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Chemical Abstracts Service

National historic chemical landmark.

Dedicated June 14, 2007, at the Chemical Abstracts Service in Columbus, Ohio.

Commemorative Booklet (PDF)

The Chemical Abstracts Service, a division of the American Chemical Society, has provided the most comprehensive repository of research in chemistry and related sciences for over 100 years. CAS innovations have fueled chemical research through development of the CAS Registry SM and CAS databases which contain invaluable information for chemical scientists, including SciFinder ® and STN ® .

Early Chemical Abstracting in the United States

Growth of chemical abstracts, cas expansion: 1950’s and 1960’s, digital age and computer-enabled abstracting, the cas registry, online abstracting tools: stn, scifinder, and more, further reading, landmark designation and acknowledgments, cite this page.

The early history of chemical abstracting in the United States is intertwined with the Noyes family. In 1895, Arthur A. Noyes, a professor of physical chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began the Review of American Chemical Research (the Review ) as a supplement to MIT's Technology Quarterly . He began the Review because he believed American chemists were not receiving adequate credit in European publications for their accomplishments, and under his editorship, the Review published only abstracts of American chemical papers.

In 1897, the Review became part of the Journal of the American Chemical Society ( JACS ). Five years later, William A. Noyes, Sr. (Noyes), a distant cousin of Arthur A. Noyes, became editor of JACS and the Review . Noyes long believed that the American Chemical Society should publish a comprehensive and inclusive separate journal of abstracts. He worked diligently to persuade the Society to authorize an abstract journal, and in 1906, the ACS Council approved publication of Chemical Abstracts , with Noyes as editor. The first issue appeared in January 1907.

Chemical Abstracts was not the first publication to abstract chemical information. Scientific abstracts first appeared in primary journals, which published abstracts of work reported in other sources in addition to original research. One example was the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The first specifically chemical publication to include abstracts was Crell's Chemische Journal fÜr die Freunde der Naturlehre , which was published from 1778 to 1781. Other German publications appeared in the late 1700s as a forum for chemists to exchange information and research. French ( Annales de Chemie) and British ( Journal of the Chemical Society ) publications followed suit in the next century.

At the same time, publications specifically devoted to chemical abstracts began to appear. The most famous of these was Chemisches Zentralblatt , which debuted in 1830. It was published weekly under the editorship of Gustav Theodor Fechner. Chemisches Zentralblatt initially covered only German literature, and while it expanded its coverage in the early 20th century, the emphasis was always on German material. Chemisches Zentralblatt remained an important abstracting service until World War II. It was the emphasis on German chemistry that prompted the interest in an American abstract service.

Noyes served as editor of Chemical Abstracts for its first two years. At first, Noyes worked from his laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, where he was chief chemist. He and Chemical Abstracts moved to the University of Illinois when Noyes became chair of the chemistry department there in 1907. Noyes’ contribution to the success of Chemical Abstracts cannot be exaggerated. Not only did he persuade ACS to sponsor an abstract journal, but he organized, planned and edited the publication while serving as ACS secretary and working full time. Many of the policies he implemented served Chemical Abstracts for decades.

One of Noyes's most important legacies was his insistence that Chemical Abstracts cover applied as well as theoretical chemistry. In the early 20th century the gulf between industrial and academic or theoretical chemists was wide and many of the latter thought that ACS, and its publications, should belong to "pure" chemists only with applied chemists shunted off to a separate organization. In England and Germany chemists split along these lines and in both countries distinct abstract journals existed. Chemical Abstracts pioneered in the merging of the interests of these two groups of chemists.

In 1909 Austin Patterson succeeded Noyes as editor, and the editorial offices moved to The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus at the invitation of William McPherson, head of the OSU Chemistry Department. Chemical Abstracts remained at Ohio State until 1965, when the Chemical Abstracts Service moved into its own building on a 50-acre site adjacent to the university.

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The mission of CAS is to be the world's leading provider of chemical information." — Robert J. Massie, President, CAS

(Quoted in Ross, Linda Romaine, "CAS Aims to Keep Customers by Improved Service, Pricing, Management," Chemical & Engineering News 72 (October 31, 1994): 20.)

The early history of Chemical Abstracts is the story of Evan J. Crane, who served as editor for 43 years. Crane succeeded John Miller, editor for a brief time in 1914 following Austin Patterson's resignation. Crane joined Chemical Abstracts in 1911 at the age of 22 as an associate editor; he became acting editor in 1915 after Miller’s resignation.

During Crane's stewardship, Chemical Abstracts grew from a fledgling operation into the trendsetter for scientific abstracting and indexing journals. Crane did this through some very difficult times—money was often so scarce that he dipped into his own small salary for business travel. Crane himself wrote that it was his "long-established policy to trim his budget sails as well as possible to fit the Society's current circumstances and then to keep within budget limits." During his tenure he did that, never exceeding the publication’s annual budget.

Crane said that "in times of financial difficulty, keeping within limits [was] accomplished principally by shortening abstracts rather than by failing to report all papers and patents containing new information of chemical interest. The history of Chemical Abstracts is in part a series of ups and down as far as length of abstracts is concerned, with most of the emphasis on 'downs.'" Crane's perseverance in the face of financial and other difficulties insured the success of Chemical Abstracts . He won many honors, including the Society's Priestley Medal, but perhaps Crane's greatest honor came in 1956 when he was named the first director of the renamed Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a new division of the American Chemical Society.

Under Crane's tutelage, Chemical Abstracts grew rapidly. In its first year of operation, 1907, the service published 12,000 abstracts. Half of those were on works published in Germany. The number of abstracts published rose almost every year after and the service soon claimed complete coverage of the chemical literature. Of course, the definition of "completeness" is itself abstract; as Crane wrote "completeness in an abstract journal is a somewhat indefinite goal never quite attained, but the whole history of Chemical Abstracts has been one of striving for complete coverage so that the user of this journal can have confidence in the thoroughness of his survey without searching elsewhere." He defined completeness as reporting all suitable papers and patents, insuring that each abstract is thorough to allow full indexing, and guaranteeing that the index contains all the useful information that a searcher needs.

Completeness meant, among other things, that the number of abstracts published each year soared. It was not until 1939—32 years after publishing began—that the number of abstracts published reached one million; it took eighteen years to generate the next million; eight years for the third million. In 2006, for the first time in one year, more than one million abstracts were added to the CAS databases.

Crane recognized early in his tenure that comprehensive and accurate indexes were necessary. Cursory author and subject indexes were provided from the beginning, but Crane undertook to release a thorough Chemical Abstracts Decennial Index in 1916, doing much of the work himself. This project prompted a search for a more thorough system of indexing. The solution was to devise a systematic index for compounds on the grounds that the absence of such a system would mean that references to compounds would be scattered throughout the index and related compounds would not be grouped together. The indexing system had an important influence on chemical nomenclature.

Over the years indexing assumed increased importance because of the volume of material being abstracted. An annual formula index was added in 1920. Other indexes were added: for example, numerical patent indexes and a keyword subject index. The amount of material abstracted became so large that in 1962 Chemical Abstracts began publishing Volume Indexes semiannually rather than annually.

Crane retired in 1958. He was replaced by Dale Baker, who became Director, while Charles Bernier was appointed Editor and Leonard Capell, CAS' nomenclature expert, was named Executive Consultant. The most important task facing these three men was to oversee CAS' transition from an ACS-supported service to a financially independent operation. In the beginning, ACS-member dues financed Chemical Abstracts and Society members could receive it free. In 1933 a small subscription fee was charged, as a supplement to the allocation from dues, a system that satisfied CAS' financial needs for a time.

After World War II, this financial arrangement proved inadequate. The rapid expansion of scientific publications—which meant more abstracts—coupled with post-War inflation forced CAS to look elsewhere for funding. For a time, industry was asked to make up the service's deficit. In 1955, the ACS Board of Directors stepped in and changed subscription prices with the aim that Chemical Abstracts should break even. Fees were raised so that, in the words of Board Chair Ernest Volwiler, Chemical Abstracts would become "a joint responsibility of the profession and of those governmental, industrial, and commercial organizations that have a direct stake in its availability."

The post-Crane leadership had a second problem to tackle—housing for a rapidly expanding organization. Since 1909, CAS had been housed on the OSU campus, first in a 15-by-30 foot room, then a room twice that size, and in 1928 in 1,600-square foot section of McPherson Chemistry Laboratory. In the 1950s, when CAS had a staff of 100, a building jointly financed by ACS and OSU was erected on campus to house the abstract service. In 1965—now with a staff of 300—CAS moved into a four-story, multi-million dollar building of its own on a 50-acre site adjacent to OSU's campus. Less than a decade later CAS added a second building.

Until the 1960s, Chemical Abstracts relied on volunteers for the bulk of its abstracting. In 1907, Chemical Abstracts utilized 129 volunteer chemists; by the mid-1960s the number of volunteers reached more than 3,200. Crane referred to some of the volunteers as "the iron men of CA [ Chemical Abstracts ]," and many served for decades, with thirteen volunteers abstracting for more than 50 years. Over the years the abstractors took on an international caste as chemists from 70 nations contributed entries. In the mid-1960s, CAS began to phase out its use of volunteers, and in 1994 it entirely ceased using volunteer abstractors.

The decline in use of volunteers corresponded to CAS' entry into the digital age. Baker and the rest of the CAS leadership understood the need to modernize procedures due to the vast increase in chemically-related published material. Older methods for producing abstracts did not suffice by the 1960s. On one level, this meant professionalizing of the staff; at another, it meant new ways of processing information.

CAS had been moving into the information age slowly. In 1955 it established a research and development department. In 1959 Baker hired G. Malcolm Dyson, an Englishman who had worked on an early linear notation system for representing chemical structures. It was Dyson—working part-time in Columbus from 1959 to 1963—who developed many of the cutting-edge innovations in information processing that CAS introduced in these years, starting with Chemical Titles in 1961. Chemical Titles was the first periodical to be organized, indexed and composed by computer, which meant greater publishing speed. The issue of Chemical Titles listing a given article often reached subscribers before the journal in which that article appeared.

CAS information needs began to drive the technology. For example, CAS required a composition system that did not yet exist. This problem was solved in 1967 when CAS acquired an IBM unit and then developed a software-based, computer-driven composition system for it. It was put to good use, and by 1970 all Chemical Abstracts indexes were being organized and composed by computer. Computerization meant considerable savings in staff time and costs. It also meant more precise data; in addition, staff no longer had to do the routine fact checking which could now be done by the computer. This freed staff for the more intellectual tasks of analyzing the primary chemical literature. For chemists, it meant ease and speed. Information seekers in the past might have to wait a day or more for a librarian to find the appropriate references (only to find sometimes that the references were not appropriate). With computers, the chemist could do his own searching and do it quickly and accurately.

CAS revenues sources shifted with computerization. In 1975 95% of CAS' revenues came from print services; only 5% from electronic sources. By the end of the 20th century, that had shifted to 19% of revenues from printed sources with 79% from electronic services (the remaining 2% came from consulting and other sources). In 2006 95% of CAS' revenue stream derived electronic sources with the remaining 5% from print and other services.

The mechanization of information yielded CAS' most significant and far-reaching innovation: The Chemical Registry System. G. Malcolm Dyson first suggested the idea of a registry in the late 1950s. With the increasing complexity and sheer numbers of substances appearing in the literature, CAS needed an alternative to chemical nomenclature as a basis for this registry.

Chemists have an advantage over many other scientists in being able to communicate by referring to chemical compounds through unambiguous and universally understood structural diagrams. These diagrams indicate a compound's chemical atoms, the bonds that connect them, and even the spatial arrangement of the atoms. But there was no good way to catalogue these structures that enabled easy retrieval. At CAS, every time a chemical compound was indexed it was copied by hand and then given a name, which may or may not have agreed with the name given it by its presumed discoverer. Was the compound really new? Had it been reported in the literature? Indexed by Chemical Abstracts ? The rapid increase in the number of named structures led to much confusion; some compounds were named over and over.

