Journal of Natural Products Discovery (JNPD): Covering Natural Products Research From A New Perspective

Abstract

Natural products have long been utilized as a source of food, medicine and other commercially important materials and products, and because of this, natural products, from plants, microbes or animals, have been studied extensively in the ever-ending search for new products, particularly new drug candidates. Historically, several ‘block buster’ drugs like the anticancer drugs taxol, vincristine and vinblastine, antibiotics like penicillins and cephalosporins, and the narcotic analgesic morphine were discovered from natural sources, either from plants or microbes.

Over the last couple of decades, particularly since the appearance of the ‘open access’ platform, the number of journals that claim to cover research in the area of natural products has mushroomed. However, with the exception of a few reputed journals in this area, most of the other journals have become just a business venture, they charge large sum of money from the authors in the name of so called ‘page charge’, ‘processing charge’ or ‘publication charge’, and publish almost anything and everything without assessing the quality of publications. Most often, all these publications are repetitive, the same findings in a new package or even shamelessly plagiarised from previously published articles and have little or no applied scientific values. Moreover, most of the journals catering for natural products research cover mainly academic research without any tangible outcomes or discoveries that can lead to product development.   

Journal of Natural Products Discovery (JNPD), which is the official journal of the Centre for Natural Products Discovery (CNPD) at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), will stand out from the crowd because of its product-discovery-focussed approach. The coverage will be focussed more to discoveries of new products or new applications of already known natural products in relation to food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and other commercial products.

The Centre for Natural Products Discovery (CNPD) was founded within the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences at LJMU about three years ago with the aim to facilitate world-class research in natural products discovery impacting on societal, national and global needs. This centre has already organised successfully two international conferences in 2020 and 2021, and the third anniversary conference will be held in March 2022.  A brand-new MSc programme in Natural Products Discovery was launched last year, as a part of the initiatives from CNPD to embed natural products research and to disseminate knowledge at various levels.  Similarly, a monthly research newsletter was also launched a year ago to capture various activities of the centre. Publication of this new journal will further strengthen the activities of the centre and this journal will become one of the main outlets for communicating our research activities to a wider audience using the open access platform, sponsored by the LJMU Library.

In this connection, we gratefully acknowledge the outstanding support and assistance that we have received from Ms Catherine Dishman to establish this platform and set up the journal online submission system. We would also like to express our gratitude to our colleague Dr Jose Prieto Garcia (Executive Editor-in-Chief), who worked closely with Catherine, all other colleagues of the CNPD and us to establish this journal, and to make this very first issue possible. This journal is in open access, and there is no charge whatsoever levied to the authors, meaning the publication in this journal is completely free!

We hope this journal will grow rapidly as one of the leading journals in the field of natural products research and will attract the finest quality publications from researcher from all over the world.