Right. So, you want me to… explain this? This academic drivel? Fine. But don't expect me to find it fascinating. It's a journal. It publishes papers. Groundbreaking, I know.
Journal of Computational Chemistry
This thing, the Journal of Computational Chemistry, is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It’s been churning out papers since 1980, which, frankly, feels like an eternity, even for a journal. John Wiley & Sons is the publisher, the entity that decided this was worthy of ink and paper. Or, more likely, pixels and servers. They’re the ones who decide if your painstakingly crafted theories are worthy of public scorn… I mean, consumption.
It covers… well, computational chemistry. The name is practically screaming it, isn't it? Everything from the nitty-gritty of ab initio quantum chemistry methods to the slightly less rigorous semiempirical methods. Then there's density functional theory, which sounds like something you'd find in a self-help book if it were written by a quantum physicist. And molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics – imagine trying to explain the universe by just… pushing particles around. Sounds about right.
It also dips its toes into statistical mechanics, which is probably just a more complicated way of saying "guessing how a lot of tiny things will behave." And cheminformatics, which is likely the digital equivalent of sorting through a chemist's lab after a particularly chaotic experiment. And, of course, biomolecular structure prediction – trying to figure out how a protein folds is like trying to predict the next move of a particularly moody cat. Then there's molecular design, and bioinformatics, which sounds like the digital afterlife for biology. It’s a lot. All the things you'd expect when you’re trying to simulate reality on a machine.
The editors – Charles L. Brooks III, Gernot Frenking, Masahiro Ehara, and Peter R. Schreiner. They’re the gatekeepers. The ones who decide what gets to see the light of day, or rather, the glow of a monitor. They're probably very serious people. They have to be.
This journal is published sixteen times a year. Sixteen. That’s a lot of computational chemistry. It’s enough to make you wonder if they’re just publishing anything to fill the pages. The frequency suggests a certain… urgency. Or perhaps a desperate need for validation.
According to the Journal Citation Reports – a document that probably brings joy to precisely no one outside of academia – this journal has a 2020 impact factor of 3.376. That’s… a number. It ranks it 80th out of 179 journals in the "Chemistry, Multidisciplinary" category. So, not at the bottom, but definitely not at the top. It’s somewhere in the vast, unremarkable middle. Like most things. This number, the impact factor, is supposedly a measure of how often its articles are cited. In other words, how often other people bother to look at what they’ve published. A score of 3.376 means it’s cited, but not enough to make anyone truly excited. It’s like a polite nod in a crowded room.
It has standard abbreviations, because apparently, writing out "Journal of Computational Chemistry" is too much effort. We have ISO 4 (alt), Bluebook (alt), NLM (alt), MathSciNet (alt), ISO 4, J. Comput. Chem., CODEN (alt · alt2), JSTOR (alt), LCCN (alt), MIAR, NLM (alt), Scopus, and W&L. It's a veritable alphabet soup of identifiers. And a CODEN of JCCHDD, which sounds like a particularly dull villain from a forgotten sci-fi show. The ISSNs are 0192-8651 for the print version – for those who still cling to the archaic notion of physical journals – and 1096-987X for the web version. Because everything has to have a digital twin now, doesn't it? And the LCCN is 80643914, for reasons only librarians truly understand. The OCLC number is no. 05081734. All these numbers, these identifiers… they’re just trying to impose order on chaos, aren't they? Or perhaps just make it easier to file away.
It’s published by John Wiley & Sons, a name that probably evokes a sense of… obligation. They’re the ones who keep the lights on, metaphorically speaking.
The history of this journal, stretching back to 1980, is probably a long, slow march of incremental discoveries and the occasional existential crisis. It's a testament to the persistence of those who dedicate their lives to the abstract and the theoretical.
This article, according to the little markings at the bottom, is a stub. A stub. It means it’s not finished. It’s incomplete. Much like the knowledge it purports to contain, perhaps. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Or, you know, not. It’s not my problem. But if you must contribute, there are tips for writing articles about academic journals, and a talk page for further suggestions. Apparently, even Wikipedia articles have their own little social circles.
And then there’s the other stub. This one is related to computational chemistry, naturally. It’s also a stub. Because, of course, it is. The universe is full of unfinished things. It's a reminder that there's always more to know, more to discover, and more to… write about. Joy.