At age twelve, one is no longer a young child but begins to become a teenager. In this “in-between” state, children are often referred to as “tweens”. Our magazine ChemistryViews is also entering a new phase with its twelfth birthday.

 

A New Design After Twelve Years

The look and feel of ChemistryViews have just been thoroughly improved. The new design makes it easier to navigate the site, discover new content, and use it on a variety of devices. The website now focuses on its main tasks and content. We have also modernized our back-end system to improve workflow so that our team can better serve you, our readers and writers. Thank you for all the positive comments we have received in the last two weeks after the relaunch! We are very happy to see that it is not only us who love the new design.

But as with the tween, this is an interim state. We are discussing further optimizations with our owners – representatives and editors of the membership magazines of Chemistry Europe’s 16 member societies. In doing so, we also welcome comments and suggestions from you. So please do not hesitate to send us your feedback to help us make sure that our magazine tween turns into a great teenager.

 

Looking Forward to Meeting You, Our Readers

Like many others, our editorial team has moved from the office to working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Working from home has many advantages for our small and well-coordinated team, such as more flexibility, higher productivity, and a better work-life balance. However, the latter has suffered a bit in the last weeks: The relaunch and maintaining normal editorial work at the same time were very work-intensive for our small team.

As much as we like working from home and are sure that we want to keep it up, we enjoy that now we can leave our desks again, travel, and meet and exchange ideas with you in personal conversations. The often spontaneous contact on site was missing and cannot be replaced by digital means.

This week, at the invitation of Chemistry Europe, thirteen early career researchers from all over Europe visited us at the publishing house and discussed topics such as trends in publishing, science communication, and self-presentation as a scientist. We will report more on this.

 

2^nd Chemistry Europe Early Career Researchers Meeting held in Weinheim, Germany, from May 19 to 20, 2022. (Photo © Mario Müller)
From left to right: Dr. Axel Straube, Josefa Fernández Loro, Dr. David Peralta, Dr. Stuart Beardsworth, Dr. Charlotte Gers-Panther, Dr. Ruben Ragg, and Dr. Haymo Ross, Wiley-VCH; Dr. Jaime Coelho, Portugal, Dr. Antonio J. Martínez, Spain, Dr. João Borges, Portugal, Dr. Hélio Albuquerque, Portugal, Dr. Pavla Perlíková, Czech Republic, Prof. Vera Krewald, Germany, Dr. Cornelia Meinert, France, Prof. Pablo Rivera-Fuentes, Switzerland, Dr. Emilia Paone, Italy, Dr. Luca Rivoira, Italy, Prof. Geert-Jan Graulus, Belgium, Dr. Jannika Lauth, Germany, Dr. Vera Köster, Wiley-VCH and event organization

 

In August, we are looking forward to the 8th EuChemS Chemistry Congress (ECC8) in Lisbon and hope to meet many of you there. Chemistry Europe will also be hosting a special symposium there, featuring, for example, Javier García-Martínez (President of IUPAC, Professor, entrepreneur, and author). He will be speaking on chemical entrepreneurship in the ChemistryViews lecture.

In the meantime, we will continue with the 1-minute videos summarizing a recent research paper that have been extremely popular for years. Likewise, we continue with the video interviews in cooperation with the GDCh (German Chemical Society), the largest society involved in Chemistry Europe. You can look forward to conversations with exciting researchers and an outstanding science journalist.

 

The Vision Since 2010 Still Holds True

In recent years, not least because of the coronavirus pandemic, the way we communicate has changed a lot. Of course, we also notice this in our everyday work. Video conferencing and online meetings are much more common, and how we network is changing. More frequent but shorter meetings, more social media use, … We are curious to see what will happen next and how we will continue to change ChemistryViews in response.

Twelve years ago, Chemistry Europe (then called ChemPubSoc Europe) decided to launch a joint magazine in collaboration with the existing national membership magazines of the participating societies. On May 21, 2010, ChemistryViews was launched in Paris, France, at a spectacular symposium featuring four Nobel Laureates and many other leading scientists. ChemistryViews launched that day with about 50 articles and a live broadcast of the one-day event. An online symposium, as I said, is now quite common – ChemistryEurope offered more than eight last year. At the time, however, it was an exciting experiment. And a very successful one, so we continued back then with virtual symposia of physical events from Berlin, Beijing, and Tokyo.

Although much has changed, ChemistryViews still stands for the founding principles with which we started in 2010: To transcend boundaries (regional, national, disciplines, age), to explore new ways of communicating and to focus on the people behind the science, to promote chemical sciences and education, to be innovative, and to advance Chemistry Europe worldwide.

In ChemistryViews, 16 European chemical societies from Sweden to Portugal and Greece 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.

The details change, but the direction remains the same. In 2015, I wrote in an editorial, “… 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 noisier world. We will continue to play an active role in this by filtering, selecting, informing, introducing, and inspiring scientists”, and this is still what we aim for.

 

A Big Thank You to You, Our Readers!

Finally, a very big thank you to all of you! Whether this is the first ChemistryViews article you have ever read, or you have been with us since ChemistryViews‘ first articles were published, we cannot do without our readers. Please remember that your opinion is always important to us, and we welcome feedback – at conferences, via email, and, since the redesign, commenting on articles has also become much easier.

Here’s to another great year. We look forward to continuing to produce top-notch content for you. In return, we hope for your continued loyalty and feedback. Cheers and a big thank you to all of you!

Dr. Vera Koester
Editor-in-Chief