JACS policy

Dear Dr Duax

The recent letter by Jack Dunitz misrepresents the policy of the Journal of the American Chemical Soc. and I thought I should set the record straight. Dr Dunitz states that JACS will "no longer accept papers based on interpretation or reinterpretation of existing data." However, as I pointed out to Dr Dunitz in a letter to him, the requirement for publication of such papers in JACS is that an editorial board member first examine the paper and indicate that the conclusions of such a study are important and of broad interest. This is also clearly indicated in our Notice to Authors J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1997, 119, 7A) which states "Papers that draw conclusions from the treatment of existing data must include significant new data or make new experimental or theoretical predictions of broad interest."

I'm sure the papers of Pauling and Mendeleev would have been accepted under these criteria.