Clearly, CAS needed a system that recognized previously named structures and allowed for easy retrieval by CAS staff. In the early 1960s a solution was found when Harry Morgan of CAS developed an algorithm that generates a unique and unambiguous two-dimensional record of a substance's structure. The record could be read by a computer and was so simple that staff with little special training could employ it. The algorithm became the basis of the CAS Chemical Registry System (CAS Registry).

In late 1964 an experimental Chemical Registry System went into operation supporting the new publication Chemical-Biological Activities . By early 1965, the CAS Registry, no longer experimental, began to include all chemical substances indexed in Chemical Abstracts , with their structures and names recorded in computer-readable files. Every substance was given a permanent, unambiguous and unique identifying number, the CAS Registry Number.

To show the usefulness of the CAS Registry to researchers, think about a hypothetical new drug developed by a pharmaceutical company. This drug could have a systematic chemical name about 70 characters long, and be marketed under several different trade names. But it can be identified concisely by CAS Registry Number of up to 10 digits, such as 58-08-2 for caffeine. Today scientists and researchers around the world rely upon the CAS Registry Number as the globally accepted standard for defining and describing a chemical substance.

Though the system would go through several iterations over the years, it quickly became an integral part of CAS’s indexing procedures. More advanced versions were soon added which refined and improved nomenclature and the ability to recreate structure diagrams algorithmically. It took only ten years for the Registry to record three million unique structures. But the Registry's virtue is not limited to size or number; its success has eliminated the vagaries of chemical nomenclature since every unique substance gets a unique CAS Registry Number.

In the 1970s and 1980s the Chemical Abstracts Service adopted the tools of the new digital age—the computer, the internet, etc.—to assist CAS in fulfilling its core mission: Providing scientists with access to chemical literature and information. What changed were the methods of delivery (away from paper and traditional forms of publishing) and the speed with which CAS was able to deliver information to clients. In the past, chemists needing information might have to wait a day or several days for a librarian to find the requested references, which might not be entirely relevant. But in the digital age, scientists are only seconds from the information sought. Not only is information retrieval faster, but it can be done by the scientist himself.

CAS entered the electronic information age slowly. Before the 1980s online access to CAS databases went through commercial vendors. On November 1, 1980, CAS introduced CAS ONLINE ® , which provided access to about one-third of CAS's substance records. Gradually, other segments of the CAS Registry were added as search capacity increased. Although initially limited, CAS ONLINE ® permitted bench chemists and information experts to identify substances by specified molecular structures, something difficult, if not impossible, to do with printed materials. Although searching has been augmented over the years and the display of CAS Registry records has improved, the most remarkable advantage researchers derive from CAS ONLINE ® remains the ability to perform structure-based searching of the CAS database.

In 1983 CAS introduced CA File, which enabled subscribers to retrieve post-1967 bibliographic references. Other enhancement followed, but by the 1980s CAS began planning a new online network, one that grew out of an agreement between the American Chemical Society and the German scientific organization, FIZ Karlsruhe, to create an international network of databases to include areas beyond chemistry and chemical engineering. The result was STN SM International—the Scientific and Technical Information Network.

STN ® offered access to CAS files and Physics Briefs. Initially, the creation of STN ® provided European customers access to CAS files and search systems. Eventually, CAS databases would become available globally. As the CAS web site puts it: "STN ® is an online database service that provides global access to published research, journal literature, patents, structures, sequences, properties, and other data."

Dale Baker, who had ushered CAS into the digital age, retired in 1986 after serving as director for 28 years. Ronald Wigington, who had been director of research and development, succeeded Baker as director with no change in the emphasis on moving CAS toward the delivery of electronic information services. Wigington left in 1991 and was replaced a year later by Robert Massie.

Massie's first challenge was to insure CAS' financial well-being. At the same time, he wanted to guarantee CAS' leadership in providing scientific information. To further the latter, CAS moderated its price increases—to keep old and attract new customers—and strengthened product development. This meant even greater emphasis on electronic services in the 1990s as CAS embraced the Internet and World Wide Web as tools for distributing information. In 1995 CAS introduced CAplus SM , a database covering literature worldwide in chemistry, chemical engineering, biochemistry and related sciences since 1967.

A major launch in the 1990s was SciFinder ® . Much research went into the development of this forward-looking tool. Although the Internet was still in its infancy, CAS recognized the need for a new mode of data searching and retrieval. The rapid increase in personal computers meant that it would be possible to put chemists in direct connection with CAS databases. In 1991, CAS began to look into creating a desktop research tool, and the next year created a product development team. This group solicited views from CAS staff members and from customers. From users, the CAS researchers learned that scientists wanted more control over research and direct access to information. Moreover, the team understood that most scientists were not familiar with the language of information retrieval; accordingly, the search mechanisms had to be conversational and intuitive. In other words, users should not be asked to learn a command language, but rather they should be able to sit at their computer and use the system without training.

After extensive testing of prototypes by pharmaceutical and chemical companies, SciFinder ® was launched in 1995. From the beginning it allowed for simple interaction with the search system. The complex algorithms and other tools that buttress the CAS Registry and other CAS files remain in the background. In 1997 SciFinder ® Scholar TM appeared as a version of SciFinder ® for chemistry students and faculty.

CAS quickly adapted to the online environment as it became popular in the closing years of the 20th century. Web-based initiatives undertaken by CAS included creation in 1994 of its website, http://www.cas.org ; introduction of Chemical Patents Plus in 1996, which covers U.S. patents since 1974; STN ® Easy, also in 1996, to make access to some STN ® databases even easier; ChemPort ® in 1997, a joint service with ACS Publications to provide links from the records in the searchable databases to full-text journals and patents on the Web; a whole host of new STN ® products, including STN ® Express™, STN ® AnaVist™, STN ® on the Web SM ; and many others.

By 2007, when CAS celebrated its 100th anniversary, its databases demonstrated the exponential growth in scientific publishing and research. Those databases contained more than 27 million records of journal and patent literature, more than 170 million citations and more than 30 million substance records in the CAS Registry. In the words of Robert Massie, "CAS celebrates one hundred years of service to world science as an integral part of the American Chemical Society. That is a century in pursuit of a single mission—to provide access to chemical and related information that speeds and enables scientific discovery to improve people's lives."

• Chemical Abstracts Service History (Chemical Abstracts Service/ACS)

Landmark Designation

The American Chemical Society designated the Chemical Abstracts Service a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a ceremony at CAS headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, on June 14, 2007. The text of the commemorative plaque reads:

Founded in 1907 with the first publication of Chemical Abstracts TM , CAS has provided generations of scientists with unparalleled access to the most comprehensive collection of chemical information. The CAS Chemical Registry SM , established in 1965, is the recognized global standard for chemical substance identification and the largest database of chemical substances in the world. CAS continues to pursue its mission to provide access to chemical and related information that speeds and enables scientific discovery to improve people's lives .

Also on June 14, 2007, the American Chemical Society presented a plaque to The Ohio State University for its support of CAS, which was located on the OSU campus for many years. The text of the plaque presented to OSU reads:

From 1909 to 1965, The Ohio State University provided the American Chemical Society a range of support services and facilities that allowed the nascent Chemical Abstracts TM publication to grow into the world's most important resource for chemistry-related research. CAS moved to its own campus in 1965, adjacent to The Ohio State University, and cherishes the memory of that half century of generous and farsighted support.

Acknowledgments

Adapted for the internet from “Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS),” produced by the National Historic Chemical Landmarks program of the American Chemical Society in 2007.

American Chemical Society National Historic Chemical Landmarks. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/cas.html (accessed Month Day, Year).

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The Journal of Natural Products invites and publishes papers that make substantial and scholarly contributions to the area of natural products research. Contributions may relate to the chemistry and/or biochemistry of naturally occurring compounds or the biology of living systems from which they are obtained. Specifically, they may be articles that describe secondary metabolites of microorganisms, including antibiotics and mycotoxins; physiologically active compounds from terrestrial and marine plants and animals; biochemical studies, including biosynthesis and microbiological transformations; fermentation and plant tissue culture; the isolation, structure elucidation, and chemical synthesis and semi-synthesis of novel compounds from nature; and the pharmacology of compounds of natural origin. When new compounds are reported, manuscripts describing their biological activity are much preferred. Manuscripts that focus on biological properties of chemically complex extracts, mixtures, or essential oils are outside of the scope of the journal.

Manuscripts may be submitted as Articles, Notes, Reviews, or Perspectives. Authors should indicate in a cover letter accompanying the manuscript which category they intend for their submission.

All manuscripts will be submitted to a review process. Manuscripts will be considered for publication on the understanding that they have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

Articles . Articles are comprehensive, critical accounts of work in the areas outlined above.

Notes. Notes are abbreviated papers presented in the same general style as Articles. Generally, studies that are narrower in scope than published in Articles are reported as Notes. When only one or two new compounds are reported in a manuscript, these substances must be of significant structural, biogenetic, and/or biological interest. The publication of known compounds will be considered only if they have been demonstrated to possess potentially important bioactivity. Manuscripts solely reporting NMR assignments or X-ray crystallographic data of known compounds will not be considered. For known compounds, authors should submit full experimental details of the isolation and identification data for consideration by the referees but not for publication. Full details of the isolation and identification procedures for known compounds may be made available to the reader as Supporting Information. (See the subsequent section on Supporting Information.)

Authors investigating the chemistry of a single species should aim to publish their results in a single manuscript rather than in a series of manuscripts describing each new compound as it is found. Manuscripts that report fragmentary parts of a larger study will be returned to the authors at the Editors’ discretion.

Reviews . Comprehensive reviews of topics within the scope of the journal and supported by significant literature should be submitted as reviews. Short reviews of recent literature that update a topic are also considered. The information in Reviews should be presented objectively, not limited to the contributions of the authors, and written with the intent of familiarizing the general reader with the broad current state of knowledge of a topic of active interest. The length of reviews should be commensurate with the information available; there are no formal limitations on length. Reviews are considered upon invitation, or after approval of presubmission inquiries outlining a synopsis of the manuscript sent to [email protected] .

Perspectives . Perspectives are personal reviews of subject or a topic in natural products, which should be focused rather than comprehensive. Perspective authors should assess the current status of the selected subject or topic, with an emphasis toward identifying important advances being made or those advances that are needed. Perspective reviews should present a forward-thinking approach in discussing the selected topic to be covered. The Journal of Natural Products Perspective should address the recent literature, including key contributors, aiming primarily to inspire and provide new insights to direct future research efforts. Perspectives authors will be invited by the Editor, or presubmission inquiries outlining a synopsis of the manuscript can be sent to [email protected] . Perspectives should be no more than 9,000 words, including the abstract, main text, and figure captions

While this document will provide basic information on how to prepare and submit the manuscript as well as other critical information about publishing, we also encourage authors to visit the ACS Publishing Center for additional information on everything that is needed to prepare (and review) manuscripts for ACS journals and partner journals, such as

• Mastering the Art of Scientific Publication , which shares editor tips about a variety of topics including making your paper scientifically effective, preparing excellent graphics, and writing cover letters.
• Resources on how to prepare and submit a manuscript to ACS Paragon Plus, ACS Publications’ manuscript submission and peer review environment, including details on selecting the applicable Journal Publishing Agreement .
• Sharing your research with the public through the ACS Publications open access program.
• ACS Reviewer Lab , a free online course covering best practices for peer review and related ethical considerations. 
• ACS Author Lab , a free online course that empowers authors to prepare and submit strong manuscripts, avoiding errors that could lead to delays in the publication process.
• ACS Inclusivity Style Guide , a guide that helps researchers communicate in ways that recognize and respect diversity in all its forms.

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All ACS journals and partner journals have simplified their formatting requirements in favor of a streamlined and standardized format for an initial manuscript submission. Read more about the requirements and the benefits these serves authors and reviewers here .

Manuscripts submitted for initial consideration must adhere to these standards:

• Submissions must be complete with clearly identified standard sections used to report original research, free of annotations or highlights, and include all numbered and labeled components.
• Figures, charts, tables, schemes, and equations should be embedded in the text at the point of relevance. Separate graphics can be supplied later at revision, if necessary.
• When required by a journal's structure or length limitations, manuscript templates should be used.
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• Supporting Information must be submitted as a separate file(s).

