ACS Publications Announces The Large-Scale Digitization And Open Availability Of Data Coupled To ACS Legacy Archives Journals

WASHINGTON, October 23, 2013 — The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) announced today the completion of a comprehensive undertaking to digitally convert and conserve the Supporting Information for its broadly subscribed ACS Legacy Archives journals collection.

This initiative was part of the Society’s commitment to broaden the online accessibility of the Supporting Information and data associated with the ACS Legacy Archives –– a premium collection of nearly half a million original research articles published in ACS journals between the years 1879 and 1995. The digitization effort has generated new Supporting Information files for 40,000 ACS original research articles, and in total comprises 800,000 pages of highly valuable data and underlying research information.

The recently digitized research material is openly available to any visitor of the ACS Publications website and can be readily downloaded from the abstract page of any ACS Legacy Archive journal article that contains Supporting Information.

The ACS Legacy Archives continues to be one of the most important sources of research information for chemists worldwide. Supporting Information is often essential to understanding the relevance and context of the original research article. The digital conversion of this additional Supporting Information enables easy access to tabular data, illustrations and diagrams, spectroscopic and crystallographic results, detailed experimental procedures, software programming code, biological test data, mathematical derivations and more.

Among the extensive collection of the newly available digital information are many noteworthy examples of data that supported published scientific breakthroughs, such as:

• J. Am. Chem. Soc. – Absolute configuration correlations for a study on enantiomeric purity, as reported by Sharpless and coworkers in 1981 (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja00410a053)
• Langmuir – Experimental details from a study of self assembly of dialkyl sulfides published by Whitesides and coworkers in 1988 (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la00080a021)
• Macromolecules – Structure factors for a crystal structure determination of poly (ethylene oxide) as revealed by Takahashi and Tadokoro in 1973 (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ma60035a005)
• J. Phys. Chem. – Details on the data evaluation for a study by Pitzer and Mayorga on activity and osmotic coefficients for strong electrolytes, as published in 1973 (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/j100638a009)

“This significant investment by ACS Publications will benefit the end user scientist as well as the library community that has long supported our efforts with the ACS Legacy Archives,” said Brandon Nordin, Vice President, Sales, Marketing, and Digital Strategy for ACS Publications. “It preserves and makes broadly accessible a significant amount of the 20th century’s primary research data for the global community of chemists. With indexed metadata and full text search of the files associated with published journal articles, this digital offering vastly increases the online discoverability and integration of this information into current researcher workflows –– helping scientists to advance their studies by providing additional context, relevance and a sound basis for comparing results. The availability of this digital material will also eliminate the need for librarians and their patrons to purchase this information via microfiche format, and will give researchers immediate access to the data they need.”

For more information visit pubs.acs.org/legacyarchives or email [email protected].

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About ACS Publications

ACS Publications manages the scholarly publishing program of the world’s largest and most influential scientific society.  Every year approximately 40,000 articles authored by research teams from the community of scientists are selected for publication within the more than 40 peer-reviewed journals from ACS Publications.  Noted for their high quality, rapid time to publication, seminal and high impact, and prevalent citation in future research, ACS journals are available in print, online, and mobile formats at more than 5,000 academic, business and corporate institutions worldwide.  In addition, over 163,000 ACS members have flexible options for access to the research published in ACS journals as a benefit of membership. ACS editors are all independent active scientific researchers, highly published in their respective fields of inquiry. ACS Publications supports more than 400 editorial offices at leading research universities and government-funded laboratories throughout the world to ensure the integrity, global reach and expertise of its peer-review process.  ACS Publications also publishes Chemical & Engineering News –– the Society’s flagship news periodical covering the global chemical enterprise and related sciences.

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