Editorial: A new type of journal on Nanotechnology
David
Alcantara1, Valeria Grazu2
1) Society for
the Improvement of Science (SACSIS), Guatemala 1, 41500 Alcal‡ de Guadaira (Seville),
Spain; 2) Nanoimmunotech SL, Av de la Autonom’a 7, 50003, Zaragoza, Spain.
Dear readers of the All Results Journals: Nano,
We are pleased to introduce you to The
All Results Journals: Nano (All Res. J. Nano.). A very particular journal,
as it publishes fully indexed articles and reviews that challenge current
models, tenets and dogmas. This journal, as part of the family journals we
publish in SACSIS, represents the first Total Open Access source for
nanotechnology research concerning negative results and will be a valuable
resource for researchers all over the world, including those who are already
experts and those entering the field.
The All Results Journals: Nano immediate goal is to provide scientists with responsible and balanced
information in order to avoid unproductive synthetic nanomaterial routes,
improve experimental designs and economical decisions. Many journals skew
towards only publishing positive data; that is, data that successfully proves a
hypothesis. The All Results Journals: Nano is the home for negative or
secondary data: experimental documentation of hypotheses that turn out not to
be true, or other experiments that do not lead to an advance of a specific
hypothesis but are nevertheless a true rendering of that experiment. There is a
huge mass of experimental data locked up in lab notebooks that could be of
great service to the Nanotech community at large. Many experiments fail to
produce results or expected discoveries. Some have even pointed out the
different types of negative data we can obtain.1 This high
percentage of failed research can still generate high quality knowledge, as
have been presented in our Chemistry, Biology and Physics journals since 2010.2
The main objective of The All Results Journals: Nano is to recover and
publish these valuable pieces of scientific information on the Nanotechnology
field.
As we continue publishing negative
results, the newer generation of researchers will not waste their time and
money repeating the same studies and finding the same results (negative in this
case). We believe that negative results are high-level pieces of knowledge that
deserve to be published.
The All Results Journals: Nano is a peer reviewed journal developed to publish original, innovative
and novel research articles resulting in negative results. This peer-reviewed
scientific journal publishes theoretical and empirical papers that report
negative findings and research failures in Nanotechnology and all related
sub-fields. Submissions should have a negative focus, which means the output of
research yielded in negative results is being given more preference. All
theoretical and methodological perspectives are welcomed. We also encourage the
submission of short papers/communications presenting counter-examples to
usually accepted conjectures or to published papers. To add more interesting
content to the journal for our readers, we included the following sections which
cover new nanotech pipelines: Review articles, Book Reviews and Research
Highlights.
The All Results
Journals: Nano on the field
The development of
Nanotechnology in the last 30 years allowed to obtain many new materials with
properties that differ from those of larger bulk materials. These
size-dependent new properties make them ideal for introducing a myriad of novel
applications in a wide variety of fields such as in medicine, electronics,
biomaterials energy production, and consumer products. Specifically their application
in nanomedicine is producing significant advances in molecular detection and
imaging, target and multifunctional therapeutics and in prevention and control
of diseases.
However, despite the
exponential growth of scientific output and creation of intellectual property
worldwide in the field of Nanotechnology during the last decades, a similar
pattern in product development and commercialization was not achieved.3
This is a common hallmark of innovative and emerging technologies. In fact, the
number of new agents approved annually as new medicines is similar to that seen
60 years ago.4 It is clear that a way to overcome this gap in the
near future is to carry out the design of nanosystems guided by societal needs
and not only by scientific curiosity. Yet, another way to speed up this gap
reduction is to shed light on the negative results obtained within the nano
community.
Which of the wide variety
of nanomaterial synthetic methods continuously reported are able to be produced
in an appropriate size scale and with a reliable batch-to-batch
reproducibility? Which of them has an adequate colloidal stability that could
ensure their multifunctionalization in order to obtain more sophisticated
products and devices to meet needs not addressed by current technologies (eg:
point-of-care ultrasensitive biosensing tools, smart-targeted drug delivery
nanosystems)? Which sterilizing methodologies affect/non-affect the intrinsic
physiochemical properties of the nanocarrier? Are the assays being used
to unravel the interaction of different nanomaterials with living matter
carefully and rationally designed in order to generate useful and comparable
data?
These are only few
examples of questions that arise and need to be answered in order to progress
from proof-of-concept feasibility demonstration at the lab scale to a
full-scale commercial production. Thus the publication of negative
results and not only positive ones would certainly enable to achieve in a
fastest way an overall impact of Nanotechnology on economics, business and
society.
In this issue
In this first issue of the journal, we
publish one article related to the bucky-amino acid acylation of the
Phospho-cytidine-phospho-adenosine (pdCpA) Subunit.
The irreversible adsorption of fullerene
(C60) substituted amino acids to the hydrophobic resin bead surface
during solid phase peptide synthesis leads to low yields. Due to the challenge
in preparing sufficient C60-substituted phenylalanine (Bucky amino
acid, Baa), an alternative route to fullerene-substituted peptides was
investigated. In their article, Professor Andrew R Barron and his colleagues
have performed the synthesis of the amino acylated
phospho-cytidine-phospho-adenosine subunit (pdCpA-Baa) prior to enzymatically
ligating it to a truncated tRNA. However, despite their successful synthesis of
the cyanomethyl ester Fmoc-Baa-OCH2CN, no reaction is observed
between the hydrophilic pdCpA and hydrophobic Baa even in the presence of
cationic surfactant or in DMF solution. As an alternative method a
N,N-diisopropylcarbodiimide coupling route was investigated, which
despite the presence of an appropriate m/z in the MALDI-MS did not lead to an
isolable product. The successful coupling of a hydrophobic perfluorophenyl
ester (Fmoc-Gly-OPfp) to pdCpA suggests that it is steric bulk rather than
miscibility what precludes the Baa coupling.
The second paper of this first issue of All.
Res. J. Nano. is a book review by Prof. Franco focused on Atomic Force
Microscopy (AFM). AFM is one of major scientific tools responsible for the
emergence of modern nanotechnology. This general book about AFM describes the
technique in an introductory yet profound manner. Prof. Ricardo Franco made a
useful description of it: ŇThe most interesting feature of the book is that
although it can be considered an introductory text to a technique that is
becoming more and more a microscopy technique of wide applicability,
specialized users of the technique can also find it extremely motivating to go
over its more dedicated contentÓ.
These two articles open the venue for new
submissions to the journal; comments on the articles are also welcomed and our
registered readers are invited to send them to foster debate.
Remarks
Nanotechnology is recognized as one of the
six key enabling technologies (KETs) according to a Communication of the
European Commission, showing applicability in several different sectors. On the
other hand, scientists spend much of their time doing work that does not get
published. The time and money spent to produce such data (that we like to call
secondary data) is essentially wasted. Should not we make an effort to increase
our society's return on its investment? The All Results Journals: Nano
is taking it. Our goal is to establish an online medium for the publication of
the negative results that otherwise may be lost. We request now the
collaboration of all Nanotech researcher community to succeed.
References
1.
Patil, C.; Siegel, V., Disease Models Mechanisms,
2009, 2, 521-525.
2. http://arjournals.com/ojs/index.php?journal=Chem; http://arjournals.com/ojs/index.php?journal=Biol; http://arjournals.com/ojs/index.php?journal=Phys.
3.
Roco MC, Mirkin CA, Hersam MC. Nanotechnology research directions for societal
needs in 2020. Retrospective and outlooks. Berlin and Boston: Springer; 2011.
4.
Duncan R, Gaspar R. Nanomedicine(s) under the microscope. Mol Pharm 2011;8:210141