The templates facilitate the peer review process by allowing authors to place artwork and tables close to the point where they are discussed within the text. Learn more about document templates here . 

General information on the preparation of manuscripts may also be found in the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication .

See the list of Acceptable Software and appropriate File Designations to be sure your file types are compatible with ACS Paragon Plus. Information for manuscripts generated from TeX/LaTeX is also available.

A cover letter must accompany every manuscript submission. During the submission process, you may type it or paste it into the submission system, or you may attach it as a file.

To assist with the subsequent editorial process, it is preferred that manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Natural Products be prepared in single columns per page, double-spaced, with font size 12. The template is available for on the Information for Authors  page. Use of a template is encouraged but not mandatory. The template facilitates the peer review process by allowing authors to place artwork and tables close to the point where they are discussed within the text.

Manuscripts may be submitted as Articles, Notes, Reviews (by invitation of presubmission inquiry), Perspectives (by invitation or presubmission inquiry), and Editorials (by invitation) (see “Scope and Editorial Policy” document). The manuscript title should appear on a separate page and should be followed by the author names and the institution name and address. The title, author name(s), and affiliations should all appear on their own respective line of text. Place an asterisk after the name of the author to whom enquiries regarding the paper should be directed and include that author’s telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address. Author affiliations should be footnoted using sequential lower-case letters, numbers, or symbols. Subdivisions (e.g., departments) of an institution should be grouped on the same line or lines. In article titles, the words “new” or “novel” (with the latter referring specifically to a compound based on an unprecedented carbon skeleton) should not be included, and the number of new substances obtained should not be specified. The title page and the rest of the manuscript should be typed in font size 12.

The abstract, detailing, in a single paragraph, the problem, experimental approach, major findings, and conclusions, should appear on the second page. It should be double spaced and should not exceed 200 words for Articles and Reviews or 100 words for Notes and Perspectives. Compounds mentioned in the abstract, and given as specific Arabic numerals that are bolded in the manuscript text, should also be accompanied in the abstract by the same bolded numerals. The abstract should be on a separate page and should be provided with the bolded and capitalized heading “ABSTRACT”.

Introduction

The manuscript should include an untitled introductory section stating the purpose of the investigation and relating the manuscript to similar research.

Results and Discussion

The “Results and Discussion” should be presented as a coherent whole section, in which the results are presented concisely. The discussion should interpret the results and relate them to existing knowledge in the field in as clear and brief a fashion as possible. Tables and figures should be designed to maximize the presentation and comprehension of the experimental data. Authors submitting a manuscript as a Note should omit the heading “Results and Discussion.” For Articles of unusual length, subheadings may be included within the “Results and Discussion” section. The major heading “Results and Discussion” should be bolded and capitalized, with the text starting on the line following. Subheadings are indented, followed by a period, and are a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. The text follows on the same line as the subheading.

Bolded structural code numbers should only be used for new compounds and for those known compounds for which new biological data or spectroscopic values are being reported, and should be presented in the main text in ascending numerical order. Authors providing manuscripts focusing on the biological properties of two or fewer known natural products have the option of referring to the compound(s) concerned by name, rather than assigning each a bolded numerical code number. Other known compounds should be referred to in the text by name, wherever necessary. Sugar units in glycosides should not be inferred as D or L based solely on NMR data analysis, but should be determined by supporting experimental work such as measurement of their optical rotations following acid hydrolysis or by the preparation of chiral derivatives and comparison with standards using a chromatographic analytical method. If the aglycone of a glycoside is also a new compound, then it should be isolated and its physical constants and spectroscopic parameters stated. Authors are advised to use correctly the terms “relative and absolute configuration” instead of “relative and absolute stereochemistry”. In, for example, a carbocyclic compound, only a stereogenic carbon or a stereogenic element, such as an axis, possesses configuration. Substituents such as methyl groups are either alpha or beta oriented and are not alpha or beta configured. Care should be taken not to make erroneous configurational conclusions via NMR NOE associations from ring to side-chain protons of, for example, sterols and tetracyclic triterpenoids. The term “spectral” should be avoided in a structure elucidation discussion, when “spectroscopic” or “spectrometric” are meant instead. When describing mass spectrometric details, authors should not refer to the terms “pseudomolecular ion”, “quasimolecular ion”, or “protonated molecular ion" and should refer instead to, e.g., “a sodium adduct ion”, “a protonated molecule”, or a “deprotonated molecule” (see Pure Appl. Chem . 2013 , 85 , 1515–1609).

In manuscripts that present results of biological studies with tumor cell lines or animal-based tumor models, authors should pay special attention to the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NIH) guidelines for cancer drug discovery studies. Compounds that suppress the growth of, or kill, isolated tumor cell lines grown in culture should be referred to as either “cytostatic” or “cytotoxic”, as appropriate. Only compounds that inhibit the growth of tumors in animal-based models should be called “antitumor”. The term “anticancer” should be reserved for compounds that show specific activity in human-based clinical studies (see Suffness, M.; Douros, J. J. Nat . Prod . 1982 , 45 , 1–14). Some flexibility in this system is afforded in the description of compounds that show activity in molecular-targeted antitumor assays. Compounds should be compared against a suitable positive control substance and follow accepted guidelines when represented as “active”. For example, a cytotoxic pure substance when tested against a cancer cell line would exhibit an IC 50 value of <10 μ M (or 4–5 μ g/mL).

Experimental Section

The presentation of specific details about instruments used, sources of specialized chemicals, and related experimental details should be incorporated into the text of the Experimental Section as a paragraph headed General Experimental Procedures. The general order for inclusion should be as follows: melting points; optical rotations; UV spectra; ECD and/or VCD spectra; IR spectra; NMR spectra; mass spectra; and chromatographic and other techniques.

In a separate paragraph, experimental biological material should be reported as authenticated if cultivated or from a natural habitat, and the herbarium deposit site and voucher number should be recorded. The month and year when the organisms were collected should be stated, and it is recommended that the exact collection location be provided using a GPS navigation tool. All microorganisms used experimentally should bear a strain designation number and the culture collection in which they are deposited. The scientific name (genus, species, authority citation, and family) should be presented when first mentioned in the body of the manuscript. Thereafter, the authority should be eliminated, and the generic name should be reduced (except in tables and figure legends) to the first capital letter of the name (but avoid ambiguity, if two or more generic names have the same first letter). If the biological material has not been identified as to species, the manuscript will not be considered for publication unless a special protocol has been followed. Thus, a voucher specimen of the organism should be deposited with a recognized taxonomist for the particular group of organisms in question. The taxonomist should then assign to the specimen an identifying number unique to the organism so that any additional collections of the same organism would bear this same number. The number will be retained until the organism is completely identified. The taxonomist should write a brief taxonomic description to be included in the manuscript, which should state how the organism in question relates morphologically to known species. Contributors should use DNA sequence analysis to assist with the taxonomic identification of unknown microorganisms, and to deposit these data in GenBank . Photographs of incompletely identified organisms may be included as Supporting Information. Authors should be aware of the fact that the large-scale collection of marine or terrestrial organisms may have negative ecological effects. Therefore, authors describing an investigation derived from large-scale collections should thus include a statement in their manuscript (in the “Biological Material” paragraph of the Experimental Section) explaining why the collection had no significant adverse ecological effect or justifying such effect in terms of the benefit from the resulting work. When organisms are collected from a foreign country, the corresponding author must state in the cover letter with the submitted manuscript that formal collection permission was obtained. Authors who purchase dried “herbal remedies” or other materials from companies must make provision for their proper deposit in a herbarium or other permanent repository, for access by future workers. When a commercially available extract is obtained, the extraction procedure from the organism of origin must be specified. The identification of the extract should be supported by an HPLC trace of known secondary metabolite constituents of the organism, which should be included with the manuscript as Supporting Information.

When physical and spectroscopic data are presented in the body of the manuscript, the following general style must be used (with the various commonly used techniques presented in this same order):

Romucosine (1): colorless needles (CHCl 3 ); mp 152–153 °C; [a] 25 D  –110 ( c 0.4, CHCl 3 ); UV (EtOH) λ max (log ε) 235 (4.23), 275 (4.18), 292 (sh) (3.52), 325 (3.41) nm; IR (Nujol) ν max 1680, 1040, 920 cm –1 ; 1 H NMR (CDCl 3 , 400 MHz) δ 8.11 (1H, d, J = 7.6 Hz, H-11), 7.54–7.28 (2H, m, H-9, H-10), 7.27 (1H, m, H-8), 6.59 (1H, s, H-3), 6.10, 5.97 (each 1H, d, J = 1.5 Hz, OC H 2 O), 4.86 (1H, dd, J = 13.7, 4.4 Hz, H-6a), 4.44 (1H, m, H-5a), 3.77 (3H, s, NCOOC H 3 ), 3.06 (1H, m, H-7a), 2.99 (1H, m, H-5b), 2.91 (1H, m, H-7b), 2.82 (1H, m, H-4a), 2.61 (1H, m, H-4b); 13 C NMR (CDCl 3 , 100 MHz) δ 155.8 (C, N C OOCH 3 ), 146.8 (C, C-2), 143.0 (C, C-1), 135.8 (C, C-7a), 130.7 (C, C-11a), 128.7 (CH, C-8), 127.79 (C, C-3a), 127.78 (CH, C-9), 127.2 (CH, C-10), 127.0 (CH, C-11), 125.6 (C, C-3b), 117.3 (C, C-1a), 107.6 (CH, C-3), 100.9 (CH2, OCH 2 O), 52.7 (CH3, NCOO C H 3 ), 51.7 (CH, C-6a), 39.2 (CH2, C-5), 34.5 (CH2, C-7), 30.4 (CH2, C-4); EIMS m / z 323 [M] + (98), 308 (28), 292 (5), 262 (20), 248 (21), 236 (81), 235 (100), 206 (17), 178 (27), 88 (17); HREIMS m / z 323.1152 (calcd for C 19 H 17 NO 4 , 323.1158).

The correct presentation of NMR spectroscopic data is shown in the table below.

Table 1. NMR Spectroscopic Data (400 MHz, C6D6) for Aurilides B ( 1 ) and C ( 2 )

The correct format to present elemental analysis data is: anal. C 72.87, H 11.13%, calcd for C 37 H 68 O 6 , C 73.02, H 11.18%. The structures of compounds are expected to be supported by high-resolution mass spectrometry (error limit 5 ppm or 0.003 m / z units) or elemental analysis. Melting point determinations should not be provided for compounds described as “amorphous solids.” The unit of concentration to be used for optical rotation measurements is grams per 100 mL. UV extinction coefficient data should be provided as log є values, to two places of decimals. In reporting 1 H NMR data of diastereotopic methylene protons, the deshielded one should be listed as the “a” proton and the shielded one as the “b” proton, as in “H-10a” and “H-10b”, respectively. If two proton or carbon signals in an NMR spectrum appear at the same chemical shift but are still distinguishable, an additional decimal place (three for 1 H NMR data and two for 13 C NMR data) may be used to designate the resonance in question. Carbon-13 NMR data should be reported to the nearest 0.1 ppm with the number of attached protons designated using the C, CH, CH 2 , and CH 3 notation.

Authors must emphasize any unexpected, new, and/or significant hazards or risks associated with the reported work. This information should be in the experimental details section of the Article, Note, or Rapid Communication.

Associated Content

This section has the bolded subheading Supporting Information and should contain a brief non- sentence description of each file deposited. (A full description of the requirements for the Supporting Information is provided later this document.)

Author Information

A section may be included, as needed, entitled “Author Notes” to provide pertinent information on the authors, such as the names of authors who contributed equally to the article.

Acknowledgments

The Acknowledgments section should include credits [initial(s) and last name] for technical assistance, financial support, and other appropriate recognition. During manuscript submission, the submitting author is asked to select funding sources from the list of agencies included in the FundRef Registry .

