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Quality manuscripts in analytical chemistry
Talanta 57 (2002) 601– 603 www.elsevier.com/locate/talanta
Letter
Quality manuscripts in analytical chemistry Peter T. Kissinger a, Jean-Michel Kauffmann b,* b
a Bioanalytical Systems, Inc and Purdue Uni6ersity, West Lafayette, IN, USA Institut de Pharmacie, Uni6ersite´ Libre de Bruxelles, Campus Plaine CP 205 /6, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
Received 22 January 2002; received in revised form 4 February 2002; accepted 5 February 2002
There have been many concerns lately about the quality of papers in analytical chemistry journals. Some are highly repetitive with earlier work, employ out of date technology, or simply do not justify publication in an international journal. We offer our opinions on what constitutes the best publications in this field. This is designed to help scientists to do good science and stimulate discussion. We fully expect others to disagree in some respects. Both of us have published papers over the past 25 years that we would like to ‘take back’ from the journals because we were less attentive to the way the work was presented than we should have been. Now that we think we have achieved more wisdom (have we?), we are taking the bold step to share it. The key to a quality analytical chemistry paper is to have a clear purpose. That purpose should not solely be to get another listing in the Curriculum Vitae or to make a graduate student feel like a professional. That purpose must include a brief survey of literature in the field and a fair comparison with existing methodology to present a clear reason for the new approach. The work should not be described in relativistic terms like faster, better, cheaper, or better ‘sensitivity’…. A method that is 2 min faster than a 30-min method is not an advance. A method that gives a detection limit * Corresponding author. Fax: + 32-2-6505225. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.-M. Kauffman).
higher or a selectivity lower than what is required is not productive except to demonstrate that the method will not work and to keep others from trying it. One more ‘fast, sensitive, inexpensive method for compound x’ is not needed if it provides only a trivial improvement to 100 other published papers. Just because something has been done, or something can be done, does not mean it should be published. One key point to evaluate first: Is the paper most important as a method or is it really valuable because it contains some data of interest to the analytical community and/or to the end users (for example data on a new drug or a new pesticide). Analytical papers focus on instrumentation, on the determination of given analytes, they describe a specific application or a new methodological concept. In many papers, there is no data of archival value; thus the methodological aspects must be very clearly advantageous. The ideal paper would both contain data that would interest other scientists AND novel methodology. Both are not required, good data from existing methodology is still good data. Often the data is of limited interest and results from contrived samples, such as a drug spiked in blood, a trace metal or a pesticide spiked in river water etc… Papers dealing with specific applications should study real samples and if those are not available or contrived, publication of the paper is discouraged because of unproven usefulness. Spiking a drug or
0039-9140/02/$ - see front matter © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. PII: S 0 0 3 9 - 9 1 4 0 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 5 1 - 6
602
P.T. Kissinger, J.-M. Kauffmann / Talanta 57 (2002) 601–603
a trace metal in urine samples and subsequently determining the analyte is a good example of poor quality paper (PQP) since no care is taken on the extent of metabolism (metabolites might interfere) and final form(s) (no speciation) of the parent species. PQP are also encountered when developing a method and illustrating its applicability, for example, on pesticides or trace metals spiked in river samples at concentrations not likely encountered in real situations. If the data is simply to validate/demonstrate the method, it may not be of much interest to future readers and users. Tables of such numbers, for example, serve little purpose. We will not address the matter of validation here since it has been so extensively covered in recent years but it is clear that good quality papers (GQP) require special attention to international guidelines, make use of reference materials (if available) and contain a thorough study of all the parameters which may affect the accuracy of the assay and particularly its selectivity. GQP would gain great benefit by paying attention to requirements of end users and professionals to whom the work is addressed. Cost is an elusive notion, especially to academics. Those of us in industry recognize that instruments are cheap and people are expensive. Getting to the needed result, quickly and unambiguously saves the most money. We also often have to deal with ‘regulatory requirements’ from government agencies which insist on bureaucratic ‘levels of validation’ that may or may not be reasonable. Quite often a method based on mass spectrometry that is available today is far superior (including less costly) than constructing a sensor which often lacks analytical robustness. This is especially true in analytical control laboratories, no one would ever, for example, determine a drug in urine with cyclic voltammetry or UV spectrophotometry, considering the power of liquid chromatography (LC). Sensors may have attractive features though, provided that their performances are not equal but clearly superior to good analytical methods available or if they allow unique applications to be performed (in vivo, remote sensing, etc.). Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is an extremely powerful tool if judiciously
