Dear contributors and readers of the International Journal of Polymer Analysis and Characterization (IJPAC), I am pleased to inform you that our journal achieved the highest impact factor (IF), IF = 1.515, in its whole history in 2015 and placed 46/85 in Polymer Science related journals. This achievement is due to the high-quality of the papers published during the last few years. All authors who published the results of their original research in the IJPAC merit recognition for their choice of our journal. The anonymous referees fulfilled very serious jobs by evaluating the submitted manuscripts (rigorously chosen for review) and recommending their acceptance with or without corrections, but in some cases also their rejection. I appreciate the permanent support and collaboration of the Associate Editors and all recent Editorial Board (EB) members. The substantial contribution of the whole production team at Taylor & Francis in Philadelphia, USA, working on the final appearance of all papers accepted for publication in the IJPAC should not be forgotten. The policy of a periodical rotation of the EB members is also behind the growing importance of the IJPAC. Without any exception, the newly invited EB members attracted the attention of the scientists in their home countries to the IJPAC and it was manifested by many valuable contributions from those countries. As a consequence, a massive increase in the number of submitted manuscripts resulted in a high percent of papers that had to be rejected because of the limited space of the IJPAC. Hopefully, larger is the choice of the papers satisfying the criteria of high-quality research; higher is the reputation of the IJPAC in the scientific community.
The IJPAC should continue its successful progress in the years to come. It seems to me that one crucial way to assure such progress is to try to enlarge the spectrum of the topics preferred for publication. However, such an idea can be realized only by slightly moderating the topics preferred until now. Undoubtedly, the research on new polymers of natural origin and their composites with synthetic polymers is of extreme importance with regard to many aspects of human existence. By the way, such contributions are certainly behind the increasing prosperity of the IJPAC. Nevertheless, the papers on these topics should be accepted in the future only if the described scientific findings will represent crucial new facts, methodologies, etc., and not only a description and characterization of a novel natural polymer or composite by standard methods and techniques. Some of the last issues of the IJPAC volume 2016 will start this new trend.
Josef Janča
Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Polymer Analysis and Characterization