Preprints and Scholarly Communication in Chemistry: A look at ChemRxiv

In August 2016, the American Chemical Society (ACS) announced its plans to develop a chemistry preprint service, and that it was seeking collaborators as well as input from all stakeholders to ensure that the service met the needs of the chemical community [1]. A year later, nearly to the day, on 14 August 2017, the ACS and its collaborative partners, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the German Chemical Society (GDCh), launched the beta version of ChemRxiv (pronounced ‘chem-archive’), as a non-profit, free service for chemists around the globe. All three partners are supplying financial support. But why chemistry and why now, more than a quarter of a century after the first preprint server, arXiv, was launched to serve the fields of physics, mathematics, astronomy, and computer science? (Coincidentally, arXiv was also launched on August 14th) [2]. To answer these questions, I spoke with Dr. Darla Henderson, ACS’ Assistant Director of Open Access Programs, who brought me up-to-date on the status of ChemRxiv as it approached its first birthday.

150 Years of Chemical Society in Germany

In 2017, the German Chemical Society (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, GDCh) celebrated the 150th anniversary of the creation the older of its two predecessor organizations, the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft.