American Chemical Society announces intention to establish “ChemRxiv” preprint server to promote early research sharing

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10, 2016 — The American Chemical Society (ACS) today announced its intention to form ChemRxiv, a chemistry preprint server for the global chemistry community, proposed as a collaborative undertaking that will facilitate the open dissemination of important scientific findings. The Society is presently in the process of inviting interested stakeholders to participate in helping to shape the service ahead of its anticipated launch.

ChemRxiv is expected to follow the established models of arXiv in physics and bioRxiv in the life sciences by enabling researchers working across diverse areas of inquiry to share early results and data with their scientist-colleagues ahead of formal peer review and publication,” says Kevin Davies, Ph.D., who, as Vice President within the ACS Publications Division, will be spearheading the effort as part of a joint undertaking with the Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service. “Preprints are fully citable and are freely accessible preliminary communications, aimed to advance the pace of scientific discovery and information dissemination. The chemistry community has a growing interest in such open sharing to aid researchers in establishing recognition and priority for their research discoveries, while also providing a mechanism to elicit informal feedback from other scientists to help in shaping their ongoing work.”

“The ACS is advancing the concept for ChemRxiv, as doing so aligns with key aspects of our Society’s mission and goals, notably the advancement of science through the dissemination of indispensable chemistry-related information worldwide,” says Thomas Connelly Jr., Ph.D., ACS Executive Director and CEO. “Furthermore, in keeping with our mission of service to the global chemistry community, the American Chemical Society recognizes there is considerable merit in pursuing ChemRxiv as a multi-organization venture — with an eye toward interoperability with various sources of chemistry-related information. Accordingly, we invite interested parties to become potential co-organizers and sponsors, and will be engaging in a broad consultation to help shape the scope, governance and operating principles for ChemRxiv as a collaborative endeavor.”

From initial market research and expert feedback, including advice and encouragement from editors-in-chief of ACS Journals, the Society has identified broad support for the launch of a chemistry preprint server. Over the coming months, and in collaboration with potential partners, a full evaluation will be completed to ensure ChemRxiv supports the specific needs of the chemistry-research and publishing community.

“An ACS-sponsored chemistry preprint server would be an important and forward-looking contribution to the global community and to science,” says Laura Kiessling, Ph.D., Steenbock Professor of Chemistry and the Laurens Anderson Professor of Biochemistry, Director of the Keck Center for Chemical Genomics at the University of Wisconsin and the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Chemical Biology.

“Conceptually, preprint servers could solve one problem we face today in academic publishing related to peer review,” says Paul Alivisatos, University of California, Berkeley’s Samsung Distinguished Professor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Director of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Nano Letters. “By its nature, peer review can be a trade-off between time and quality. The availability of a chemistry preprint server would provide researchers a speedy mechanism by which to share their results and data, and would, in turn, allow peer reviewers and journal editors to focus their efforts on assessing the scientific accuracy and quality of research articles prior to formal journal publication. … Given the popularity of preprint servers in physics and now biology, chemistry will have a preprint server. It is a positive move by the ACS to foster this initiative in this way,” Alivisatos affirmed.

For further detail see:

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2016/august/acs-announces-intention-to-establish-chemrxiv-preprint-server-to-promote-early-research-sharing.html

Taylor & Francis Online unveil new ejournal platform

Taylor & Francis have updated their ejournal platform at Taylor & Francis Online.

T&FO

The new search functionality highlights articles from within the Taylor & Francis collection as well as allowing searching by journal title.

Hem article T&FThe list of search results will include content which is available to members of the University of Cambridge amongst content to which we do not have subscriptions.

Content which is accessible off campus through Raven authentication, or on campus from a networked PC, can be identified by a green triangle containing a tick in the bottom right hand corner of the result screen record. If there is no tick then we do not have access to the article.

OA TFOpen access articles are indicated by an orange triangle with an open padlock at the bottom right hand side of the result screen records.

The refine options, on the left hand side of the results screen, offer a way to limit the results to ‘Only show content I have full access to’ (this functionality may not be working correctly at present).

Fict selvesWhen you click a ‘green ticked’ article title the first page of the full text  or an abstract will appear. A green circle with a tick denoting ‘Full access’ appears on the right of the article screen, a little above the title.

Any key words from your initial search will be highlighted in grey throughout the text.

Some of the articles can be read online, but some will need to be downloaded as PDFs in order to see the full text. To open a PDF you need to click on the green PDF icon.

LiesIf you try to access an article to which we do not have access via subscription you will see the same type of article screen as you would for a full access article.

The important difference with the screens is that articles we cannot access will not have the green circle with the tick and will have an orange icon marked ‘Get access’ next to the green PDF icon.

The two examples of articles shown above are both from the journal ‘a/b: auto/biography studies’, but we have access to only one of the articles from the title. To investigate this further you could quickly check the ejournals A-Z and see that our holdings are from 1997 to present, holdings can also be checked on the Taylor & Francis platform by searching for the journal title on the search bar on the home page.

ab journalsThe default results screen view is for article titles, but there is a ‘Journals’ tab is now also visible. Navigating to the journal page will offer a view of the most recent articles and various links to information about the title.

To see the list of available issues it is necessary to scroll down to a link to ‘See all volumes and issues’ on the right hand side of the screen. The list of volumes and issues needs to be expanded in order to view our access rights. A green triangle with a tick will appear next to any volumes that can be accessed. If there is no green triangle tick then there is no access available.

accessThe first article shown above appears in  vol 31, issue 2 (2016)  and the second article is in vol 9, issue 1 (1994).

As it is common for journals to have frontfile (current) material from around  1997 onwards and backfile (archive) material up to around 1996 a check of the volumes for 1996 and 1997 gives you an indication that our access is only to frontfile volumes. This will not apply to all ejournals we have access to and holdings information can be more clearly seen in the ejournals A-Z or iDiscover

European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750

European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750

is now available via the Cambridge LibGuides Databases A-Z here:

http://libguides.cam.ac.uk/go.php?c=24018434

This is an authoritative bibliography that is well-known and respected by scholars worldwide. The database contains more than 32,000 entries and is a comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750. It covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of Native American peoples.

The database is derived from the seminal reference work, European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1750. Commonly known as the Alden-Landis bibliography (after the co-editors John Alden and Dennis Landis), this reference work features documents produced in Europe that make some mention of the discovery and emerging awareness of the Americas. The work is arranged in chronological order across six volumes. The database is searchable by every category of information found within the printed volumes and will be an invaluable resource for researchers interested in the subject.

By Michelle Walz Eriksson – originally posted to Flickr as View of Haitian Landscape, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8689804