I hope that as a reader, you will tell me what you find useful and interesting (and also, though perhaps sotto voce, what you do not). I have just had the good fortune to get lots of reader feedback through a symposium at the 14th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, and I found the experience exhilarating and energizing. I thank all of the speakers, each of whom did an excellent job of initiating discussion of an issue during the five minutes allotted for a talk, and the audience, who more than filled the other 20 minutes per paper with cogent, relevant discussion. Both the Journal's staff and I appreciate the many constructive suggestions and ideas that came out of that meeting.

Many of the suggestions readers make to the editorial staff apply indirectly to authors. If you are an author or prospective author, I encourage you to submit. Here are some of the things we would like to see when you decide to write it up for the Journal.

First of all, the Journal has a specific role to play. We are looking for manuscripts that describe work in chemical education, and both words are important with regard to manuscript content. We do not publish original research in chemistry, nor do we publish educational papers that do not have clear relevance to the chemistry classroom or lab. The primary chemistry research journals do the former, and education journals deal with the latter. Therefore it is important that your manuscript indicate clearly how it is relevant to both chemistry and education.

A good way to gauge whether what you are thinking of publishing would be suitable for the Journal is to see whether it falls into one of the main areas we have established to categorize what we print. These are the main headings in the Table of Contents and are described in more detail in the Guide to Submissions on page 1006. If your paper would fit either the Secondary School Section or one of the feature columns that appear regularly, then it is likely to be appropriate, though the converse is not true. Many published papers are not part of any feature column. Currently those features for which submissions are solicited are

Chemical Information Instructor

Computer Bulletin Board

Computer Series

Concepts in Biochemistry

Curricular Change Digests

Exam Question Exchange

Experiential, Cooperative, and Study-Abroad Education

Microscale Lab

Overhead Projector Demonstrations

Research in Chemical Education

Safety Tips

Tested Demonstrations

Topics in Chemical Instrumentation

Recently all feature editors were asked to examine the content and goals of their column and each will soon provide a short mission statement that will describe what is appropriate content for each feature.

I want very much to include in the Journal papers by high school teachers for high school teachers. So does the new Secondary School Section editor, Emory Howell. Whether or not you teach in a secondary school, one of the high school chemistry feature columns might be appropriate for you to write for. These features will be described once the transition from one Secondary School Section editor to another has taken place.

The next thing we are looking for in a submission is quality. Your manuscript should be original and you should not have submitted it to another publication. It should tell readers about ideas, materials, or techniques they can use to improve and update their background in chemistry or their ability to help students learn chemistry. Your submission should be well organized, clear, and concise. Lack of clarity can disguise a great idea in language that prevents reviewers and editor from recognizing its importance. Poor organization often makes manuscripts too long and also makes them less useful to busy readers. The Journal can only publish so many pages, and consequently we favor shorter articles. Don't repeat what has been published elsewhere or is available in textbooks, but rather include such material by appropriate references. It is essential that a thorough literature search be done and that all relevant references be included in your bibliography. Do provide at the beginning of your article a short overview that will help busy readers quickly grasp the gist of what they can learn from it.

A third important consideration is the medium in which your paper appears. The Journal publishes in the print medium that you are reading, of course, but we also publish JCE: Software on computer disks, videodiscs, CD-ROMs, and videotape. In addition, there is JCE: Internet, which publishes original material on the internet. Perhaps your paper would more appropriately fit one of the electronic parts of our publication. For instance, it would be more appropriate to submit a computer program for teaching kinetics to JCE: Software than to submit a description of its use to JCE. Similarly, if your submission involves animations, color graphics, or other components that cannot be accommodated on these printed pages, you might want to submit it to JCE: Internet.

If you have an experiment or demonstration that you have tried in your classes and found to work well, a piece of apparatus or equipment that other teachers would find useful, a course or curriculum revision to describe or advocate, an experiment in chemical education research to report, an intriguing, instructive item of history, an application of chemistry in the real world that can be discussed in terms accessible to students, or an area of new chemistry or research that can be reviewed in terms understandable to advanced undergraduates, please write it up for the Journal. We look forward to working with you to improve chemical education.