American Chemical Society introduces ACS ChemWorx™ -- the first secure, integrated research management environment serving scientists worldwide

Partnership with software innovator colwiz, Ltd makes research collaboration and publication more efficient

WASHINGTON, March 27, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Chemical Society (ACS) announced today the launch of ACS ChemWorx, a powerful new research collaboration system designed to integrate all facets of the researcher's work life.  Every step of the research process—from forming an initial concept, to exchanging documents and literature references with a network of global collaborators, to assembling the resulting research findings with coauthors—can now be performed within the secure and interoperable ACS ChemWorx environment.

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The ACS also announced today its strategic investment in colwiz, Ltd. (colwiz), an early-stage company established by Oxford University scientists that is providing much of the underlying technology for ACS ChemWorx.  Under the terms of the development agreement, ACS and colwiz will combine the Society's trusted information services and membership benefits for chemistry professionals with the power of cloud-based social collaboration technology developed by colwiz, Ltd.

ACS ChemWorx enables researchers to quickly create online profiles with comprehensive messaging and social communication features, and to organize secure workgroups and projects, share document libraries, manage calendars and group task lists, and maintain private discussion areas.  Integrated Web, desktop, and mobile applications provide powerful capabilities for content discovery, reference and document management, coordinated storage and retrieval of data, and collaborative manuscript preparation and editing, as well as personal publication tracking with ACS Publications.  ACS ChemWorx is being offered free to any ACS-registered user, and to faculty and students based at any of the Society's institutional customers worldwide.

"ACS welcomes the opportunity to leverage colwiz's unique capabilities to speed the publication of research findings," said Susan King, Ph.D., Senior Vice President responsible for the Society's Journals Publishing Group.  "ACS is leading the way in digital publishing, and we are delighted to find in colwiz a technology partner who supports our vision of being the most trusted source of the comprehensive knowledge needed to cultivate the chemists of tomorrow.  To aid scientists with information solutions as part of their research workflows, we're creating together with colwiz a powerful suite of integrated Web and mobile applications, starting today with ACS ChemWorx."

"Our approach is to break down the research process into its key components, custom-build each tool from scratch, and integrate them seamlessly into a single platform for individual and group productivity," said Tahir Mansoori, CEO and co-founder of colwiz.  "At the moment, researchers are using a dizzying array of discrete applications for research management and collaboration—but because these are separate applications, they don't always talk to each other," said Mansoori.

"Researchers, the universities at which they work and the scholarly societies to which they belong, are natural partners for the advancement of scientific research," said Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford.  "As a member of ACS for over 30 years, I am delighted see technology solutions developed by colwiz, an Oxford University start-up company, underpinning the advancement of chemistry."

"We at colwiz are delighted to be embarking on this partnership.  ACS Publications has a distinguished publishing history and reputation for scientific rigor, and is known for facilitating rapid publication through its award-winning journal publishing platform and state-of-the art editorial and production operations, which integrate online submission, peer review and technical editing with web and mobile content delivery," said colwiz Chief Scientist, Professor David Gavaghan of Oxford University.  "Colwiz shares ACS Publication's vision of providing researchers with the tools they need to work together across continents and across disciplines—via software that manages the entire research lifecycle from an initial idea, through complex collaborations, and on to publication of the results."

Coinciding with the launch of ACS ChemWorx, ACS Publications also is introducing notable feature enhancements to the digital editions of its entire portfolio of peer reviewed research journals, including:

• ACS ActiveView PDF – An interactive full text format that enables researchers to attach highlights and notes to ACS journal articles of interest, explore referenced abstracts via the CAS SciFinder®-powered Reference QuickView, make and save annotations in their ACS ChemWorx library, share links with colleagues and lab group members, and sync their libraries across smartphone, tablet, and desktop environments.
• "Add to ACS ChemWorx" – Through a single click, researchers can export citations from any ACS article to their ACS ChemWorx reference libraries—via links found on search results, and on table of contents, abstract, and full text page types.

More information, including a comprehensive list of features and benefits, and instructions for individuals to enroll as ACS ChemWorx registered users, is available at www.acschemworx.org.

About the American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress.  With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences.  Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

The ACS Publications Division publishes more than 37,000  new research articles annually across 42 preeminent, peer- reviewed scientific journals, and hosts a comprehensive online collection of the Society's scholarly output, now totaling approximately 1 million research publications, dating back to the time of Society's origins in 1876.  C&EN, published weekly by the ACS, is the Society's flagship news periodical for the chemical enterprise, attracting scientists and non-scientists alike with updates on the latest advances across  a wide range of scientific disciplines including pharmaceuticals, life sciences, genomics and environmental sciences.

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, is the world's authority for chemical information. CAS is the only organization in the world whose objective is to find, collect and organize all publicly disclosed chemical substance information.  A team of scientists worldwide curates and controls the quality of our databases, which are recognized as the most comprehensive and authoritative by chemical and pharmaceutical companies, universities, government organizations and patent offices around the world. By combining these databases with advanced search and analysis technologies (SciFinder^® and STN^®), CAS delivers the most current, complete, secure and interlinked digital information environment for scientific discovery. 

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact [email protected].

About colwiz, Ltd.
colwiz (collective wizdom) is a free research management, collaboration and productivity platform for individual researchers, groups, departments and organizations.  Utilizing web, desktop, and mobile applications synched in real time, the platform manages the entire research lifecycle from an initial idea, through a complex collaboration, to publication of the results.  The company was founded by leading researchers from the University of Oxford.  For more information about colwiz, visit www.colwiz.com.  For press inquiries, contact [email protected]

SOURCE American Chemical Society