The References section should provide both citations to the literature and all notes, regardless of their nature, which should be numbered in order of appearance in the manuscript and cited in the text with superscript numbers. Each reference may have its own citation number, or alternatively, references referring to the same topic may be grouped under a common number using alphabetical subdesignations (e.g., 1a, 1b, 1c). Each note should be assigned its own number. References and notes should follow the format shown:

• Journal references can be provided in any style, as noted in the Review Ready Submission section, and titles must be included.
• Linington, R. G.; Williams, P. G.; MacMillan, J. B. Problems in Organic Structure Determination. A Practical Approach to NMR Spectroscopy ; CRC Press/Taylor and Francis Group: Boca Raton, FL, 2016.
• Harada, N.; Nakanishi, K.; Berova, N. In Comprehensive Chiroptical Spectroscopy, Vol. 2; Applications in Stereochemical Analysis of Synthetic Compounds, Natural Products, and Biomolecules ; Berova, N., Polavarapu, P. L., Nakanishi, K., Woody, R. W., Eds.; John Wiley & Sons: New York, 2012; pp 115–166.
• Zheng, G.; Kakisawa, H. Chin. Sci. Bull. 1990 , 35 , 1406–1407; Chem. Abstr. 1991 , 114 , 43213 m .
• Imai, A. Pharmacognosy of the Aerial Parts of Black Cohosh ( Cimicifuga racemosa ). Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2013.
• Davis, R. U.S. Patent 5,708,591, 1998.
• Partial data for plakinic acid M were reported in the Supporting Information of Ref 5a, but a more complete listing is given here for comparative purposes.
• World Health Organization. Fact Sheet No. 94, 2015. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs094/en/ (accessed October 1, 2015).

For additional information on the reference and note format to use, see The ACS Style Guide , 3rd ed. (2006) ( https://pubs.acs.org/page/styleguide ), available from Oxford University Press, Order Department, 2001 Evans Road, Cary, NC 27513 ( http://www.oup.com ).

The author is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of all references. In particular, authors must cite all of the references from their own work on a particular topic, such as all papers published or submitted on the constituents of a given organism under consideration. In addition to the citation, it should be explicitly indicated in the text if this is a continuing work for the same group. Because subscribers to the Web edition are now able to click on the “CAS” tag following each reference to retrieve the corresponding CAS abstract, reference accuracy is critical. Journal abbreviations should be those used by Chemical Abstracts [see Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI) 1907 – 2004 ]. A list of journal abbreviations in the ACS Style Guide can also be accessed.

The author should supply the Editor-in-Chief with copies of related manuscripts that are cited as “in press” or “submitted” for use by the editors and the reviewers in evaluating the manuscript under consideration.

Nomenclature

It is the responsibility of the authors to provide correct nomenclature. All nomenclature must be consistent and unambiguous and should conform with current American usage. Insofar as possible, authors should use systematic names similar to those used by Chemical Abstracts Service, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. For new natural products that are closely related structurally to known compounds, it is much preferred to assign the new compound as a derivative of the known compound, rather than introduce a completely new trivial name into the literature.

Chemical Abstracts ( CA ) nomenclature rules are described in Appendix IV of the Chemical Abstracts Index Guide . A list of ring systems, including names and numbering systems, is found in the Ring Systems Handbook , American Chemical Society, Columbus, OH, 2003, and its latest cumulative supplement. For CA nomenclature advice, consult the Manager of Nomenclature Services, Chemical Abstracts Service, P.O. Box 3012, Columbus, OH 43210-0012. A name generation service is available for a fee through CAS Client Services, 2540 Olentangy River Road, P.O. Box 3343, Columbus, OH 43210-0334; tel: (614) 447- 3870; fax: (614) 447-3747; or e-mail: [email protected].

For IUPAC rules, see:

• Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry, Recommendations, 1990 ; Blackwell Scientific Publications: Oxford, England, 1990.
• A Guide to IUPAC Nomenclature of Organic Compounds, Recommendations, 1993 ; Blackwell Scientific Publications: Oxford, England, 1993.
• Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry, Sections A – F and H ; Pergamon Press: Elmsford, NY, 1979.
• Compendium of Macromolecular Nomenclature ; Blackwell Scientific Publications: Oxford, England, 1991.
• Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents , 2 nd ed.; Portland Press, Ltd.: London, England, 1992.
• Selected IUPAC recommendations can be found on the Web at http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/iupac.html . 
• The ACS Web site has links to nomenclature recommendations: chemistry.org .

Abbreviations

Abbreviations are used without periods. Standard abbreviations should be used throughout the manuscript. All nonstandard abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and must be defined in the text following their first use. The preferred forms of some of the more commonly used abbreviations are mp, bp, °C, K, s, min, h, mL, μ L, kg, g, mg, μ g, cm, mm, nm, mol, mmol, μ mol, ppm, TLC, GC, NMR, MS, UV, ECD/VCD, and IR. For further information, refer to The ACS Style Guide (2006).

Authors should not provide a separate list of abbreviations in a manuscript; additional abbreviations should be spelled out in full the first time they are mentioned. Authors are discouraged from using abbreviations for terms that are included in the manuscript in only a few instances.

Figures, Schemes, and Charts are numbered with Arabic numerals. Blocks of chemical structures should not be designated as “Figures”. Each graphic must be identified outside the frame of the graphic. The quality of the illustrations depends on the quality of the originals provided. Graphics cannot be modified or enhanced by the journal production staff. The graphics must be submitted as part of the manuscript file and are used in the production of the Journal (material deposited as Supporting Information will not be published in the print edition). The preferred submission procedure is to embed graphics in a Word document. It may help to print the manuscript on a laser printer to ensure all artwork is clear and legible.

Additional acceptable file formats are TIFF, PDF, EPS (vector artwork), or CDX (ChemDraw file). Labeling of all figure parts should be present, and the parts should be assembled into a single graphic. (For EPS files, ensure all fonts are converted to outlines or embedded in the graphic file. The document settings should be in RGB mode.)

TIFF files should have the following minimum resolution requirements:

• Black and white line art: 1200 dpi
• Grayscale art: 600 dpi
• Color art (RGB mode): 300 dpi

Color graphics submitted in CMYK or at lower resolution may result in poor-quality images. Save graphic files at the final resolution and size using the program used to create the graphic. The inclusion of a color photograph is particularly recommended for manuscripts based on the constituents of organisms that are not identified beyond the genus level. Digital photographs are accepted. Photographs that are single or double column width so that they will not have to be reduced work best.

Layout. In preparing structures for publication, layout is critical. Figures, Schemes, Charts, and blocks of structures are presented in the Journal either in one-column or two-column format.

For efficient use of journal space, single-column illustrations are preferred.

• Maximum width:240 pts (3.33 in.)
• Maximum depth: 660 pts (9.16 in.)
• Minimum width: 300 pts (4.16 in.)
• Maximum width: 504 pts (7 in.)

Authors are advised that structural material labeled as a “Figure” is placed at the top or bottom of a page, as is all two-column material. All structural material that should immediately follow certain text must be designed to fit the one-column format, and its location in the text must be indicated in the manuscript. Structures, arrows, and compound designators should be arranged so as to make maximum use of the width afforded by the one-column or two-column format.

For best results, illustrations should be submitted in the actual size at which they should appear in the Journal. Consistently sized letters and labels in graphics throughout the manuscript will help ensure consistent graphic presentation for publication. Lettering should be no smaller than 4.5 points. (Helvetica or Arial type works well for lettering.) Lines should be no thinner than 0.5 point. Lettering and lines should be of uniform density. If artwork that should be reduced must be submitted, larger lettering and thicker lines should be used so that, when reduced, the artwork meets the above-mentioned parameters.

Complex textures and shading to achieve a three-dimensional effect should be avoided. To show a pattern, a simple cross-hatch design should be used.

Content. Abbreviations such as Me for CH 3 , Et for C 2 H 5 , and Ph (but not Φ ) for C 6 H 5 are acceptable. Make liberal use of “R and X groups” in equations, schemes, and structure blocks to avoid the repetition of similar structures. Do not repeat a structure; the number alone of an earlier structure can be used if a compound occurs several times. Within graphics, structures should be numbered with boldface Arabic numerals, consecutively from left to right, top to bottom, regardless of the order in which the compounds are discussed in the text. It is not necessary to give reagents and conditions in complete detail, since this detail is contained in the Experimental Section. Where needed, numbers such as NMR chemical shifts may be included directly on structural formulas.

Table of Contents/Abstract Graphic

A graphic must be included with each manuscript that will be used for both the abstract and the Table of Contents (TOC) of the Web edition of the Journal issue in which the Article, Note, Perspective, or Review will appear. This graphic should capture the reader’s attention and, in conjunction with the manuscript’s title, should give the reader a quick visual impression of the type of chemistry described and/or the biological results obtained; however it should not be too complex. Structures in the TOC graphic should be constructed as specified in the “Chemical Structures” section below. The TOC graphic should be submitted at the actual size to be used and should be no larger than 3.25 in. (8.5 cm) wide and 1.75 in. (4.45 cm) tall. (See detailed instructions at http://pubs.acs.org/page/4authors/submission/howtosubmit.html .) Text should be limited to labels for compounds, reaction arrows, and figures. The use of color to enhance the scientific value is highly encouraged. The TOC graphic should be inserted on a separate page at the end of the manuscript file. The title and author list will be added during production.

Chemical Structures

Structures should be produced with the use of a drawing program such as ChemDraw. Structure drawing requirements (preset in the ACS Stylesheet in ChemDraw) are as follows:

• chain angle, 120º
• bond spacing, 18% of width
• fixed length, 14.4 pt (0.508 cm, 0.2 in.)
• bold width, 2.0 pt (0.071 cm, 0.0278 in.)
• line width, 0.6 pt (0.021 cm, 0.0084 in.)
• margin width, 1.6 pt (0.056 cm, 0.0222 in.)
• hash spacing, 2.5 pt (0.088 cm, 0.0347 in.)
• font, Arial/Helvetica
• size, 10 pt
• units, points
• tolerances, 5 pixels
• paper, US Letter
• scale, 100%
• (5) Using the ChemDraw ruler or appropriate margin settings, create structure blocks, schemes, and equations having maximum widths of 11.3 cm (one-column format) or 23.6 cm (two-column format)
• (6) Embolden compound numbers, but not atom labels or captions.
• (7) Authors are urged to use only a single configurational descriptor when defining a stereocenter in a chemical structure. Atom numbering should be kept outside of rings wherever possible. Rather than rectangular solid and dashed lines, authors should use solid and dashed wedges to indicate configurations, as shown below. Dots at ring junctions intended to represent hydrogen atoms should not be used. Structures should be drawn in a neat manner ready for direct reproduction, and should not be cluttered or overlapping. Any arrows and numbering used for atoms in figures should not come into contact with bonds or ring systems. See an example of a prepared structure using ChemDraw with the specified preferences below. In molecules containing a chiral biphenyl axis, it is recommended that one of the aromatic rings be drawn in the plane of the paper and the second one be rotated out of the plane of the paper, to reflect the P or M conformation about the biphenyl bond (see below for example).

When the structure of a chiral compound is flipped horizontally, the stereodescriptors should be changed at every stereogenic carbon, otherwise the enantiomer of the relevant compound would be depicted. This is depicted below for the b-D-glucopyranoside of phenol. The 1 to 2 horizontal flip is incorrect since the depicted glucopyranosyl moiety belongs to the L-series of glucopyranoses. The 1 to 3 horizontal rotation through 180°/adjustment of the tetrahydropyran ring is correct and shows the descriptor changes required to retain the D-configuration of the glucopyranose moiety. Alternatively, in the “planar” presentations the 4 to 5 horizontal flip is incorrect and the 4 to 6 horizontal rotation is correct, showing the proper descriptor changes. Please note that presentations 4 and 6 are InChI (International Chemical Identifier) compliant, while 1 and 3 are not.

Authors using other drawing packages should, in as far as possible, modify their program’s parameters so that they reflect the above guidelines.

