Zusammen

As part of a continuing series on free chemistry databases and resources on the Web, we look today at Heterocycles Web Edition. Most organic chemists are familiar with the journal Heterocycles, but fewer may realize that this journal maintains an extensive, actively-maintained, searchable collection of references to the primary literature as part of their Web presence.

The Heterocycles Web Edition database is organized around heterocycle-containing structures that appear in the primary literature. The system is quite easy to use - on the left of the main page is a sidebar containing all of the fields you can search by. A number of criteria are available, including: molecular weight, carbon count, heterocycle name, journal, and author. Using any of these fields as search criteria returns a results page containing the structure of the heterocycle, bibliographical reference, and the types of analytical data present.

Journal publishers in chemistry are in a unique position to take control of their contents. They have the best insight into what their readers are most interested in and so can tune searching and cataloging capabilities to better match expectations of their readers. The availability of increasingly useful and cost-effective tools for creating Web-based chemical databases is making the job technically easier as well.

Heterocycles Web Edition is a good example of a publisher recognizing they're creating a platform and a community, not just a journal, and trying to make the most of it.

Kudos

• Simple, focused query interface.
• Multi-journal content.
• Actively curated.
• Information on presence/absense of specific kinds of analytical data.

Ideas for Improvement

• Enable exact and substructure search.
• Enable type of analytical data present as query parameter.
• Convert the stream of new items added into an RSS or Atom Feed.
• Directly link to article on publisher site (or better, use a DOI hyperlink).