Here is an interesting new web site that I was informed about recently. The idea is to let you, the synthetic chemist, post your own synthesis. You know the ones that never quite made it into the publication or the patent. Or, indeed, it lets you upload literature procedures you have tried, allowing you to review the said procedure “did it work as stated?”, if not what happened?”.

It’s very easy to use and allows no frills publication, which is great. Here are the words of the creator of this valuable database, who can explain it much better than I can:

“I have spent the last few months putting together a website that allows users to review syntheses, whether from a paper, patent, or online. Additionally, a new, non-published synthesis can be published on the site and cited in one’s CV, and this synthesis will remain open access, as the entire site is free to use. 

With this, I hope to establish a community of synthetically-experienced people who enjoy calling out the literature for what works and what does not, with the end goal of being a scifinder-like resource that collects syntheses from all mediums, and allows quick searching for how to make something, with easy filtering by how well a procedure works as crowd sourced from the user base.

Of course, that is only the adding syntheses and reviews part of the site.  One can search for a chemical name, formula, or structure to find the best routes to a material (of course assuming it has been added to the site already, eg. search 1-amino-1,2,3-triazole).  One can also search by DOI or author to see how well rated syntheses in a given paper or by a certain author are.”

So go have a look and please put your results and reviews into the resource and with time it will become a major starting point for searching the synthetic organic chemical space.