ARKAT USA, Inc. -

Since the initial publication of Arkivoc in 2000, the journal has expanded from a total of 90 papers in two issues to over 300 papers in 14 issues in 2009. Publications in 2010 are expected to maintain and possibly exceed this output. In addition, the Impact Factor (IF) has risen from 0.4 in 2003 to 1.37 in 2008. The journal appears with three types of format – Commemorative Issues dedicated to the work of an individual chemist or particular region of the world, an annual Reviews/Accounts Issue highlighting areas of current interest, and General Issues open to any author.

The Commemorative Issues, under guidance of two members of the Control Board, are each organized by a Facilitator who monitors the submission of manuscripts, writes a tribute to the Honoree or a background to the region, and helps to meet the completion date set by the Control Board. It should be emphasized that the fundamental policy of the journal and ARKAT-USA is the publication of sound, peer-reviewed, scientific information (over 60% of General Papers submissions are rejected) completely free of charge to authors and readers. The latter aspect was designed specifically to benefit chemists in developing countries and hence promote the basic human rights of opportunity and education.

The publication of Arkivoc has recently changed to an automatic online submission system whereby authors under the guidance of “Instructions for Authors” (posted on the website) submit papers at a minimal cost in a specified format to an electronic monitoring system that directs each paper through technical editing, referee assignment, scientific editing, and finally publishing without the intermediate of labor-intensive e-mails.

An important partner for Arkivoc is the University of Michigan’s Library Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO). A major objective of the SPO is to provide assistance to not-for-profit, freely accessible journals. Under this agreement the SPO already hosts ten years (2000-2009) of Arkivoc manuscripts and these are now available at the SPO website (http://www.lib.umich.edu/spo/).

Printed versions of Arkivoc for 2000-2008 are available at minimal cost from Amazon.com (and Lightning Source) and later issues are available from the University of Michigan Library SPO, again at minimal cost.