The number of communications, articles and reviews submitted to Comptes rendus Chimie has never been so high and we are of course delighted by the response of the scientific community. At the same time, this success implies an increasingly severe selection and a sharpening of the Editorial policy since the total number of published pages is limited. A number of reasons can explain the growing attractiveness of Comptes rendus Chimie, such as the steady progress in its readership and impact factor, for which our authors and guest editors (who are in charge of the thematic issues) are responsible, and the easy access to the articles published in Comptes rendus Chimie through the Internet portal “ScienceDirect”.

Notes (preliminary communications) should focus on novel and important results and full papers should report new results and include a detailed experimental section (the deposition of supplementary material is encouraged). In all cases, the work should be of high general interest or of outstanding specialized interest. Consequently, only submissions considered by the Editorial office to meet these main criteria are sent out to referees. We understand the frustrations generated by a rejection not accompanied by detailed comments from the referees but this is the only way to proceed, as also done by many international scientific journals. Short reviews in the form of accounts, focusing on the author(s) research and placed in the context of most important recent advances, are very welcome.

A new section, called Block calendar, was introduced in 2015 at the initiative of Dr. Ioana Fechete, which provides a short comment on major scientists associated with each calendar day. These historical perspectives will be enhanced in 2016, a year during which the Académie des Sciences will celebrate its 350th anniversary, by a short biography of former members who were born in the month of the relevant issue of Comptes rendus Chimie. I am very grateful to Dr. Ioana Fechete for her initiative.

Like in previous years, theme issues have been coordinated by guest editors and those published in 2015 have again covered very diversified fields, in chronological order: International Chemical Engineering Congress (ICEC) 2013: From fundamentals to applied chemistry and biochemistry (by Mejdi Jeguirim and Lionel Limousy), GECat 2014 – Advances and prospects in heterogeneous catalysis (by Benoît Louis, Pascal Fongarland, Olivier Marie, Hugo Petitjean, Élodie Devers, Didier Borremans, Rui Marques, Céline Fontaine, Thomas Onfroy, and Jean-Sébastien Girardon), South Europe–Japan Joint Forum on Inorganic Chemistry and its Interfaces (by Munetaka Akita and Pierre Braunstein), and International Symposium on Air & Water Pollution Abatement Catalysis (AWPAC) with its Volume 1 focusing on Catalytic pollution control for stationary and mobile sources and its Volume 2 on Catalysis for renewable energy (by Patrick Da Costa and Christophe Dujardin). It has been a real pleasure and most rewarding to work with all our authors, referees and guest editors, and we congratulate them for their efforts and support. We always encourage all of you to contribute to the success of Comptes rendus Chimie by being the guest editor of a thematic issue on a topic of your choice.

The quality and diversity of the articles published in Comptes rendus Chimie certainly accounts for the considerable increase in the number of downloads, ca. 179,070 in 2014 and 206,000 in 2015. This indicator represents a very strong encouragement that we are pleased to share with you.

The broad coverage of Comptes rendus Chimie is also apparent from the lists of most accessed articles. The “top-ten” most downloaded articles published in 2014 were:

• “Methanation catalytic reactor” by H. Er-rbib and C. Bouallou,
• “Simple and efficient one-pot solvent-free synthesis of N-methyl imines of aromatic aldehydes” by N.S. Radulovic, A.B. Miltojevic, and R.D. Vukicevic,
• “Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of green tea extract loaded into nanostructured lipid carriers” by A.M. Manea, B.S. Vasile, and A. Meghea,
• “Rice husk: Introduction of a green, cheap and reusable catalyst for the protection of alcohols, phenols, amines and thiols” by F. Shirini, S. Akbari-Dadamahaleh, A. Mohammad-Khah, and A.R. Aliakbar,
• “Grape seed oil extraction: Interest of supercritical fluid extraction and gas-assisted mechanical extraction for enhancing polyphenol co-extraction in oil” by N. Rombaut, R. Savoire, B. Thomasset, T. Belliard, J. Castello, E. van Hecke, and J.-L. Lapoiselle,
• “Bixin extraction from defatted annatto seeds” by L.M. Rodrigues, S.C. Alcazar-Alay, A.J. Petenate, and M.A.A. Meireles,
• “Evaluation of alternative solvents for improvement of oil extraction from rapeseeds” by Y. Li, F. Fine, A.S. Fabiano-Tixier, M. Abert-Vian, P. Carre, X. Pagès, and F. Chemat,
• “Efficient green extraction of polyphenols from post-harvested agro-industry vegetal sources in Piedmont” by L. Aexandru, A. Binello, S. Mantegna, L. Boffa, F. Chemat, and G. Cravotto,
• “Evaluation of a new magnetic zeolite composite for removal of Cs⁺ and Sr²⁺ from aqueous solutions: Kinetic, equilibrium and thermodynamic studies”, by H. Faghihian, M. Moayed, A. Firooz and M. Iravani.