These should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and should be placed as they should appear in the paper. Footnotes in tables should be given lowercase letter designations and be cited in the table by italic superscript letters. The sequence of letters should proceed by line rather than by column. If a footnote is cited both in the text and in a table, insert a lettered footnote in the table to refer to the numbered footnote in the text. Each table should be provided with a descriptive heading, which, together with the individual column headings, should make the table, as nearly as possible, self- explanatory. In setting up tabulations, authors are requested to keep in mind the type area of the journal page (17.8 × 25.4 cm) and the column width (8.5 cm), and to make tables conform to the limitations of these dimensions. Arrangements that leave many columns partially filled or that contain much blank space should be avoided.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

A statement describing any financial conflicts of interest or lack thereof is published with each manuscript. During the submission process, the corresponding author must provide this statement on behalf of all authors of the manuscript. The statement should describe all potential sources of bias, including affiliations, funding sources, and financial or management relationships, that may constitute conflicts of interest (please see the ACS Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research ). The statement will be published in the final article. If no conflict of interest is declared, the following statement will be published in the article: “The authors declare no competing financial interest.”

It is a mandatory requirement for authors to deposit copies of NMR spectra for all new compounds in the Supporting Information with at least the 1 H and 13 C NMR spectra included . A typical caption for a spectrum would be: “S1. 1 H NMR (400 MHz, CDCl 3 ) spectrum of the new compound xx ”. Supporting Information pages should be consecutively numbered and a table of contents for the Supporting Information should be included.

This information is provided to the reviewers during the peer-review process (for Review Only) and is available to readers of the published work (for Publication). Supporting Information must be submitted at the same time as the manuscript. See the list of Acceptable Software by File Designation and confirm that your Supporting Information is viewable .

If the manuscript is accompanied by any supporting information files for publication, these files will be made available free of charge to readers. A brief, nonsentence description of the actual contents of each file, including the file type extension, is required. This description should be labeled Supporting Information and should appear before the Acknowledgement and Reference sections.  Examples of sufficient and insufficient descriptions are as follows:

Examples of sufficient descriptions: “Supporting Information: 1 H NMR spectra for all compounds (PDF)” or “Additional experimental details, materials, and methods, including photographs of experimental setup (DOC)”.

Examples of insufficient descriptions: “Supporting Information: Figures S1-S3” or “Additional figures as mentioned in the text”.

When including supporting information for review only, include copies of references that are unpublished or in-press. These files are available only to editors and reviewers.

All ACS journals strongly encourage authors to make the research data underlying their articles publicly available at the time of publication.

Research data is defined as materials and information used in the experiments that enable the validation of the conclusions drawn in the article, including primary data produced by the authors for the study being reported, secondary data reused or analyzed by the authors for the study, and any other materials necessary to reproduce or replicate the results.

The ACS Research Data Policy provides additional information on Data Availability Statements, Data Citation, and Data Repositories.

NMR Data Files

When submitting spectra, authors should adhere to the following guidelines:

A caption should be included on the spectrum, noting the nucleus being measured, the solvent (formula preferred, e.g., CDCl 3 ), and the field strength. A representation of the compound should be included on the spectrum; please use ChemDraw or a related program. The bold compound number used in the manuscript should be included. The largest peak in the 1 H NMR spectrum should normally arise from the compound, not the solvent. All peaks in the 1 H NMR spectrum should be integrated. Chemical shift values should be included. The solvent peak should be clearly labeled on the spectrum. All peaks should be visible on the spectrum. Insets are encouraged to show expanded regions. At minimum, the spectral window should be –1 ppm to 9 ppm for 1 H NMR and –10 ppm to 180 ppm for 13 C NMR. The font should be clear and large enough to read (minimum of 10 point). Horizontal orientation is preferred for spectra.

For every new compound, a copy of a well-resolved 1D proton NMR spectrum and a copy of a proton- decoupled 1D carbon spectrum (conventional, DEPT, DEPTQ, or PENDANT), should be included in the supporting information. In cases where structure assignments of complex molecules depend heavily on NMR data interpretation, including isolated and synthesized natural products, copies of the 2D spectra are requested. All original primary NMR data supporting a submission should be retained and provided if requested. Additionally, authors are strongly encouraged to furnish a folder of the primary (“raw”) NMR data files (free induction decay (FID) and 2D serial files) as additional Supporting Information. Authors reporting compounds of complex, unusual, or unexpected structure are encouraged to provide FID data. The FID data should be mentioned in the Supporting Information availability statement in the manuscript file. The FID and serial file data can also be deposited in a public repository that provides a permanent link, such as a DOI.

When preparing raw NMR data (FIDs):

• One folder (root folder) should be created for each compound
• The root folder should be named clearly, including the compound number and/or a unique identifier
• Establish subfolders for each spectrum and name them according to the type of nucleus measured and experiment performed: 1H, 13C, DEPT, COSY, etc.
• Include in each subfolder the actual FID or serial files, acquisition data and processing parameters for each experiment; depending on the spectrometer used, this can be several files or a combination of further folders and files
• In a text document with the same name as the root folder, include the name of the manufacturer of the spectrometer used to collect the data, the acquisition software and processing programs used to analyze the data and the operating frequency used to measure each nucleus (e.g. 300 MHz 1H or 75 MHz 13C)
• Include a structure file that shows the structure and compound identifier for each provided dataset. MolFile is the strongly preferred format
• Compress the entire root folder into a single zip archive file

Recommendations for Crystal Structure Papers

Although the results of crystal structure determinations are frequently of interest to readers of the Journal, details of crystal structure experiments are generally not. Results appropriate for the Journal are not, however, sufficient to allow referees to assess the quality of an X-ray structure determination. Thus, it is recommended that manuscripts involving such determinations be accompanied by material provided for the benefit of the reviewers only. Authors should submit the following minimum materials, in tabular form where possible, for each compound for which X-ray crystallographic supplementary data are available.

Published Manuscript:

• Crystal data, including chemical formula, formula weight, crystal system and space group, cell dimensions (with uncertainties), number of formulas per unit cell, calculated density, radiation used, and wavelength. When determined, the Flack and/or Hooft parameters should be included.
• Final fractional atomic coordinates. Hydrogen atom coordinates should be included only if they have been experimentally determined or refined. Calculated coordinates should be provided as reviewer’s material.
• A brief outline of procedures used for data collection and refinement, including the method used for intensity measurement, 0 limits, portion of the full sphere collected, handling of absorption (if applicable), method of refinement, number of reflections used in the refinement and criteria for their choice, treatment of hydrogen atoms, and final R factor.
• A perspective diagram (perhaps prepared by ORTEP, PLUTO, or similar programs) that gives the atom-numbering scheme if it is not unambiguous from the remainder of the paper. If the figure is a stereoview, it should be provided reduced to correct size, about 55–60 mm between images.

Besides a description of the structure, other information (important distances, torsion angles, results of best plane calculations, etc.) may be included if appropriate. A note should be cited at an appropriate place in the manuscript and included in the References and Notes Section: “Crystallographic data for the structure(s) reported in this paper have been deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. Copies of the data can be obtained, free of charge, on application to the Director, CCDC, 12 Union Road, Cambridge CB2 1EZ, UK (fax: +44-(0)1223-336033 or e-mail: [email protected] ) .”

Reviewer’s Material:

• Any calculated coordinate (e.g., hydrogen atoms).
• A full list of bond distances (and their uncertainties).
• A full list of bond angles (and their uncertainties).

All tables should be clearly legible, the contents nonredundant, and their interpretation immediately obvious. Authors must provide this information in the form of a Crystallographic Information File (CIF) for each compound for which X-ray crystallographic data are determined, with each CIF being separated from any other Supporting Information files.

Authors will deposit the tables of final fractional atomic coordinates and the full list of bond lengths and angles at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) prior to the submission of their paper. The CCDC deposition number must be included in the submitted manuscript. A checklist of data items for deposition is available at www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk .

A well-written paper helps share your results most clearly. ACS Publications’ English Editing Service is designed to help scientists communicate their research effectively. Our subject-matter expert editors will edit your manuscript for grammar, spelling, and other language errors so your ideas are presented at their best.

The quality of illustrations in ACS journals and partner journals depends on the quality of the original files provided by the authors. Figures are not modified or enhanced by journal production staff. All graphics must be prepared and submitted in digital format.

Graphics should be inserted into the main body whenever possible. Please see Appendix 2 for additional information.

Any graphic (figure chart, scheme, or equation) that has appeared in an earlier publication should include a credit line citing the original source. Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to re-use this material.

The impact of your research is not limited to what you can express with words. Tables and figures such as graphs, photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and other visuals can play a significant role in effectively communicating your findings. Our Artwork Editing and Graphical Abstract services generate publication-ready figures and Table of Contents (TOC) graphics that conform to your chosen journal’s specifications. For figures, this includes changes to file type, resolution, color space, font, scale, line weights, and layout (to improve readability and professional appearance). For TOC graphics, our illustrators can work with a rough sketch or concept or help extract the key findings of your manuscript directly for use as a visual summary of your paper.

Preparing for Submission

Manuscripts, graphics, supporting information, and required forms, as well as manuscript revisions, must all be submitted in digital format through ACS Paragon Plus , which requires an ACS ID to log in. Registering for an ACS ID is fast, free, and does not require an ACS membership. Please refer to Appendix 1 for additional information on preparing your submission

Journal of Natural Products authors are allowed to deposit an initial draft of their manuscript in a preprint service such as ChemRxiv , arXiv, or bioRxiv. A patent or a published patent application is not considered to be a prior "publication". Please note any use of a preprint server, patents, and dissertations in the cover letter, and as appropriate, state how the manuscript has been adjusted/updated between deposition and submission. All other prior/redundant publications are forbidden. Upon publication in Journal of Natural Products , authors are advised to add a link from the preprint to the published paper via the Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

Please suggest 4 reviewers. Authors are encouraged to avoid suggesting reviewers from the authors’ institutions. Do not suggest reviewers who may have a real or perceived conflict of interest . Whenever possible, suggest academic email addresses rather than personal email addresses.

If your submission is declined for publication by this journal, the editors might deem your work to be better suited for another ACS Publications journal or partner journal and suggest that the authors consider transferring the submission. Manuscript Transfer simplifies and shortens the process of submitting to another ACS journal or partner journal, as all the coauthors, suggested reviewers, manuscript files, and responses to submission questions are copied by ACS Paragon Plus to the new draft submission. Authors are free to accept or decline the transfer offer.

Note that each journal is editorially independent. Transferring a manuscript is not a guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted, as the final publication decision will belong to the editor of the next journal.

PRODUCTION AND PUBLICATION

Correction of the galley proofs is the responsibility of the Corresponding Author. The Corresponding Author of an accepted manuscript will receive e-mail notification and complete instructions when page proofs are available for review via ACS Direct Correct . Extensive or important changes on page proofs, including changes to the title or list of authors, are subject to review by the editor.

It is the responsibility of the Corresponding Author to ensure that all authors listed on the manuscript agree with the changes made on the proofs. Galley proofs should be returned within 48 hours in order to ensure timely publication of the manuscript.

Accepted manuscripts will be published on the ACS Publications Web site as soon as page proofs are corrected and all author concerns are resolved. The first date on which the document is published on the Web is considered the publication date.

Publication of manuscripts on the Web may occur weeks in advance of the cover date of the issue of publication. Authors should take this into account when planning their patent and intellectual property activities related to a document and should ensure that all patent information is available at the time of first publication, whether ASAP or issue publication.

All articles published ahead of print receive a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, which is used to cite the manuscript before and after the paper appears in an issue. Additionally, any supplemental information submitted along with the manuscript will automatically be assigned a DOI and hosted on Figshare to promote open data discoverability and use of your research outputs.

Manuscripts will be published on the “ASAP Articles” page on the web as soon as page proofs are corrected and all author concerns are resolved. ASAP publication usually occurs within a few working days of receipt of page proof corrections, which can be several weeks in advance of the cover date of the issue.

The American Chemical Society follows guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) when considering any ethical concerns regarding a published article, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern.

Additions and Corrections

Additions and Corrections may be requested by the author(s) or initiated by the Editor to address important issues or correct errors and omissions of consequence that arise after publication of an article. All Additions and Corrections are subject to approval by the Editor, and should bring new and directly relevant information and corrections that fix scientific facts. Minor corrections and additions will not be published. Readers who detect errors of consequence in the work of others should contact the corresponding author of that work.

