We are in good company

The last couple of months have been very good to us. Why? Because at the end of April it was announced that the RSC had won the 2013 Queen’s Award for Enterprise and then in May we were told that Chemistry World had been shortlisted for the Online Media Awards 2013.

The Queen’s Award for Enterprise is an accolade that recognises outstanding business achievement by UK organisations and in the case of the RSC it highlights its ‘continuous achievement in international trade’. Indeed, the RSC has been honoured in the international trade category for the sustained and impressive growth of its scientific publishing activities. The recommendations committee, chaired by HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, singled out the RSC’s overseas earnings growth of 45% over six years for praise. Also commended were the RSC’s exports to 86 countries worldwide, with recent high increases in sales to the US, India and China and its world class portfolio of high profile scientific conferences.

This news was followed by Chemistry World being shortlisted for best specialist site for journalism in the Online Media Awards. The awards are very prestigious within the media industry and nominees in other categories include some of the biggest names in journalism, such as Channel 4 News, Sky News, Al-Jazeera English and the BBC. 

The ‘best specialist site for journalism’ category highlights the excellent work that regional and niche sites such as Chemistry World are doing and we are in good company there, facing tough competition from the Press Gazette, the Guardian data website and Nursing Times.

We are now looking forward to the awards ceremony on 12 June to hear who the winner is. Whatever happens, we are obviously delighted and very proud that our work has been recognised in this way. Fingers crossed!

Critical point

I’m also delighted to announce that we have a new columnist for Chemistry World and it’s none other than Mark Peplow. You’ll remember him if you’ve been a member of the RSC for more than five years as he was my predecessor as editor here at Chemistry World. After a stint as editor of Nature News we’ve seized the opportunity to have him back on board doing what he does best and so we have given him a permanent spot contributing to a new column called Critical point. He has already written a few comment pieces for us on  issues such as the future of the Royal Institution, hydrogen-powered cars and the controversy surrounding neonicotinoid pesticides that have proven very popular and have provoked debate online.

As a Chemistry World columnist he joins a very illustrious family which includes Derek Lowe, Philip Ball, Andrea Sella and Paul Docherty. Welcome back.