Flashback

A paper by Fraser Stoddart and colleagues at Birmingham University and Imperial College, London, was launched for the first time on the internet recently - making the first fruit of the Clic Consortium’s foray into electronic publishing. The consortium - a group made up of internet enthusiasts from the RSC, University of Cambridge, University of Leeds and Imperial College London - has been working on a project to put electronic forms of RSC journals onto the net for more than a year. Its main aim is to put an electronic version of  Chemical Communications  on the net and to have all 12 of the RSC’s primary journals up by the end of the year. 

The Stoddart article is entitled The genesis of a new range of interlocked molecules. The pseudorotaxane superstructures formed are difficult to interpret, and it is here that the electronic version wins over the printed version. Using software, called Chime, the internet user can not only see the 3D structures, but also rotate them, giving users a 360? view of the molecule. 

Ed. This first RSC paper on the internet by Peter T Glink, Cesare Schiavo, J Fraser Stoddart and David J Williams is still online (Chem. Commun., 1996, 1483 DOI: 10.1039/cc9960001483). 

The RSC now has all its current 27 primary journals on the internet, papers being published as advance articles long before printed publication. In addition to the 3D possibilities mentioned above, internet readers can also take advantage of supplementary data, citation linking, and multimedia features such as video.