News from the Lab on a Chip Editors

Editor-in-Chief & Journal Scope

I am humbled and honoured to take on the role of Editor-in-Chief for Lab on a Chip from this issue. Now in its 16th year, Lab on a Chip is built on the pioneering visions of “giants of miniaturization”, most notably the founding Managing Editor Harp Minhas and Editor-in-Chief Andreas Manz, followed by George Whitesides' leadership over the last 5 years. The journal has soundly established itself as the leading journal for micro- and nano-scale science and technologies towards the ultimate goal of miniaturizing, accelerating and automating chemical and biological laboratory processes on a “chip-scale” platform. Over the years, the field of lab-on-a-chip has evolved and expanded tremendously with new applications enabled by the technologies and even resulting in several tremendous commercial successes. It is with this backdrop that the Editorial Board has decided to modify the scope of the journal to reflect the advancement of the field and also to provide the maximal value to the community given its high demand and competitive selection criteria. The new scope will allow Lab on a Chip to be positioned squarely at the interface of novel micro- and nano-scale devices and applications in biology, chemistry, medicine, energy, environment and beyond. While outstanding papers featuring novelty in either the device or the application may still be published, the submissions that are most likely to be published are those at the interface describing novelties in both. For more information, read our new detailed scope statement on the journal website (www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/about-journals/lab-on-a-chip/). The prime engine for the success of Lab on a Chip remains its army of capable and reputable reviewers, and I believe they (you) will appreciate the new online review form that should assist in assessing submitted manuscripts under the new scope.

Editorial & Advisory Board

We are also delighted to have made several new appointments to the journal's Editorial and Advisory Boards over the last few months. To the Editorial Board, Professors Petra Dittrich (ETH Zürich) and Joel Voldman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) joined as Associate Editors and Professors Dino Di Carlo (University of California, Los Angeles), Piotr Garstecki (Institute of Physical Chemistry of Polish Academy of Sciences) and Shoji Takeuchi (University of Tokyo) joined as regular members. Petra and Joel join our experienced Associate Editors Professors Jianhua Qin (Dalian Institute for Chemical Physics) and Aaron Wheeler (University of Toronto), who together coordinate the peer review for a significant proportion of articles submitted to the journal. Our Associate Editors are supported by our Publishing Editor team based in our UK Cambridge office, thereby giving our authors a choice about whether their article is handled by a professional Publishing Editor or Associate Editor.

We also expanded our Advisory Board in order to better represent the breadth of interests and diversity of the journal's community. New Advisory Board members include Yoshinobu Baba (Nagoya University), Jean-Christophe Baret (University de Bordeaux), Anja Boisen (Technical University of Denmark), Qun Fang (Zhejiang University), Martin Gijs (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Noo Li Jeon (Seoul National University), Gwo-Bin Lee (National Tsing Hua University), Hang Lu (Georgia Institute of Technology), Adrian Neild (Monash University), Nicole Pamme (University of Hull), Samuel Sánchez (Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia), Anderson Ho Cheung Shum (University of Hong Kong) and Jeff Tza-Huei Wang (Johns Hopkins University).

Editorial office team

During 2016 there were some changes to the team in Editorial office. Dr Sam Keltie has joined the team as the journal's Executive Editor and works closely with the Editorial Board to develop the journal. We wished the journal's previous Executive Editor, Sarah Ruthven, well on her new endeavours. Sam along with the journal's Deputy Editor, Dr Maria Southall, will be attending a number of conferences in 2017 and we look forward to meeting many authors, readers and reviewers to discuss how the journal can best serve them.

In 2017 we also say thank you to our Focus Editor, Samuel Sánchez, who has written Focus articles for the journal for the last two years. Samuel joins our Advisory Board from now.

Community

In August 2016 we published a themed issue on Emerging Investigators (http://rsc.li/loc-emginv-16), the fourth in this series, celebrating some of the most promising and brightest amongst early career miniaturisation scientists around the world. We are grateful to the Guest Editors of the issue, Professors Yanyi Huang (Peking University), Sarah Köster (University of Göttingen) and Charles Schroeder (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) – thank you for putting together a great issue! In October we were involved with four competitions at the Annual MicroTAS conference in Dublin with various partners. In collaboration with Corning Inc and the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS), we presented the 2016 11th Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship to Professor Daniel Irimia (Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT). We also presented awards to the winners of the 9th Art in Science Competition in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the 3rd video competition in partnership with Dolomite and the 16th Widmer poster prize. Congratulations to all the winners! For more details on all the competitions, please see the Lab on a Chip blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/lc/2016/10/20/lab-on-a-chip-awards-prestigious-prizes-at-microtas-2016/).

Looking forward to 2017

We will shortly be introducing a new type of online themed issues called “thematic collections”. These will be a bit different to the themed issues we have published previously. Thematic collections will be led by a “thought leader” and are designed to cover reviews and original research in emerging technologies and applications in a particular topic within the field of miniaturisation. Each thematic collection's thought leader will outline the topic of the collection in a Perspective article. Articles will then be invited and submitted for the collection. As articles are published they will be placed into regular issues of the journal when ready and then collated together into an on-going virtual thematic collection. Look out for the first thematic collection in spring 2017.

As I assume my new position and announce our new scope, it is appropriate that I wish you a most fulfilling New Year in 2017. Little devices are destined to make giant impact through our collective inspirations, aspirations and perspirations!

Professor Abraham Lee, Editor-in-Chief

Dr Sam Keltie, Executive Editor

Dr Maria Southall, Deputy Editor

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