This month sees the debut of two highly interdisciplinary new journals from RSC Publishing: Integrative Biology: Quantitative biosciences from nano to macro and Metallomics: Integrated biometal science.

Integrative Biology is a unique journal focused on quantitative multiscale biology using enabling technologies and tools to exploit the convergence of biology with physics, chemistry, engineering, imaging and informatics. The first issue contains articles on human mammary progenitor cell fate decisions, the analysis of aptamer binding sequence-activity relationships using microarrays, and genome-wide transcriptome analysis of 150 cell samples and much more. 

Metallomics covers the research fields related to metals in biological, environmental and clinical systems and is expected to be the core publication for the emerging metallomics community.  First issue articles include a look at the effect of vanadium(IV) in diabetic mice, cytotoxicity of chemical warfare degradation products, and identification and characterisation of metallodrug binding proteins.

Authors from around the globe have submitted work of the highest quality, knowing that they can rely on RSC staff for overseeing a rigorous peer-review process, efficient manuscript handling and rapid publication.

The current issues of both new journals are freely available to all readers via the website. Free institutional online access to all 2009/2010 content will be available following a simple registration process.

An InChI Resolver, a unique free service for scientists to share chemical structures and data, is to be developed via a collaboration between ChemZoo Inc., host of ChemSpider, and RSC Publishing.

Using the InChI - an IUPAC standard identifier for compounds - scientists can share, contribute and search molecular data from many web sources.

The InChI Resolver will give researchers the tools to create standard InChI data for their own compounds, create and use search engine-friendly InChIKeys to search for compounds, and deposit their data for others to use in the future.

'The wider adoption and unambiguous use of the InChI standard will be an important development for the future of chemistry publishing, and further development of the semantic web,' comments Robert Parker, managing director of RSC Publishing.

The InChI Resolver will be based on ChemSpider's existing database of over 21 million chemical compounds and will provide the first stable environment to promote the use and sharing of compound data. 'With the introduction of the InChI Resolver, we hope to expand the utility and value of both InChI and the ChemSpider service,' adds Antony Williams of Chemspider.

This collaboration sees RSC Publishing remain at the forefront of chemical information technology.

Delegates were invited to pre-order the latest edition of the bestselling textbook, Nanochemistry by Geoff Ozin, and take part in a prize draw to win a solar powered charger in celebration of the 2008 launch of Energy & Environmental Science.

Looking ahead, preparations are underway for the Third International ChemComm Symposium, which is to be held in China next month.  The subject will be organic chemistry and keynote speakers include Professors Peter Kundig, Keiji Maruoka and Susan Gibson.