Additions and Corrections must be submitted as new manuscripts via ACS Paragon Plus by the Corresponding Author for publication in the “Addition/Correction” section of the Journal. The corresponding author should obtain approval from all coauthors prior to submitting or provide evidence that such approval has been solicited. The manuscript should include the original article title and author list, citation including DOI, and details of the correction.

Retractions

Articles may be retracted for scientific or ethical reasons and may be requested by the article author(s) or by the journal Editor(s), but are ultimately published at the discretion of the Editor. Articles that contain seriously flawed or erroneous data such that their findings and conclusions cannot be relied upon may be retracted in order to correct the scientific record. When an article is retracted, a notice of Retraction will be published containing information about the reason for the Retraction. The originally published article will remain online except in extraordinary circumstances (e.g. where deemed legally necessary, or if the availability of the published content poses public health risks).

Expressions of Concern

Expressions of Concern may be issued at the discretion of the Editor if:

• there is inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors;
• there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case;
• an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive;
• an investigation is underway but a judgment will not be available for a considerable time.

Upon completion of any related investigation, and when a final determination is made about the outcome of the article, the Expression of Concern may be replaced with a Retraction notice or Correction.

At ACS Publications, we know it is important for you to be able to share your peer reviewed, published work with colleagues in the global community of scientists. As sharing on sites known as scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) is becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s scholarly research ecosystem, we would like to remind you of the many ways in which you, a valued ACS author, can share your published work .

Publishing open access makes it easy to share your work with friends, colleagues, and family members. In addition, ACS Publications makes it easy to share your newly published research with ACS Articles on Request (see below). Don’t forget to promote your research and related data on social media, at conferences, and through scholarly communication networks. Increase the impact of your research using the following resources: Altmetrics , Figshare , ACS Certified Deposit

When your article is published in an ACS journal or partner journal, corresponding authors are provided with a link that offers up to 50 free digital prints of the final published work. This link is valid for the first 12 months following online publication, and can be shared via email or an author’s website. After one year, the access restrictions to your article will be lifted, and you can share the Articles on Request URL on social media and other channels. To access all your Articles on Request links, log in to your ACS Publishing Center account and visit the “My Published Manuscripts” page.

Article , journal , and commercial reprints are available to order.

Appendix 1: PREPARING FOR SUBMISSION

We’ve developed ACS’ publishing and editorial policies in consultation with the research communities that we serve, including authors and librarians. Browse our policies below to learn more.

Ethical Guidelines

ACS editors have provided Ethical Guidelines for persons engaged in the publication of chemical research—specifically, for editors, authors, and reviewers. Each journal also has a specific policy on prior publication .

OFAC Compliance

As a U.S.-based non-profit organization, the American Chemical Society (ACS) is required to comply with U.S. sanctions laws and regulations administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). While these laws and regulations permit U.S.-based publishers like ACS to engage in publishing-related activities with authors located in sanctioned regions in many cases, ACS may be prohibited under U.S. law from engaging in publishing-related activities in some cases, including, but not limited to, instances where an author or the institution with which an author is affiliated is located in a particular sanctioned region or has been designated by OFAC as a Specially Designated National (SDN) pursuant to certain U.S. sanctions programs. ACS reserves the right to refrain from engaging in any publishing-related activities that ACS determines in its sole discretion may be in violation of U.S. law.

Safety Considerations

Authors must emphasize any unexpected, new, and/or significant hazards or risks associated with the reported work. This information should be in the Experimental Section of a full article and included in the main text of a letter. Statement examples can be found in the Safety Statement Style Sheet  and additional information on communicating safety information from the  ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication is freely available here .

A statement describing any financial conflicts of interest or lack thereof is published in each ACS journal and partner journal article.

During the submission process, the Corresponding Author must provide a statement on behalf of all authors of the manuscript, describing all potential sources of bias, including affiliations, funding sources, and financial or management relationships, that may constitute conflicts of interest. If the manuscript is accepted, the statement will be published in the final article.

If the manuscript is accepted and no conflict of interest has been declared, the following statement will be published in the final article: “The authors declare no competing financial interest.”

In publishing only original research, ACS is committed to deterring plagiarism, including self-plagiarism. ACS Publications uses CrossCheck's iThenticate software to screen submitted manuscripts for similarity to published material. Note that your manuscript may be screened during the submission process.

Further information about plagiarism can be found in Part B of the Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research . See also the press release regarding ACS' participation in the CrossCheck initiative.

Authorship, Author List, and Coauthor Notification

Authors are required to obtain the consent of all their coauthors prior to submitting a manuscript. The submitting author accepts the responsibility of notifying all coauthors that the manuscript is being submitted.

During manuscript submission, the submitting author must provide contact information (full name, email address, institutional affiliation, and mailing address) for all of the coauthors. Because all of the author names are automatically imported into the electronic Journal Publishing Agreement , the names must be entered into ACS Paragon Plus. (Note that coauthors are not required to register in ACS Paragon Plus.) Author affiliation should reflect where the work was completed, even if the author has since left that institution. Authors may include a note with a current address if their institution has changed since the work was completed.

To expedite the processing of your manuscript, please format your author and affiliation information according the guidelines in this link: https://pubsapp.acs.org/paragonplus/submission/author-address-information.pdf .

Criteria for authorship can be found in Part B of the Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research . Artificial intelligence (AI) tools do not qualify for authorship. The use of AI tools for text or image generation should be disclosed in the manuscript within the Acknowledgment section with a description of when and how the tools were used. For more substantial use cases or descriptions of AI tool use, authors should provide full details within the Methods or other appropriate section of the manuscript.

If any change in authorship is necessary after a manuscript has been submitted, confirmation is required that all of the authors (including those being added or removed) have been notified and have agreed to the change. To provide this confirmation, authors are asked to complete and sign an authorship change form and provide the completed form to the appropriate editorial office.

Authors with a single name:  If you, or any of your coauthors, have only one name, please follow these steps for proper submission to ACS Paragon Plus:

• First (Given) Name Field: Enter an asterisk (*) into the "First (Given) Name" field.
• Last (Family) Name Field: Enter your single name into the "Last (Family) Name" field.

If your paper is accepted, the asterisk (*) will be removed from the published version of the paper.

Patent Activities and Intellectual Property

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all patent activities and intellectual property issues are satisfactorily resolved prior to first publication (ASAP or in issue). Acceptance and publication will not be delayed for pending or unresolved issues of this nature.

Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)

Authors submitting manuscript revisions are required to provide their own personal, validated ORCID iD before completing the submission, if an ORCID iD is not already associated with their ACS Paragon Plus user profiles. This ID may be provided during original manuscript submission or when submitting the manuscript revision. All authors are strongly encouraged to register for an ORCID iD, a unique researcher identifier. The ORCID iD will be displayed in the published article for any author on a manuscript who has a validated ORCID iD associated with ACS when the manuscript is accepted.

ORCID iDs should not be typed into the manuscript. ACS publishes only those ORCID iDs that have been properly verified and linked before the manuscript is accepted . After your ORCID iD is linked, it will be displayed automatically in all subsequently accepted manuscripts for any/all ACS journals. We do not publish ORCID iDs provided during proof review or via other communications after a manuscript is accepted for publication.

With an ORCID iD, you can create a profile of your research activities to distinguish yourself from other researchers with similar names, and make it easier for your colleagues to find your publications. If you do not yet have an ORCID iD, or you wish to associate your existing ORCID iD with your ACS Paragon Plus account, you may do so by clicking on “Edit Your Profile” from your ACS Paragon Plus account homepage and following the ORCID-related links. Learn more at www.orcid.org .

Copyright and Permissions

To obtain forms and guidelines for completing the Journal Publishing Agreement or obtaining permissions from copyright owners, and to explore a Copyright Learning Module for chemists, click here .

Funder Reporting Requirement

Authors are required to report funding sources and grant/award numbers. Enter ALL sources of funding for ALL authors in BOTH the Funder Registry Tool in ACS Paragon Plus and in your manuscript to meet this requirement.

Open Access Compliance

ACS offers options by which authors can fulfill the requirements for open access and deposition into repositories for funded research. Visit our ACS Open Science site to see how to fulfill requirements for specific funders  and to find out if you are eligible to publish under a Read + Publish agreement between ACS and your institution. You can also find out more about Open Access Compliance and ACS Open Science initiatives .

Diversity and Inclusion Statement

During manuscript submission, ACS journal authors have the option to submit a statement sharing information related to diversity and inclusion that is relevant for their paper. If supplying a diversity and inclusion statement, the corresponding author must provide this on behalf of all authors of the manuscript during the submission process. These statements include but are not limited to analysis of citation diversity and acknowledgment of indigenous land on which research was conducted. Statements expressing political beliefs are not permitted and may be removed by the journal office. All statements are subject to final review by the Editor.

• Citation Diversity Statement: The citation diversity statement should appear in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. ACS recommends including the following: (1) the importance of citation diversity, (2) the proportion of citations by gender and race/ethnicity for the first and last authors, (3) the method used to determine those proportions and its limitations, and (4) steps taken to by the authors to improve citation diversity in the article. We recognize that one limitation of the current methods is that it cannot account for intersex, non-binary, and transgender people, or Indigenous and mixed-race authors. (Adapted from BMES/Springer Guidelines )
• Land acknowledgment: The land acknowledgment statement should appear in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. The statement should link to the institutions’ formal land acknowledgments on which the research took place, if possible. Further guidance for creating these statements can be found here: https://nativegov.org/news/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/ .

Appendix 2: Preparing Graphics

Digital graphics pasted into manuscripts should have the following minimum resolutions:

• Black and white line art, 1200 dpi
• Grayscale art, 600 dpi
• Color art, 300 dpi

Graphics must fit a one- or two-column format. Single-column graphics can be sized up to 240 points wide (3.33 in.) and double-column graphics must be sized between 300 and 504 points (4.167 in. and 7 in.). The maximum depth for all graphics is 660 points (9.167 in.) including the caption (allow 12 pts. For each line of caption text). Lettering should be no smaller than 4.5 points in the final published format. The text should be legible when the graphic is viewed full-size. Helvetica or Arial fonts work well for lettering. Lines should be no thinner than 0.5 point.

Color may be used to enhance the clarity of complex structures, figures, spectra, and schemes, etc., and color reproduction of graphics is provided at no additional cost to the author. Graphics intended to appear in black and white or grayscale should not be submitted in color.

Type of Graphics

Table of contents (toc)/abstract graphic.

Consult the Guidelines for Table of Contents/Abstract Graphics for specifications.

Our team of subject-matter experts and graphical designers can also help generate a compelling TOC graphic to convey your key findings. Learn more about our Graphical Abstract service .

A caption giving the figure number and a brief description must be included below each figure. The caption should be understandable without reference to the text. It is preferable to place any key to symbols used in the artwork itself, not in the caption. Ensure that any symbols and abbreviations used in the text agree with those in the artwork.

Charts (groups of structures that do not show reactions) may have a brief caption describing their contents.

Each table must have a brief (one phrase or sentence) title that describes the contents. The title should be understandable without reference to the text. Details should be put in footnotes, not in the title. Tables should be used when the data cannot be presented clearly in the narrative, when many numbers must be presented, or when more meaningful inter-relationships can be conveyed by the tabular format. Tables should supplement, not duplicate, information presented in the text and figures. Tables should be simple and concise.

Each scheme (sequences of reactions) may have a brief caption describing its contents.

Chemical structures should be produced with the use of a drawing program such as ChemDraw.

Journal of Natural Products authors are encouraged to submit images to be considered for use on the journal’s front cover or Supplementary Covers at the time of the submission of their revised manuscript. If your article is accepted for publication, your suggestion may also be selected for use on one of the journal’s covers. If your art is selected for front cover, ACS will send you information about how to request one complimentary 18” by 24” printed poster featuring your work. Images chosen for the front cover will be published at no cost to the author.

Cover image submissions should be colorful and visually engaging, with minimal text. The cover image should not resemble a graphical abstract or data figure, but rather should be an artistic and scientifically accurate representation of the manuscript. Cover illustrations for the Journal of Natural Products generally are composed of a high-contrast photograph of an organism (e.g., higher or lower plant, microbe, or a marine animal), which is overlaid by the chemical structure of a constituent of significance from this organism. Representative past cover motifs are provided on the journal website . 

