30 November 1998, via e-mail chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. 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