June 20, 2025 | This article will appear in Volume 61, Issue 1
It is wonderful to see continued strong leadership at the helm of our flagship journal in natural products science! Distinguished Professor Bradley Moore from the University of California San Diego has started his term as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Natural Products with a vision of continuing the trajectory of our previous editors-in-chief, namely staying current with the newly emerging dimensions of natural products while maintaining the highest levels of rigor and ethics in scientific research.
In the words of Professor Doug Kinghorn, the longest serving editor-in-chief of the journal, “After five very successful years with Phil Proteau at the helm, the Journal of Natural Products is very fortunate that Brad Moore has been appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief. Brad is not only a world-leading natural products scientist but also has many years of service as a journal editor. Under his stewardship, it may be expected that the journal will continue to publish articles on the isolation and synthesis of bioactive constituents of marine and terrestrial organisms, as well as their biosynthesis, but with newer technical areas also being featured, such as those involving big data, bioengineering, integrated omics, and machine learning.”
“As in other leadership roles, Brad will seek to make changes that improve the quality and exposure of the journal. His broad knowledge of the field and connections with leading researchers will no doubt allow him to bring exciting new perspectives to the Journal of Natural Products.” -Paul Jensen, PhD
As Kinghorn aptly points out, our field of natural products science continues to be relevant, impactful and vigorous because we continue to evolve and bring in new thinking, new tools, and new research objectives. Moore is the ideal person to lead our society into the coming era through this editor-in-chief position.
Moore brings a wealth of editorial experience to the editor-in-chief position. He served as the commissioning editor and chair of the editorial board of Natural Products Reports and then as associate editor for Organic Letters. He also has been a highly productive editor of his own work which numbers over 400 published research papers that have been cited nearly 35,000 times. As a profuse author himself, Moore will be working to streamline the journal’s review process so as to provide authors with timely responses to their submitted articles.
Each editor-in-chief brings their own style and emphasis to the journal, and while it can be predicted that we will see broadening of the editorial scope of published work in the coming years, exactly what trajectory this takes will be exciting to see. In the words of Moore’s close colleague at Scripps, Professor Paul Jensen: “As in other leadership roles, Brad will seek to make changes that improve the quality and exposure of the journal. His broad knowledge of the field and connections with leading researchers will no doubt allow him to bring exciting new perspectives to the Journal of Natural Products.”
Furthering this, Moore notes in his recent interview on this topic, “I want to engage all scientific communities that engage in natural products science—including discovery, synthesis, biosynthesis, synthetic biology, biocatalysis, pharmacology, ecology, big data—and for the Journal of Natural Products to become the melting pot of our dynamic field.”
Knowing Moore, whichever direction he takes the journal, it will certainly be modern, visionary, forward thinking, and ultimately to the benefit of the journal, the discipline and the American Society of Pharmacognosy.