Image files should be submitted as TIF, JPG, PNG, or EPS files (not PDF or PPT) with a resolution of at least 300 dpi for pixel-based images. Cover art should be 8.19 inches (20.8 cm) wide × 10 inches (25.4 cm) high at 300 ppi, and submission of “layered” artwork is encouraged. The journal’s logo will obscure the top 3 inches (7.62 cm) of the image. Authors should submit the cover image, along with a brief (<50-word) cover caption explaining the significance of the cover motif, inclusive of the citation of pertinent bibliography presented in the correct style for the journal. These items should be submitted as supplementary files to ACS Paragon Plus with the revised manuscript. Authors are responsible for providing signed permission forms as deemed necessary by the American Chemical Society. 

If you wish to be considered only for the front cover, and not a paid supplementary cover, please respond NO accordingly to the Supplementary Cover Art question in ACS Paragon Plus. For more information on the Supplementary Covers program, please see this webpage .

All art submitted for consideration for a supplementary cover will also be considered for a front cover.

Web Enhanced Objects (WEO)

The Web editions of ACS journals allow readers to view multimedia attachments such as animations and movies that complement understanding of the research being reported.

WEOs should be uploaded in ACS Paragon Plus with ‘Web Enhanced Object’ selected as the file designation. Consult the list of compatible WEO formats .

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About Chemical Abstracts

Chemical Abstracts is the most comprehensive scientific abstracting service in English. It provides a complete bibliographic reference to the original publication and a non-critical summary of its content. Over 15,000 scientific and engineering journals, patents from 26 countries, conference proceedings, reports and monographs are monitored. Over 55% of this material is in English, with the remainder in any of 66 other languages.

Some familiarity with chemistry and its terminology is necessary for the efficient use of this tool. Once the construction of the indexes is understood, there should be little difficulty in the use of CA. However, hands-on experience is the only way a full understanding can be achieved.

Abstracts are arranged in 80 sections grouped under five broad headings and are published weekly.

• From 1907-1996 (v.1-125), biochemistry and organic chemistry are covered in one week; macromolecular chemistry, applied chemistry and chemical engineering, and physical and analytical chemistry in the alternate week.
• From 1997–present, all fields are covered in each issue.

How to Access:

• Individual accounts are required ( registration form ).
• You must create the account while on campus (or using the VPN - see this page: UMSL Information Technology Services ).
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• You will need to create a separate username and password.
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Abstracts There were 26 weekly issues per semiannual "volume." Each Abstract issue was divided into 80 Subject Sections. An abstract appeared in just one section, based on the novelty of the process or substance being reported in the literature. Each weekly issue also contained indexes by author, subject keyword (not official headings), and patent number. The issue indexes were superseded first by a volume index published every six months, and then by the 5-year Collective Index. (The library did not retain the issue and volume indexes.)

Collective Indexes Every five years CAS published a Collective Index (CI). The 14th CI was published in 2002 and covers the years 1997-2001. The library has all Collective Indexes up to this point. They are divided into:

• Author Index , 1907-2001
• Subject Index 1907-71 (included chemical substance names through 1971)
• Chemical Substance Index , 1972-2001 (includes all CA Index Names used during the specific index period)
• General Subject Index , 1972-2001 (includes all subject and compound-class terms that are not systematic CA Index Names)
• Formula Index , 1920-2001
• Patent Index , 1907-2001

Index Guides The Index Guide (IG) for each Collective Index period provides cross-references from commonly used chemical names to official CA Index Names (with registry numbers) used in the corresponding Chemical Substance Index. It also serves as a thesaurus of all controlled-vocabulary subject headings used in the General Subject Index. The Index Guide should always be consulted before looking up a chemical name or subject term in the Collective Indexes.

Ring Systems Handbook The RSH leads you from a ring or cage structure to the CA Index Name and Registry Number of a ring parent compound, for searching in the Chemical Substance Index. Entries are in ring analysis order and are indexed by molecular formula and Index Name.

Registry Handbook The Registry Handbook - Number Section was a cumulative numerical listing of Registry Numbers assigned to chemical substances from 1965 to 1996. If you have only a registry number and need the CA Index Name for that compound, look it up here first and then use the name to consult the Chemical Substance Indexes. A corresponding Names Section issued on microfiche provided registry numbers for several hundred thousand of the most-indexed common names.

CASSI CASSI (Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index) is the comprehensive and retrospective list of publications that have been indexed by Chemical Abstracts since it began in 1907. It includes journals, books, conferences, and other series, arranged by CA abbreviation. This is the source you use to translate journal title abbreviations into full titles for searching in the library catalog and other finding aids. The last print edition of CASSI (1907-2004) is kept in the Librarian's office. It is also available in a somewhat limited form on the web:

Doing a manual search in printed Chemical Abstracts is a tedious, mutli-step process.  This is how it was done.

• Author: Entries are arranged by last name, then by first and second initials (not by first name). Qualifying text is the title of the document. Coauthors are cross-referenced to first author.
• Formula: Entries contain only abstract numbers unless there is a large number of them, and no qualifying text. It's best to use the Formula Index to get the corresponding CA Index Name, then look up that name in the corresponding Chemical Substance or Subject (1907-71) index, where the entries are more detailed. Formulas are listed in Hill order: C, then H, then other elements in alphabetical order.
• Chemical Substance name: Start with the Index Guide to see if there's an entry for the name you have. If not, use the Formula Index or Ring Systems Handbook to get the name. In the CSI you must use only the specific CA Index Name for that CI period. There are no cross references to earlier or generic names. Names are arranged by "parent" (the structural skeleton) followed by substituents and modifications. Qualifying text in each entry indicates what the document is primarily about, followed by an abstract number. About 600 of the most frequently indexed compounds are called "Qualified Substances." Their document entries are grouped into seven categories: Analysis, Biological studies, Occurrence, Preparation, Properties, Reactions, Uses and miscellaneous.
• Subject term: Check the Index Guide first to find an appropriate term to look up in the Subject Index (1907-71) or General Subject Index (1972- ). Classes of compounds (e.g. Carcinogens), undefined compounds and mixtures (e.g. Gasoline), processes, plant/animal species, and other general topical terms are found in this index, along with cross references and scope notes.
• Patent number: Arranged by issuing country/organization, then by patent number. CA abstracts only the first member of a patent family, and links later equivalent patents to this parent patent. Equivalents are cross-referenced to the parent. Prior to 1981 the equivalents were listed in the Patent Concordance.
• Note Abstract Numbers from the entries of interest. Abstract numbers prefixed "R" indicate a review; "P" indicates a patent.
• Go to the corresponding Abstracts volume and look up the abstract by its number.
• Repeat this process for earlier or later index periods. Remember that Index Names and subject headings changed over time, so consult the Index Guide for each CI period.

For Librarians:  Retention of Chemical Abstracts

• Here's the most important consideration: It's highly unlikely that any scientist born after the mid-1970s would have any experience using print CA (or any printed index for that matter), or even be aware of its existence. Therefore academic libraries should expect all potential use to be initiated and mediated by a library staff member or senior faculty member who has working knowledge of this tool. If no such persons remain on the campus, then print CA is almost certainly a waste of space. (Similarly, there is no longer any practical reason to teach students how to use it!)
• SciFinder is not identical to Chemical Abstracts. All (or nearly all) the metadata content of the latter is included in the CAPLUS file and robustly substance-indexed via the Registry file. But it is inaccurate to say that you can do everything in SciFinder that you could do in the print.
• The Collective subject/substance/formula indexes allow browsing of chemical names, formulas, and subject headings in a way that isn't possible in SciFinder. SciFinder is great for snapshots, but it provides only a limited view of the hierarchical structure of the CA database, or its indexing and nomenclature practices; nor does it allow easy browsing for derivatives, salts, and other variants of a parent structure. In other words, you can't browse online for nearby entries like you can in the print, which removes a serendipity factor. For some purposes, this is an important distinction. Browsing and searching CA indexing terms for concepts, chemical classes, and taxonomic vocabulary from the CAS Lexicon (thesaurus) is possible in SciFinder, as of 2023.
• When you can't figure out how CAS has defined the structure or formula of certain types of compounds, especially inorganic (salts, hydrates, ions, decimals, etc), coordination compounds, and multicomponent substances, SciFinder can be frustrating. Using the Index Guide and Chemical Substance Index can actually save some time, and when you find the Registry number then you can go back to SciFinder, locate the substance record and complete the literature search. (Of course, this method only works for compounds registered before your last Collective Index.)
• Pre-1967 CA abstract numbers are not searchable or displayed in SciFinder, and can only be looked up or verified in the print. These numbers were occasionally cited in the older literature, especially as stand-ins for obscure and foreign documents.
• Some older printed abstracts may contain structure graphics that aren't duplicated online.
• If you have bound any of the six-month volume indexes, and you have the equivalent Collectives and their Index Guides, the former are expendable and should be discarded to save space. And hopefully the indexes in the back of the weekly issues were sliced out and discarded before binding -- those are indeed useless and add a significant amount of linear footage.
• Production of printed CA ceased in 2009, and the hardcopy is now only applicable to historical searching. It is not a viable substitute for any form of current online searching.
• Even if you decide to discard the bulk of CA, consider retaining the most valuable parts, such as the Index Guides (potentially useful for finding contemporary index terms, synonyms, controlled vocabulary, Registry Numbers, etc.). If you wish to split the run by time period, collective wisdom suggests that the older (and smaller) pre-1967 portion of CA is more useful than the post-1967 volumes.
• If the facility lacks space and staff who can retrieve and consult CA volumes to mediate a reference question, stored CA can't be used as designed.
• If storage space is at a premium, it's difficult to justify the space CA would occupy there. (A complete set of CA with indexes can occupy as much as 1000 linear feet of shelving, depending on how a library has bound it.)  The trend toward shared/consortial storage may allow multiple institutions to share a single print copy.
• If the item-specific metadata in your catalog don't include abstract number ranges -- as opposed to issue numbers, which are useless -- remote usage/retrieval of CA volumes becomes even more problematic and impractical.
• ACS does not require institutions to retain print CA for chemistry program approval. (There's no requirement for SciFinder either. See ACS Committee on Professional Training guidelines for more information.)
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Chemical Abstracts

Chemical Abstracts was a periodical indexing and abstracting chemistry articles, patents, and other reports, associated with the American Chemical Society.

Publication History

Chemical Abstracts began in 1907. The first copyright-renewed issue is January 10, 1940 (v. 34 no. 1). We know of no actively copyright-renewed contributions. ( More details ) It was published as a journal until 2009. Since 2010, abstracts have been added and maintained by the Chemical Abstracts Service in its SciFinder database.

Persistent Archives of Complete Issues

• 1907-1928: HathiTrust has volumes 1-22 freely readable online. Some later volumes are searchable but not readable here.
• 1927: The Internet Archive has volume 21, numbers 21-23 , covering November and December 1924, and with indexes for the year.
• 1929: The Internet Archive has volume 23, number 23 , the author index for 1929.
• 1936: The Internet Archive has volume 30, numbers 1-6 , covering January-March 1936.

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• The Chemical Abstracts Service website has more information about its offerings, and gives subscription-based access to its resources.

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Teaching Chemical Information: Tips and Techniques

— March 1998 —

Chemical Abstracts: Indepth

Chem 184/284: lecture 9.

Chemical Abstracts Print, Part 1

Chemical Abstracts Service

Chemical Abstracts Service was founded in 1907 as a division of the American Chemical Society. The first volume contained 15,000 abstracts and was distributed free of charge to ACS members.

Today: about 5,000,000 abstracts per year; annual subscription—over $15,000.

What CAS Does

CAS attempts to comprehensively index the chemical literature, including:

• some 8–12,000 journals; 1,300 of which are now indexed cover to cover—covering documents of chemical importance
• patents from 28 nations and two international organizations
• technical reports, conference papers, books and dissertations.