applied, but too often, papers on CE try to match LC applications in a repetitive manner and show no real advantage over LC. GQP may deal with time saving methods such as high throughput screening instrumentation and chemometrics when more specific methods are slow. Yet chemometric approaches devoted to some complex spectroscopy or electrochemistry analyses, otherwise readily solved by separation methods, are of limited appeal. A method that would never be used is not an inexpensive method, but rather a worthless method. This is a special problem for chemists in developing countries where the latest technology may not be available. There is however a niche for GQPs dealing with ‘simple’ innovative analytical methodology for specific analytes. Likewise, some analytical data from appropriate spectroscopic and electroanalytical technologies may be advantageously exploited by others in ‘high tech’ applications. A good analytical chemist knows measurement tools broadly and perhaps a few deeply, just like a carpenter. If you try to cut wood with a hammer and hit nails with a saw, you get the same result as when you try to develop a fluorescence method for a non-fluorescing compound or use a titration for a drug in urine. Proper education in the general tools available for analytical chemistry, their drawbacks and limitations, is mandatory. It is best to not publish titles filled with adverbs and adjectives such as ‘A Rapid Low Cost Sensitive High Performance Method for Ascorbic Acid in Orange Juice Using Laser mTAS’ when it is totally incapable of competing with readily available methods published 30 years ago. It perhaps would be ‘A Totally Impractical Method for Ascorbic Acid Using a 100 kg Instrument That Works Only 1 Day Per Week.’ When terrific new technology is explored, that is enough. It is not desirable to pretend it is useful today. It should be clear that examples are chosen for illustrative purposes and not to suggest a definitive practical method. Doing this diminishes the value of what otherwise might be highly innovative and interesting work. It is absurd, for example, to continue to refer to ‘high performance’ liquid chromatogra-
P.T. Kissinger, J.-M. Kauffmann / Talanta 57 (2002) 601–603
phy when that performance is now routine and has been for over 30 years. Recent thorough papers that provide useful practical advice and stimulate discussions in GQP may be advantageously scrutinized [1– 3].
603
References [1] R.A. Chalmers, Talanta 40 (1993) 121. [2] C.A. Lucy, Talanta 51 (2000) 1125. [3] P.T. Kissinger, www.contract pharma, Jan/Feb 54(2002).
Letter
Quality manuscripts in analytical chemistry Peter T. Kissinger a, Jean-Michel Kauffmann b,* b
a Bioanalytical Systems, Inc and Purdue Uni6ersity, West Lafayette, IN, USA Institut de Pharmacie, Uni6ersite´ Libre de Bruxelles, Campus Plaine CP 205 /6, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
Received 22 January 2002; received in revised form 4 February 2002; accepted 5 February 2002
There have been many concerns lately about the quality of papers in analytical chemistry journals. Some are highly repetitive with earlier work, employ out of date technology, or simply do not justify publication in an international journal. We offer our opinions on what constitutes the best publications in this field. This is designed to help scientists to do good science and stimulate discussion. We fully expect others to disagree in some respects. Both of us have published papers over the past 25 years that we would like to ‘take back’ from the journals because we were less attentive to the way the work was presented than we should have been. Now that we think we have achieved more wisdom (have we?), we are taking the bold step to share it. The key to a quality analytical chemistry paper is to have a clear purpose. That purpose should not solely be to get another listing in the Curriculum Vitae or to make a graduate student feel like a professional. That purpose must include a brief survey of literature in the field and a fair comparison with existing methodology to present a clear reason for the new approach. The work should not be described in relativistic terms like faster, better, cheaper, or better ‘sensitivity’…. A method that is 2 min faster than a 30-min method is not an advance. A method that gives a detection limit * Corresponding author. Fax: + 32-2-6505225. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.-M. Kauffman).
