[Goala]

We are doing seminar presentations, and my Professor doesn't want us to use ANY articles in th Journal of Medicinal Chemistry...

Why is that? She says it isn't a good journal.. is that true?

[discodermolide]

Of course it is a very good Journal. But it is concerned with Medicinal chemistry where Organic chemistry is not really discussed. The authors concentrate more on the biological properties of the molecules and structure activity relationships.
Anyway why did you not ask your professor to justify this remark? She will not bite.

[curiouscat]

She will not bite.

I won't be so sure. They can be feral.

[discodermolide]

If she is going to make a statement like that then I think it should be justified, otherwise you just get the students confused like the OP.
Asking costs nothing. Anyway you can always bite back.

[curiouscat]

If she is going to make a statement like that then I think it should be justified, otherwise you just get the students confused like the OP.

I agree with you. I was being facetious.

Anyway you can always bite back.

Even better.

[fledarmus]

Good answer, Discodermolide.

The chemistry in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry is usually pretty basic - chemists working on medicinal chemistry projects are typically using workhouse reactions to make testable quantities of material and aren't particularly interested in optimizing reaction conditions to get high yields. As long as the reaction gives enough material to put into a vial, that's good enough. Identification of the materials and structural proofs are very important, however, so the analytical data for the compounds is as good as any other chemistry journal, and better than most.

If you are interested in newly discovered chemistry or in optimization of chemical reactions for particular substrates, J Med Chem isn't a particularly good starting point.