The story of a unique experiment

On May 21, 2010, ChemistryViews.org was launched in Paris during a spectacular symposium with four Nobel laureates and many other leading scientists. ChemistryViews started that day with around 50 articles and a live broadcast of the event.

Not only was its start unique and visionary, so was the idea itself: 16 European chemical societies from Sweden to Portugal and from Poland to The Netherlands joined together to inform, educate, inspire, and connect chemists of all ages from around the world, from all fields, and from all generations. Under the auspices of ChemPubSoc Europe, they had already gained experience in publishing high-quality peer-reviewed journals such as Chemistry – A European Journal. However, starting an online portal with a companion magazine similar to national membership magazines was a different story. The idea was to create an online, free-to-read service for scientists worldwide, to provide information and insights on the activities of the societies and the global chemistry community, and to bring societies as well as chemists worldwide closer together for a better exchange of knowledge and ideas.

 

Where are we now after five years?

ChemistryViews communicates research, economics, tips, and interesting stories. Over the last five years of publishing news items, interviews, commentaries, videos, interactive features, and virtual events, it has attracted 2 million visitors. They have told us that they use ChemistryViews to get an overview of what is new and worthy of further investigation, to locate upcoming conferences and meetings, and to view teaching materials.

With one-third of our users each coming from Asia, the Americas, and Europe – with the US being the country with the most visits – we have achieved global coverage and exposure from our European base. Over the years we have received a lot of support. In the beginning, all of our content was commissioned and we had to actively look for the latest research, new trends, promising projects and ideas, fascinating people, and interesting stories. We still do this, of course, to maintain a good balance of content, but we also receive an increasing number of excellent suggestions from researchers and companies, and I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of ChemistryViews and ChemPubSoc Europe to thank all our partners for this valuable input. We are delighted to see that our content is being used by researchers, students, teachers, and journalists.

 

The Best of ChemistryViews, 2010–2015

To celebrate our fifth anniversary, we have chosen five representative past contributions to showcase the work of our award-winning editorial team and our many visiting authors. In addition, for the next five months on the 21st of each month we will highlight another article, video, or interactive feature from the archives along with our newly created features.

Best of 2010–2015
1. The Chemistry of Breaking Bad (Chemistry in Daily Life)
2. Women in Chemistry Interview series (Interviews)
3. Tips and Tricks for the Lab (Education)
4. Wonderlab Comic (Fun)
5. Guess the Chemist quiz (Interactive Features)

 

What do we hope to achieve in the future?

Our world faces major challenges — such as those involving clean water, energy, and food — that chemists and chemistry can hopefully help to overcome. In addition, the way we communicate is changing. For chemists and chemical companies, it is becoming more important to use social media and other creative ways to get their messages and ideas heard in a nosier world. We will continue to play an active role in this by filtering, selecting, informing, introducing, and inspiring scientists.

We look forward to offering you many new surprises – surprises we are working on to make ChemistryViews.org even more appealing and useful to you. But we are also looking forward to the surprises chemistry has in store for us. We are sure there will be plenty of exciting new examples to communicate how fascinating and important but also challenging chemistry is, both for the advancement of science and for everyday life. And as most of us also like a bit of fun and community gossip, we will continue to provide this for you, too.

 

Time to celebrate!

I am very grateful for having had the chance to run and promote this experiment from the very beginning. I have worked with many dedicated, interesting, and great people; met extraordinary individuals such as Nobel Laureates, young and highly motivated graduates, and representatives from both academia and industry; and have learned a lot. Running and managing ChemistryViews.org often feels like a 24/7 job — not only for me, but also for the whole editorial, marketing, and sales team. However, we really love it: It feels like being right at the heart of exciting research and great ideas. We are very happy to see how well our child has grown up. Many thanks to you, our loyal readers, users, society partners, supporters, fans, and critics. Without your ongoing interest and help this experiment would not have been as successful as it is today. Happy birthday to all of us!

Dr. Vera Koester
Editor-in-Chief