In note with some interest the author instructions for the new Springer journal "Molecules on-line". http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00783/instr.htm Intrigued as to whether this meant that the molecules themselves would be "hyperactive", as we coined in 1994, I was intrigued to find statements such as "Spectra ... must be submitted as images, preferably in form of PostScript file or a scanned file" and structure diagrams must be prepared according to "10pt Helvetica font fixed length 14.4 pt (0.508 cm, 0.2 in.) bold width 2.0 pt (0.071 cm, 0.0278 in.) line width 0.6 pt (0.021 cm, 0.0083 in.) " which are instructions clearly designed with printing in mind.There is a supplementary data section, but this implies this data will only appear on the CD-ROM version. The word "supplementary" implies that this is the least important aspect of the article submission process, and not really an integral part of it or the actual article. It would appear that (to publishers at least), "on-line" still means "electronic delivery of a facsimile of a printed journal" rather than "electronic delivery of an enhanced chemistry information tool with no printed equivalent" After about four years of the Internet and the Web, it does seem that the publishing world remains very conservative. Perhaps that is because the consumers are even more conservative, and do not wish to have any of these enhanced features ? I am sure most of the subscribers to this forum would dissent, but are we a tiny minority? Or are the publishers making these decisions on our behalf, based of course on their commercial interests, rather than necessarily our scientific interests? Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ If my digital email signature is invalid, download a new root at http://www.belsign.be/en/services/receive/install-ca.html chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)