oa Editorial

The drug discovery landscape is at cross roads with profound changes looming in the horizon. Open innovation has become the new ‘mantra’ for reinvigorating the pharmaceutical R&D's lackluster drug candidate pipeline. To fill this void, academia has now ventured from its traditional role of exploring the fundamental aspects of disease biology in to the high throughput screening arena in a big way. Thanks to the NIH Roadmap Initiative and the EuOpen Screen program for facilitating this transition. A look at the manuscripts published in Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening is reflective of this transition, with 75% of articles coming from Academia across the globe. We have published a total of 90 articles in volume 13, 2010, averaging 9 articles per issue, with 33 articles from Europe, 22 from North America, 16 from Asia and the remainder coming from the Middle East and other countries. These facts attest to the truly global reach of Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening. Articles in the theme-based ‘Hot Topic’ issues are gaining in prominence, and are becoming increasingly the most cited ones. We have lined up quite an exciting array of hot topic issues for 2011, which range from bioluminescence to LIMS and screen data management. From looking at the kind and range of articles that have been submitted for publication in Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening, it is clear that a number of articles are related to pharmacognosy. It is indeed a welcome sign as many drugs have historically been derived from natural products and that there exists a vast amount of natural product chemistry to be explored for their relevance in serving as drug leads. To fully support the review process of pharmacognosy-related manuscripts, we will soon be introducing a new section in Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening on pharmacognosy, managed by an expert in natural products. The new changes we introduced at the beginning of the year, restructuring the Editorial Board and the introduction of Section Editors, have turned out to be good moves and benefitted the manuscript review process enormously. It has also become clear that there was a certain amount of duplicity in the roles of the Regional Editor vs Section Editor. In streamlining the entire editorial review process, I have decided to empower the Section Editors to wholly manage their sections, irrespective of the regional origin of the articles; and hence discontinue the Regional Editorial process. I have not reached this decision lightly. I would like to thank the Regional Editors for the years of service, expertise, time and effort that they have tirelessly extended in helping me and Richard in bringing Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening issues month after month, year after year. We are continuing to strive for publishing high quality articles and that could only be done with outstanding manuscript submissions, and expert peer review process. Just completed Volume 13 was our best, and my first as the Editor-in-Chief. My gratitude to all those who have helped, the authors, reviewers, section and regional editors and publishing staff, for their time, advice, expertise, and tireless effort.