Nanomedicine has entered its fourth year, and its ascendancy has been beyond the greatest expectations of any of us associated with the journal. Our ratings on every metric used to judge a new journal have been stellar. For example, Nanomedicine‘s impact factor has risen exponentially with time and now sits at a very respectable 6.1. At this rate we will blow by all of our competitors within a year or two. But as I was pondering what I would write, in my now fifth Nanomedicine editorial, I wondered – what accounts for this phenomenal success? Why Nanomedicine? The answer, I decided, is that Nanomedicine was the right idea at the right time.
Let‘s take them in reverse order – the right time. There is no clear date as to when ‘nano’ evolved as a new independent scientific discipline. We all acknowledge the seminal late-1950s thinking of the legendary Richard Feynman, but his “There‘s plenty of room at the bottom” talk Citation[101] was so far ahead of its time that it would take over two decades for the rest of science to catch up. For example, a key technology that enabled Feynman‘s nanoscience vision – the scanning tunneling microscope – was not invented until 1981 and not in widescale use until the mid-1980s.
In trying to establish a birthday for nanoscience, it was fun for me to revisit some of the articles my group published in the mid-1980s. For example, in 1986, we described what might today be called electronically conductive polymer nanowires Citation[1]. But since I had not seen the nano prefix applied to materials, I called them polymer ‘fibrils‘, small fibers. The first time I used the nano prefix in the context of materials was at a 1989 conference entitled ‘Nanostructure Physics and Fabrication‘, where I presented a lecture with nano in the title Citation[2].
So I surmise that the field of nanoscience/engineering emerged as a new discipline sometime in the mid-1980s. This means that when Nanomedicine débuted in 2006 – two decades later – nano was a well-established and very mature field. At that time, the world didn‘t need yet another nano journal. But this is exactly why Nanomedicine was the right idea.
When a scientific discipline is mature, a lot of the basic science and engineering that underpins the field has been done. If the field is to survive, real-world applications must evolve. Put another way, if the basic science cannot be transferred to practical technology, then the field declines in significance. I have seen this happen to a number of formerly hot areas in my scientific lifetime.
In 2006, Nanomedicine was the right idea because the requisite real-world applications really did, and do, exist. Simply put, these applications entail the use of nanoparticles and nanotechnology to diagnose and treat disease. This is the hottest thing in nano now. It has the potential to revolutionize medical treatment and technology. And Nanomedicine is the voice of this revolution. Right idea at the right time!
What would I like to see in the future? In my 2007 editorial, I said we needed to publish more research articles, and I concluded that piece with an entreaty to my colleagues to send us their best work Citation[3]. As a result (yes, I‘m taking credit) the number of research articles published in Nanomedicine went up by 270%. We are doing well on this score. In my 2009 editorial, I predicted that Nanomedicine‘s impact factor would soon be on par with other established nano journals Citation[4]; this too has come to pass, and as I said earlier, we are just getting started.
But in reviewing the many statistics the always on-the-ball editorial office assembled, I noticed that only 13% of the articles published in Nanomedicine came from Asian authors. So I‘ll conclude here with a special invitation to my friends and colleagues from across the Asian continent. Send us some of that superb work you‘ve been publishing elsewhere. Like the Japanese poetry tradition of Renku, where poets gather and compose together, write your best verses with ours here at Nanomedicine.
Acknowledgments
I acknowledge valuable discussions on the art of Renku with Dr Hitomi Mukaibo of the Martin laboratory.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
The author has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.
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Bibliography
- Penner RM , MartinCR: Controlling the morphology of electronically conductive polymers.J. Electrochem. Soc.133, 2206–2207 (1986).
- Martin CR , TierneyMJ, ChengIFet al.: Nano- and micro-structures in chemistry, electrochemistry and materials science. In Nanostructure Physics and Fabrication. Reed MA, Kirk WP (Eds). Academic Press, San Diego, CA, USA (1989).
- Martin CR : Nanomedicine: a great first year, and with your help, a bright future ahead.Nanomedicine2, 265–266 (2007).
- Martin CR : How we got here, where we are going and being a cog in something turning.Nanomedicine4, 1–2 (2009).
Website
- Feynman RP: There‘s plenty of room at the bottom. www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html