Prof Jian DING, the Editor-in-Chief, gave a speech (image provided by SIMM)

The 30th anniversary celebration of Acta Pharmacologica Sinica (APS) in conjunction with the executive council of Chinese Pharmacological Society (CPS) was held in Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) from 31 Aug to 1 Sep 2010.

We are very happy to invite Prof Guang-sheng DING, the honorary Editor-in-Chief of APS, Prof Kai-xian CHEN, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof Jian DING, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Prof Xi-can TANG, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Prof Chang-xiao LIU, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Prof Guan-hua DU, President of Chinese Pharmacological Society, Mr Jian-jun CHENG, Secretary of Party Committee of SIMM, Mr Antonie BOCQUET, Associate Director of Nature Publishing Group Asia-Pacific and Ms Meg FITZPATRICK, Publishing Manager of Nature Publishing Group Asia-Pacific to participate in this celebration. Many editorial board members of APS, executive members of CPS and friendly colleagues in the periodical field also attended this council.

With the ardent applause of the audiences, Prof Jian-ping ZUO, the associate Editor-in-Chief of APS, announced the start of the 30th anniversary celebration of APS. Firstly, Ms Min-shu WU, the managing editor, introduced the development of APS in the past thirty years. APS, sponsored by CPS and SIMM, made a great contribution to the development in the field of pharmacological science of our country with the help of the editorial board members from all over the world in the past 30 years. From 2009, APS is co-published with NPG, which was a mile stone for the international publication; now the latest impact factor is 1.783. APS is also supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Scientific Publishing Foundation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the China Association for Science and Technology.

Prof Jian DING said: “we have been working hard to develop APS as a China’s leading international journal in pharmacology and pharmacy in the past 30 years and achieved good progress in the following aspects: international cooperation, increase of the impact factor, organization of the special issues, and rapid publication. However, we also faced a great challenge in an open market, and there are considerable difficulties in the future”. Prof DING hoped that APS be the leading journal in China and gain more successes.

In this meeting, some experts who made a prominent contribution to the development of APS were presented the outstanding contribution award and the most highly cited paper award for 2010. Furthermore, the lifetime achievement award was presented to Prof Guang-sheng DING. Finally there were some invited lectures from the oversea members of the editorial board. All the audiences enjoyed the presentations and discussion.

In the afternoon, Prof Jian DING chaired the second meeting of the 7th editorial board of APS. All the participants expressed their appreciation on the international development of APS. There were a hot discussion about how to appeal high-quality papers, how to focus on the hot topics, and how to organize a special issue. The editorial board members presented many helpful suggestions to APS.