higher or a selectivity lower than what is required is not productive except to demonstrate that the method will not work and to keep others from trying it. One more ‘fast, sensitive, inexpensive method for compound x’ is not needed if it provides only a trivial improvement to 100 other published papers. Just because something has been done, or something can be done, does not mean it should be published. One key point to evaluate first: Is the paper most important as a method or is it really valuable because it contains some data of interest to the analytical community and/or to the end users (for example data on a new drug or a new pesticide). Analytical papers focus on instrumentation, on the determination of given analytes, they describe a specific application or a new methodological concept. In many papers, there is no data of archival value; thus the methodological aspects must be very clearly advantageous. The ideal paper would both contain data that would interest other scientists AND novel methodology. Both are not required, good data from existing methodology is still good data. Often the data is of limited interest and results from contrived samples, such as a drug spiked in blood, a trace metal or a pesticide spiked in river water etc… Papers dealing with specific applications should study real samples and if those are not available or contrived, publication of the paper is discouraged because of unproven usefulness. Spiking a drug or
0039-9140/02/$ - see front matter © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. PII: S 0 0 3 9 - 9 1 4 0 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 5 1 - 6
602
P.T. Kissinger, J.-M. Kauffmann / Talanta 57 (2002) 601–603
a trace metal in urine samples and subsequently determining the analyte is a good example of poor quality paper (PQP) since no care is taken on the extent of metabolism (metabolites might interfere) and final form(s) (no speciation) of the parent species. PQP are also encountered when developing a method and illustrating its applicability, for example, on pesticides or trace metals spiked in river samples at concentrations not likely encountered in real situations. If the data is simply to validate/demonstrate the method, it may not be of much interest to future readers and users. Tables of such numbers, for example, serve little purpose. We will not address the matter of validation here since it has been so extensively covered in recent years but it is clear that good quality papers (GQP) require special attention to international guidelines, make use of reference materials (if available) and contain a thorough study of all the parameters which may affect the accuracy of the assay and particularly its selectivity. GQP would gain great benefit by paying attention to requirements of end users and professionals to whom the work is addressed. Cost is an elusive notion, especially to academics. Those of us in industry recognize that instruments are cheap and people are expensive. Getting to the needed result, quickly and unambiguously saves the most money. We also often have to deal with ‘regulatory requirements’ from government agencies which insist on bureaucratic ‘levels of validation’ that may or may not be reasonable. Quite often a method based on mass spectrometry that is available today is far superior (including less costly) than constructing a sensor which often lacks analytical robustness. This is especially true in analytical control laboratories, no one would ever, for example, determine a drug in urine with cyclic voltammetry or UV spectrophotometry, considering the power of liquid chromatography (LC). Sensors may have attractive features though, provided that their performances are not equal but clearly superior to good analytical methods available or if they allow unique applications to be performed (in vivo, remote sensing, etc.). Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is an extremely powerful tool if judiciously
applied, but too often, papers on CE try to match LC applications in a repetitive manner and show no real advantage over LC. GQP may deal with time saving methods such as high throughput screening instrumentation and chemometrics when more specific methods are slow. Yet chemometric approaches devoted to some complex spectroscopy or electrochemistry analyses, otherwise readily solved by separation methods, are of limited appeal. A method that would never be used is not an inexpensive method, but rather a worthless method. This is a special problem for chemists in developing countries where the latest technology may not be available. There is however a niche for GQPs dealing with ‘simple’ innovative analytical methodology for specific analytes. Likewise, some analytical data from appropriate spectroscopic and electroanalytical technologies may be advantageously exploited by others in ‘high tech’ applications. A good analytical chemist knows measurement tools broadly and perhaps a few deeply, just like a carpenter. If you try to cut wood with a hammer and hit nails with a saw, you get the same result as when you try to develop a fluorescence method for a non-fluorescing compound or use a titration for a drug in urine. Proper education in the general tools available for analytical chemistry, their drawbacks and limitations, is mandatory. It is best to not publish titles filled with adverbs and adjectives such as ‘A Rapid Low Cost Sensitive High Performance Method for Ascorbic Acid in Orange Juice Using Laser mTAS’ when it is totally incapable of competing with readily available methods published 30 years ago. It perhaps would be ‘A Totally Impractical Method for Ascorbic Acid Using a 100 kg Instrument That Works Only 1 Day Per Week.’ When terrific new technology is explored, that is enough. It is not desirable to pretend it is useful today. It should be clear that examples are chosen for illustrative purposes and not to suggest a definitive practical method. Doing this diminishes the value of what otherwise might be highly innovative and interesting work. It is absurd, for example, to continue to refer to ‘high performance’ liquid chromatogra-
P.T. Kissinger, J.-M. Kauffmann / Talanta 57 (2002) 601–603
phy when that performance is now routine and has been for over 30 years. Recent thorough papers that provide useful practical advice and stimulate discussions in GQP may be advantageously scrutinized [1– 3].
603
References [1] R.A. Chalmers, Talanta 40 (1993) 121. [2] C.A. Lucy, Talanta 51 (2000) 1125. [3] P.T. Kissinger, www.contract pharma, Jan/Feb 54(2002).