Furthermore, the “top-5” most cited articles published in 2013 were:

• “Hydrogenase enzymes: Applications in biofuel cells and inspiration for the design of noble-metal free catalysts for H₂ oxidation” by P. Chevalier, L. Mugherlu, S. Darbe, L. Darchy, S. DiManno, P.D. Tran, F. Valentino, M. Iannelo, A. Volbeda, C. Carazza, and V. Artero,
• “Synthesis, characterization, thermal, electrochemical, and DFT studies of mononuclear cyclopalladated complexes containing bidentate phosphine ligands and their biological evaluation as antioxidant and antibacterial agents” by S.J. Sabounchei, M. Ahmadi, Z. Nasri, E. Shams, S. Salehzadeh, Y. Gholiee, R. Karamian, M. Asadbegy, and S. Samiee,
• “Synthesis of bis N-heterocyclic carbenes, derivatives and metal complexes” by A. Huffer, B. Jeffery, B.J. Waller, and A.A. Danopoulos,
• “Quantitative characterization of shear force regulation for scanning electrochemical microscopy” by U.M. Tefashe and G. Wittstock,
• “An ultrasound-promoted green approach for the N-formylation of amines under solvent-and catalyst-free conditions at room temperature” by D. Habibi and M. Nasrollahzadeh,

whereas the “top-5” most cited articles published in 2014 were:

• “Extraction of valuable biocompounds assisted by high-voltage electrical discharges: a review” by N. Boussetta and E. Vorobiev,
• “Titanium dioxide nanowires as green and heterogeneous catalysts for the syntheses of novel pyranocoumarins” by S. Khodabakhshi, B. Karami, K. Eskandari, and S.J. Hoseini,
• “Polyphosphoric acid supported on silica-coated NiFe₂0₄ nanoparticles: An efficient and magnetically-recoverable catalyst for N-formylation of amines” by A. Khojastehnezhad, A. Rahimizadeh, F. Moeinpour, F. Eshghi and M. Bakavoli,
• “Identification, quantification and Chrastil modelling of wheat straw wax extraction using supercritical carbon dioxide” by E.H.K. Sin, R. Marriott, A. J. Hunt, and J. H. Clark,
• “Synthesis and studies of calcium channel blocking and antioxidant activities of novel 4-pyridinium and/or N-propargyl substituted 1,4-dihydropyridine derivatives” by M. Rucins et al.

The data concerning the articles published in 2015 were unavailable at the time when this Editorial was written.

We are most grateful to the editorial and production staff of Comptes rendus Chimie, in particular to Marie-Christine Brissot (scientific secretary) and Fatima Messadi, who are in regular contact with our authors and referees. Their dedication and help are invaluable and I have witnessed a dramatic increase of their workload over the past years.

Major changes will occur in 2016 for all the series of Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences, including of course for the chemistry series. They will be published only in electronic format, but individual subscriptions (electronic + hard paper copy) will remain possible. On demand, thematic issues will be produced on hard copies at costs negotiated with the publisher. More importantly, immediate and worldwide free access will be provided to those publications for which the corresponding author is associated with a French laboratory or institution. Such articles can subsequently be deposited by the author in an open data base system, such as HAL (Hyper Article en Ligne). For other publications, a pay-per-view system will be available and free access will be granted after three years.

The continuing development of Comptes rendus Chimie depends on you! Please provide us with your thoughts and suggestions and help us to meet your needs.

I wish you all a happy and most successful year 2016, with exciting chemistry to share with us in this journal!