Natural Product Communications (NPC) has now entered its seventh year of publication and has become a major venue for the rapid publication of high quality natural products research, including organic, medicinal, pharmaceutical, bioorganic, analytical, theoretical, biotechnological and chemotaxonomic aspects. NPC has continued to make progress in terms of publishing more peer-reviewed articles and has attracted an ever increasing global audience of authors, research investigators, and scholars, as indicated by the increasing number of submissions and published papers, and also from the web statistics. NPC is a SCI cited journal with an impact factor in 2010 of 0.894. This has only been possible due to the large number of high quality submissions and the invaluable contribution of the reviewers, without whom we would be unable to function. We are very grateful to all the authors and reviewers for helping NPC to become known to the community of scientists around the world.

During 2011, we published two themed issues dedicated to “Some Important Aspects of Natural Products” and “Synthesis of Natural Products: Biomimetic Strategies and Use of Natural Occurring Starting Synthons”, and two special issues “NPC-SILAE” and “NPC-CIPAM” incorporating selected manuscripts originating from the meeting of the “Italo-Latin American Society of Ethnomedicine (SILAE)” and the “3rd International Congress on Aromatic and Medicinal Plants, CIPAM2011”.

An honorarium issue to commemorate the birthday of an internationally renowned natural product researcher and a founding editor of Natural Product Communications, Professor Gerald Blunden was also published. The “Gerald Blunden Award” for 2011 will be for the best paper and for 2012 for the best review. The award for 2011 will be announced in May 2012 at the time of Prof. Blunden’s Anniversary and a similar pattern will be followed in consecutive years. As a rule, an award of US$ 500, accompanied by a free print subscription for that year will be awarded to the recipient. The panel of judges for the prizes will consist of the Editorial Board Members of the journal, whose decision will be final. We are pleased to mention that we are committed to placing this journal at the forefront for the dissemination of novel and exciting natural products research and NPC will be proud to recognize other eminent scientists by dedicating an issue in their honour, and suggestions would be welcomed. We look forward to receiving your submissions and to receiving feedback.

For the information of our authors and readers, we have to announce some changes to the Editorial Board and Editorial Board of Advisors. Leaving the Editorial Board of Advisors are Professors A. A. Lesli Gunatilaka and Peter G. Waterman. We thank both of them for their support. We are, however, pleased to report that as of January 2012, Professor Alejandro F. Barrero, Department of Organic Chemistry, University of Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain, will be joining the Editorial Board, bringing considerable expertise and experience, particularly in synthetic aspects of natural products. Professors Ana Cristina Figueiredo, Luca Rastrelli, John Sorensen and Sylvia Urban will be joining the Editorial Advisory Board. We welcome them all and look forward to working with them.

Dr Pawan K. Agrawal
Professor Gerald Blunden (Honorary)
Professor Alessandra Braca
Professor Dean Guo
Professor Yoshihiro Mimaki
Professor Stephen G. Pyne
Professor Manfred G. Reinecke
Professor William N. Setzer
Associate Professor Yasuhiro Tezuka
Professor David E. Thurston