Other CAS Services

Chemical Industry Notes (CIN)—indexes the literature of chemical business (e.g. C&E News, Chemical Week)

Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI)

• Lists all periodicals ever indexed by CAS
• Lists many pre-1907 sources, such as those appearing in Beilstein
• Available in print or on CD-ROM
• Periodicals are listed in alphabetical order by their abbreviations —the name appears in full, with the abreviated portion in boldface.
• Listing include language information, starting dates and curent volume numbers, cross-references to changed titles or translations and holdings information.

CAS Document Detective Service

• provides copies of documents indexed by CA or CIN, generally for the past 20 years.
• Exceptions: indirectly indexed documents, like tech reports or dissertations
• If copyright is a problem, they will lend the original.

CAS Registry Service

• Started to track chemical substances for CAS internal files; now the standard method for uniquely identifying chemicals
• All substanced indexed by CAS get RN’s, plus substances submitted by outside firms or agencies
• Registry Numbers are of the form: xxxxxx-xx-x

Importance of Chemical Abstracts

Comprehensiveness

Chemistry as the “central science”

• high overlap with medicine, biology, physics, materials, agriculture, geology, etc

Constant ehnhancements

• CAS has been in forefront of computerization of indexing for over 30 years

Chemical Abstracts in Print: Publication Schedule

An issue each week, but subject coverage alternates, so it is effectively updated every two weeks.

Each volume covers six months; cumulative indexes arrive about two months after the volume ends.

Collective Indexes cover a ten-volume period.

Chemical Abstracts in Print: Arrangement of Abstracts

For ease of browsing, abstracts are grouped by subject area.

Currently there are 80 subject sections, divided into five broad groups.

Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry used to come out in odd-numbered weeks.

Macromolecular Chemistry, Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Physical, Inorganic and Analytical Chem. used to come in even-numbered weeks.

Cross-references are used where a given abstract might legitimately appear in more than one section.

Note that subject sections change with time to reflect current research.

Subject Coverage Manual gives a detailed definition of each section, and a table of changes over the years.

Contents of the Abstract Record

All CA records contain:

• Title of the document
• Author(s) or inventor(s) for patents
• Corporate source or patent assignee information
• Source Information, e.g. journal title, volume, issue, pages or patent numbers
• Abstracts (usually)

Author’s name appear as given in the original document

Abstracts for journal articles are usually those written byt he author

Patent abstracts may be fleshed out by the indexer

Disertations and some other documents have no abstracts

Abbreviations

Journal names are listed using CASSI abbreviations

Corporate names are heavily abbreviated

All abstracts use abbreviations for common chemical terms (see handout)

Indexing in Print CA

The types of indexing available in CA reflect the constraints of print.

The indexing available in the weekly issues is that which can be done most quickly.

The indexing in the Volume and Collective Indexes is more systematic, but still reflects the limitations of print.

Issue Indexes

Volume & Collective Indexes

• Chemical Substance
• General Subject
• Molecular Formula

Author Indexing: Weekly Issues

All authors are listed by last name and initials only. The index gives only the abstract number. Examples:

• Lipshutz B H 151869t
• Little R D 152780u

Patents have entries for both inventor and assignee; their abstract numbers have P before the number.

• Genentech, Inc. P146735s
• Leong S R P 146735s

Other types of corporate authors, such as societies and government agencies, also get author entries:

Unites States Food and Drug Administration 150996v 150997w

Author Indexing: Volume and Collective Indexes

First authors get both the abstract number and title of the paper listed under their names

The author name is not necessarily the form used in the article, but may be a standardized form of the name

Other authors are cross-referenced to the first author of the document

Even though CA tries to pull all of an author’s works under one name, it cannot always distinguish authors with the same initials, so it alphabetizes by last name and initials, even where the full name is spelled out!

Alphabetization of Author Names

Ellis, A. Ellis, Arthur Baron Ellis, A. D. Ellis, Anthony Ewart Ellis, Avery K. Ellis, Andrew Michael Ellis, Albert T.

Spelling of Author Names

Be aware of special rules for handling certain names. Names with “Mc” or umlauted letters or tranliteration from non-Roman alphabets can be tricky.

Example: Mossbauer is listed as Moessbauer

Patent Indexing

Chemical Abstracts only indexes patents with “new” chemical information and it only indexes the first version of each patent it receives.

However, the patent index (arranged by country code and patent number) gives cross-references from later, equivalent patents.

When searching for an equivalent patent, start at the year of issue of the known patent reference and work forward until you find the equivalent or run out of indexes.

Chem 184/284: Lecture 10

Chemical Abstracts Print, Part II, Subject Indexing

Concept Indexing in Chemical Abstracts

Weekly issues use keywork indexing assigned by the indexer. Terms are not systematically selected.

Volume and Collective Indexes use systematic indexing for both general concepts and chemical substances.

Keyword Indexing

Keywords are assigned by the indexer based on the body of the document, not just the title of the abstract.

Terms are often abbreviated, following the standard Ca abbreviations

To save space, a keyword is not assigned if it’s part of the section heading for the section the abstract appears in, e.g. “Steroids”.

Additional keywords are listed beneath the main keyword heading to flesh out the concept (like the co-terms in Science Citation Index)

Chemical names are listed along with concept terms in the issue indexes. The chemical names are not systematic, but follow the author’s nomenclature.

Keyword Example

“Facile preparations of 4-fluororesorcinol”

Volume and collective Indexes: General Subject Index

The General Subject Index uses standard subject headings in order to better bring related documents together (collation).

The standard headings list does get modified and expanded to reflect new areas of research. Major changes are usually done at the beginning of a Collective Index period.

General Subject Index

This index includes:

• classes of chemical substances
• physial and chemical phenomena
• types of reactions
• chemical technology
• industrial processes and equipment
• scientific names for living organisms
• biological and medical terminology

For extensive subjects, qualifiers are added as part of the main subject heading, such as

• Blood, analysis
• Sulfonic acids, uses and miscellaneous

Classes of substances may also have derivative categories, such as:

• Carboxylic acids, esters

Note: the following lists of categories apply to pre-1997 indexes. Some are undergoing dramatic changes.

Substance Categories

For ketones, aldehydes

• acetals, hydrazones, mercaptals, oximes
• anhydrides, anhydrosulfides, esters, lactones

For alcohols

General: compounds, derivatives, polymers

Heading Qualifiers

For substances and classes of substances

• biological studies
• preparations
• uses and miscellaneous

For Organs and Tissues

• composition
• disease or disorder
• toxic chemical or physical damage

CA Index Guide

The Index Guide is the key printed tool for indentifying the correct subject heading for any topic in Chem. Abs.

Each IG lists the approved headings in use for its period of coverage.

An IG is published at the beginning of each Collective Index period, with updates every 18 months until the final comes with the Collective Index itself.

Contexts of the Index Guide

An alphabetical listing of the approved subject headings, with cross-references to related headings and descriptive notes.

Many common terms not used as headings are listed, with see references to the correct heading.

Many common and / or trade names for chemical substances are listed, giving the correct CA systematic name (and Registry #!)

There are also appendixes on the organization and use of the subject indexes; how CA indexers select headings; CA chemical nomenclature; and a hierarchical list of the headings.

Whenever you are doing a subject search, in print or online, it’s a good idea to check the Index Guide!!

Note: at this point, the first 1997 Index Guide has not appeared, since the first 1997 Volume Indexes have not. See: http://www.cas.org/terms/vocab.html for an interesting compilation of changes.

The Rule of Specificity

In general, CA indexers will assign the most specific subject heading that applies to the document.

For example, if a dicument deals with the synthesis of a specific ester, the indexer will assign that substance to the index, not the general term “esters”.

Cancer of the lungs will appear as Lung, neoplasm not Lung, disease (pre-1997). 1997 and later, the geneal term in Lung Tumors , with more specific types, e.g. Lung adrenocarcinomas.

Substance Indexing: The Challenge of Nomenclature

In order to ensure that each substance has a unique possible name, and to group “like” compounds together, CA has devised their own system of nomenclature (not necessarily IUPAC) and scheme for arranging them in the Chemical Substance Index.

Unfortunately, this system can be hideously complex.

Nomenclature: A Hideous Example

Dodecahedrane (C20H20) is listed as:

5,2,1,6,3,4-(2,3)Butanylidenedipentaleno (2,1,6-cde:2',1',6'-gha)pentalene, hexadecahydro

Changing Nomenclature

It is important to remember that the CAS nomenclature has changed over time, if you are using the older literature.

The most important change took place in 1972; nomenclature has been fairly stable since then.

Basic Rules of CAS Nomenclature

CAS indexers select the “main” part of the compound to act as the heading parent.

Substituents to the parent are listed after it is inverted order

What constitutes a parent compound and how it would be named are not always obvious, even to a chemist.

Substituents

When there are multiple substituents, they are listed in alphabetical order, including the prefixes.

Alphabetization of Compounds

Compounds are listed first by parent compound, with the parent compound itself first (with and qualifiers and categories), then by substituted forms in alphabetical order.

Substituents are read from left to right, ignoring numbers and punctuation.

Example: Benzene

Benzene, analysis

Benzene, uses and miscellaneous

Benzene, compounds

Benzene, polymers

Benzene , azido-

Benzene , chloro-

Benzene , 1,2-dibutyl

Special Cases: Salts

Salts of organic acids, or inorganic oxyacids are named as derivatives of the parent acid.

Helps for finding CAS Chemical Names

In general, it can be very tricky to look at the structure of a complex compound and decide what the CA name will be.

However, in many cases, you can use a variety of resources to help find the CA name.

Index Guide for Chemical Names

If the compound has a common or trade name, check the Index Guide

The Index Guide is especially good fro drugs, natural preducts, dyes, etc.

For other common chemicals, even if you can’t find the specific chemical you want, you may be able to find a similar one and get a clue to follow.

Registry Number Handbook

CAS publishes a “handbook” which lists Registry Numbers and gives the CAS systematic name for the substance.

Remember that there are many sources you can use to find Registry Numbers which have good synonym indexes: Merck, HODOC, Aldrich, Kirk-Othmer.

Shelved just after Chem Abs. itself.

Molecular Formula Index

While most molecular formulas have a large number of possible compounds, it is far easier to look at a possible name and decide whether it matches your compound than to guess at a name.

Note that the Molecular Formula Index just gives a list of abstract numbers, not a breakdown by subheadings.

Molecular Formula Index Organization

Molecular formulas are listed in Hill order .

If carbon is present, it comes first, followed by hydrogen, then all other elements in alphabetical order.

If not, then all (including H) in alphabetical order.

Note that the rules for salts apply to molecular formulas, too.

Molecular Formula Examples

Benzene is C6H6

Teflon is (C2F4)x

Ferrocene is C10H10Fe

Hydrochloric acid is C1H

Benzoic acid is C7H6O2

Sodium benzoate is C7H6O2 , sodium salt… NOT C7H5NaO2

Ring System Handbook

Most compounds with a polycyclic ring system use the name of the ring system as the parent compound.

The Handbook lists ring systems in order of:

• Increasing number of rings
• Increasing number of atoms in the ring
• Increasing Hill order formula of the ring

Gives structure diagram, name, Reg. #

When print tools fail you…

Even with all of the above, sometimes none of the tools will help you find the correct name.

And if you don’t find something, does it mean that you haven’t guessed the right name, or that it hasn’t been reported??

Enter the power of computer searching — structure searching can give a definitive answer to most questions.

Grace Baysinger, Head Librarian and Bibliographer Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library, Stanford University Libraries graceb @ stanford.edu

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点击检索 。 按默认设置打开基本检索选项。 在检索框中输入一个与关注主题相关的术语或词组，然后点击 “GO”（开始检索） 。

• 基本检索在Word索引中进行，该索引由标题、关键词、索引条目和摘要中的单个词语组成。
•  基本检索无法识别停用词：an、and、as、at、by、for、from、in、not、of、on、or、the、to、with。
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详细记录已显示。 注意：突出显示了您检索的术语。

如果您想限制答案集，请点击“Refine”（筛选）按钮。 

您可以按语言、文件类型或 CA 出版年份进行筛选。 单击“OK”（确定）