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We are here for it.
From pandemics to decarbonization and sustainable manufacturing, Chemistry is a key driver of impactful innovation. At Elsevier, we are making a commitment to put our efforts into supporting chemists who want to change the world, now and in the future.
Researchers and research leaders are telling us that Chemistry is a field of increasing value in achieving societal impact. As the bridge from the theoretical sciences and practical applications — such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals development, and engineering — Chemistry is critical to developing urgent and important solutions for people and the planet.
Chemistry is a centuries-old field, one that is constantly changing. But the speed of change is accelerating, both in what chemistry produces and how research is performed. Chemists need to get more productivity out of existing ways of working, while leveraging new technologies and skillsets, to reach the potential of their research and to meet society’s needs. And we are here to support them in doing so.
Chemists fail often, they need to know early on whether they are on the wrong track and switch course. To assess their progress, they need a straight path to the right insights and data. But “the more successful you are, the less time you have,” a professor told us. Aside from administrative work, chemists must switch between tools, copy-and-paste information, and repeat similar tasks for varying purposes, undermining their productivity.
Societal impact is becoming every university’s north star. Challenges are complex, as reflected by the UN SDGs, and students are motivated to make a difference in the world. Research funding is increasingly dependent on demonstrated research impact.
The key to impact is collaboration. Chemists now need to collaborate with data scientists who can do the modelling before replicating it in the lab. This raises new challenges. How do you share insights and store data when lexicons are different? How do you manage a virtual team and perform experiments in a virtual lab? How do you accommodate the potentially conflicting needs? These are all questions we have already began to work on answering.
With new research directions and dynamic scientific networks, the field of Chemistry is evolving rapidly. It is now crucial to reevaluate research priorities to stay competitive in light of the emergence of AI and increased attention to cutting-edge fields like Green Chemistry. Which fields of chemistry should you focus on, and how can you build collaborations to optimize your research output?
Our latest report, Chemistry Landscape: Research Insights, Impact, Trends, & Opportunities, delves into the current state of global Chemistry research, where researchers and stakeholders can know more about:
Global Chemistry Research Trends
Regional Disparities
Opportunities for Strategic Growth
Future of Chemistry Research
Get exclusive insights and identify future opportunities in Chemistry research. Download the report
"In the past, chemists were trained in glassware and lab procedures. Now, we have robots that cut samples and do the analysis. We collaborate with computational people to get the data skills. They will do the modeling, then we will have to switch it back to a physical process."
CR
Chemistry Researcher
Academic institution
We are excited to witness an impact-driven future of chemistry, shaped by technology limited by few boundaries. The lab is changing dramatically, integrating new data, technology, and skillsets. The chemistry research team of the future will inevitably include technologists, and open new avenues for breakthroughs. We are already seeing this in industry, where there is an increased need for machine-readable information, and tools that can create shortcuts to insights. As research begins to transform, so are we. We are continuously working to integrate the latest technologies into our tools to ensure that academic and corporate researchers can make the most of them and achieve insights faster.
We know that silos need to be broken, and we are starting with ourselves. We are already running a pilot to integrate products relevant for chemists, such as ScienceDirect and Reaxys, surfacing more relevant information about chemical compounds mentioned in scientific papers.
We look to industry to anticipate future needs. Pharmaceutical companies are telling us that Reaxys is the only platform that contains the data format they can use to experiment and drive innovation. We want to help academic researchers understand how they can use the same capabilities, and our R&D network is running projects on it as we speak.
ScienceDirect: Elsevier's premier platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature
Scopus: Comprehensive, multidisciplinary, trusted abstract and citation database
Embase is the medical research database for high-quality, comprehensive evidence
