ChemRxiv

ChemRxiv
Title	ChemRxiv
Established	2016
Language	English
Discipline	Chemistry
Country	International
Publisher	Cambridge University Press (hosted) / American Chemical Society / Royal Society of Chemistry / German Chemical Society

ChemRxiv is an online preprint server for chemistry research that allows rapid dissemination of manuscripts prior to peer-reviewed publication. It serves as a platform connecting researchers, institutions, funders, and publishers involved in chemical sciences, enabling early sharing of results among communities associated with major societies and universities. The service interacts with professional organizations, scholarly publishers, and national research agencies across North America, Europe, and Asia.

History

ChemRxiv launched in 2016 through collaboration among the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the German Chemical Society (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker). Early development involved partnerships with hosting platforms and scholarly infrastructure providers such as Cambridge University Press, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and academic consortia including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The initiative was announced at meetings attended by representatives from institutions including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge, Oxford University, and ETH Zurich. Public milestones include rapid growth in submissions following global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and visibility at conferences like the American Chemical Society National Meeting and the Gordon Research Conferences. Governance and policy evolution referenced practices at repositories including arXiv, bioRxiv, and SSRN, while legal and licensing frameworks drew on precedents from organizations such as Creative Commons and national courts in the United States and European Union.

Scope and Content

ChemRxiv accepts manuscripts across chemical subfields including organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, analytical chemistry, biochemistry, materials chemistry, and computational chemistry. Submissions often cite or relate to work from researchers affiliated with institutions such as Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, University of Tokyo, and Peking University. Content types include original research articles, methods papers, data sets, reviews, and negative results; topics intersect with areas represented by journals like Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, Nature Chemistry, Chemical Science, and ACS Nano. The platform accommodates interdisciplinary links to fields associated with organizations like European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Max Planck Society, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Riken, and Argonne National Laboratory.

Submission and Moderation Process

Authors submit manuscripts through an online interface using author profiles connected to identifiers such as ORCID and affiliations including Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, University of Melbourne, Seoul National University, University of São Paulo, and Indian Institute of Science. The moderation workflow applies checks for scope, plagiarism, and non-scientific content referencing tools and guidance from entities like CrossRef, COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), ScholarOne, and publisher policies from Elsevier and Wiley. Moderation is performed by editorial staff and volunteer moderators drawn from academic networks including editorial boards of Chemical Communications and Chemical Reviews. Accepted preprints are assigned metadata compatible with indexing services such as Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar and receive digital object identifiers coordinated with organizations like DataCite.

Licensing and Copyright

Authors retain copyright on deposited manuscripts and select licenses drawing on standards established by Creative Commons such as CC BY and CC BY-NC-ND. Licensing choices reflect publisher policies from houses like Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Oxford University Press and accommodate funding mandates from agencies such as the Wellcome Trust, European Research Council, and the Human Frontier Science Program. Data-sharing expectations align with repositories and standards from organizations like Dryad, Figshare, and the Research Data Alliance. Disputes over authorship or rights have parallels with cases considered by institutions like University of Oxford and Columbia University.

Impact and Usage

ChemRxiv has accelerated dissemination of chemical research, influencing citation and media coverage patterns tracked by services such as Altmetric, Dimensions, and Crossref Event Data. Preprints from ChemRxiv have been cited in journals including Nature, Science, PNAS, Cell, and have informed reports by agencies such as the World Health Organization and the European Commission. Usage statistics reflect contributions from researchers at laboratories like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory and participation in community initiatives including the Open Researcher and Contributor ID movement and the Plan S coalition. The server has facilitated rapid exchange during crises referenced by bodies such as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Research Council.

Governance and Funding

Governance involves representation from the founding societies including the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, and the German Chemical Society, with advisory input from university libraries such as those at Yale University and University of California, Berkeley. Funding and sustainability models combine society support, publisher partnerships with entities like Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and grants from funders such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and national science agencies including the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and German Research Foundation. Operational collaborations have engaged vendors and infrastructure providers like figshare and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, while policy development consulted stakeholders including IUPAC and scholarly communication groups such as the Confederation of Open Access Repositories.

Category:Preprint servers