EuChemS Newsletters

Centennial celebrations of the Polish Chemical Society

The Polish Chemical Society is one of the largest scientific societies in Poland and provides opportunities for chemists to make networks and invests in the development of high-quality education in chemistry. It takes care of the chemical nomenclature correctness and adjusts the language of chemistry to new developments, facilitates discussions regarding chemical sustainability and supports young chemists in their studies and early careers. The main celebrations of the Centennial of the Polish Chemical Society took place on 2 September 2019 at the Warsaw University of Technology. Hundreds of members, politicians, civil servants, policy-makers, faculty and students from all over Poland and many guests joined in several spectacular events in Warsaw: a gala ceremony, research conference (62^nd Scientific Meeting), ChemPubSoc Owners Meeting, as well as tours at the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum, a performance at the Square Theatre entitled: “Radiation. Scenes from the life of Maria Skłodowska-Curie” and a banquet at the Palace of Culture and Science.

The Polish Chemical Society was founded in 1919 by a group of 118 well-known Polish chemists who worked at universities located in different parts of the then recently unified and independent Poland. The first statute of the Society consisted of 12 parts in which various aspects of the Society’s life and activities were regulated. It’s first paragraph stated that the Polish Chemical Society was established “to support the development of chemical sciences, to promote them among the society, and to care for the professional interests of chemists working in the field of science and technology.” The first president was Leon Marchlewski (1869 – 1946) from Krakow, Poland. Participants of the founding meeting also decided to apply for accession of the Polish Chemical Society to the International Union of Chemical Societies (IUPAC at the founding Congress in London). The first society’s activities consisted in organising lectures, conferences, and publishing the first Polish Chemical journal.

The 62^nd Scientific Meeting of the Society was held in Warsaw in September 2019, with more than 800 participants – as well as many important guests from Poland and abroad. Among the latter were the 2016 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Ben Feringa (University of Groningen) and the 1981 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann (Emeritus at Cornell University).

On this webpage, we recap the Centennial Celebration through photos associated with each event:

https://zjazdptchem2019.ch.pw.edu.pl/index.php/galeria/

Izabela Nowak
President Polish Chemical Society

Chinese Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of Japan join the ACS, RSC and GDCh as co-owners of ChemRxiv

On 23 August, the American Chemical Society, the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (German Chemical Society) and the Royal Society of Chemistry announced their partnership with the Chinese Chemical Society (CCS) and the Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) as co-owners to support the strategic and financial development of ChemRxiv.

ChemRxiv is the premier preprint server for the global chemistry community. Close collaboration between the five societies ensures the sustainability of this service and presents a clear path to broader engagement with authors and readers of the service.

“ChemRxiv is such a new project in the field of chemistry to enable scientific research to be quickly shared around the world,” says Jiannian Yao, president of the CCS. “We are delighted to join the board and provide strong representation from China, working with our partners to better serve the global chemical community.” “We at the Chemical Society of Japan are honoured to support this endeavour. ChemRxiv offers scientists a path to immediately disseminate and share their new research findings openly with readers around the globe,” remarks Maki Kawai, president of the CSJ.

Authors working across all fields of chemistry can post their research findings to the server ahead of formal peer review and publication. The service is free of charge, features a streamlined portal for direct and easy submission and supports a wide variety of file formats.

ChemRxiv submission includes a triage process that checks for plagiarism and scientific integrity, while retaining its rapid posting time of less than two business days.

Direct Journal Transfer, a recently introduced feature, enables easy submission to journals published by the ACS, RSC and the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, including ChemPubSoc Europe journals. With this new agreement, journals published by the CCS and CSJ will be added in the near future.

“ChemRxiv is unique since it is the only preprint server owned and governed by the globally leading learned societies in its field,” says Wolfram Koch, GDCh’s Executive Director. “With ChemRxiv the participating major chemical societies offer an important service to the global chemical community. It is a strong commitment to our common aim to support and to foster the dissemination of chemical information worldwide.”

Karin J. Schmitz
GDCh