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Chemistry

Conferences & Symposia

Conferences and symposia are where scientists gather to share the results of their latest research.  The records of these meetings may or may not be published or peer-reviewed, but these are the forms that they can take:

  • Abstracts:  Brief summaries of papers presented
  • Conference Preprints:  Longer summaries that appear prior to a meeting; sometimes called "extended abstracts"  (Not to be confused with journal preprints, such as those found on free sites like ArXiv and chemRxiv, which are papers submitted to journals but not yet peer reviewed or accepted.)
  • Proceedings:  Full papers from a meeting, selected and edited into a more formal book-length publication after the fact

Use the tabs below to learn about these formats specific to chemistry and major chemical organizations, along with tools for locating them. 

The American Chemical Society publishes abstracts of papers and posters to be presented at technical sessions of the ACS Spring and Fall National Meetings.


NOTE:  Unless a paper was also published as a preprint from one of the Divisions (see next tab), or as a postprint within a later symposium volume, there are no full papers -- the abstract is all there is.  You should contact the corresponding author for more information, or search SciFinder for later articles based on a meeting presentation.


2010-present: ACS Web Site

1995-present: SciFinder

Abstracts since 1995 (210th meeting) are included in SciFinder.  In Chemical Abstracts the title was historically abbreviated as:
"Abstr. Pap. Am. Chem. Soc."; and more recently appears as:  "Abstracts of Papers, [N]th ACS National Meeting, [place], [date]".

2006-2011: CD-ROM

The abstracts were published on CD-ROM.  In 2007 the title changed to Abstracts of scientific papers.  (While the CD-ROMs are still held in our collection, their software is obsolete and may not function properly.)

1937-2005: Print

Abstracts of papers - American Chemical Society were published as printed volumes. This is the ONLY source for these abstracts from 1937 to 1995.  The library has the entire print collection in storage.  No abstracts were published before 1937. 

For many years, various technical divisions of the American Chemical Society published short preprints of their symposium papers in advance of national meetings.

(Note:  These meeting preprints are not the same thing as journal preprints, which are papers posted to sites such as ArXiv and ChemRxiv prior to peer-review in journals.)

Division Title ACS Web Access (1) UT Archival Holdings (2)
ENFL (3)

Energy & Fuel Preprints

(published 2012-2016)

2012-2016 CD-ROM 2012-2014
ENVR Environmental Chemistry Division Preprints Extended Abstracts
(published 1973-2008)

2004-08

(not subscribed)

Print: 1973-99 (incomplete)

CD-ROM: 2000-07

FUEL (3)

Fuel Chemistry Preprints

(published 1957-2012)

1957-2012

 

Print:  1960-2002

CD-ROM: 2003-12

PETR (3)

Petroleum Preprints

(published 1942-2012)

1956-2012

Print: 1942-2005

CD-ROM: 2006-09

PMSE (4)

Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering

(published 1960-2015 under various titles)

2001-2015

Print: 1983-2001

CD-ROM: 2002-07

POLY

Polymer Preprints

(published 1962-2012)

2000-2012

Print: 1962-2004

CD-ROM: 2005-09

NOTES

  1. ACS Publications no longer supports the Proceedings content and the search feature is not functional.  Browsing by meeting and topical session is the only way to find a specific preprint, and they are not in any numeric order.  Access to this content is restricted to former subscribing institutions; they are not freely available.
  2. Our archival holdings are located in remote storage facilities.  The CD-ROM publications are often difficult to use because of obsolete software and nonfunctional search features.  It's best to ask a librarian to assist with retrieval. 
  3. The FUEL and PETR divisions merged into the Energy and Fuels Division (ENFL) in 2012.  The former divisions published their respective FUEL and PETR preprints for the Spring 2012 (243rd) meeting.  ENFL preprints began with the Fall 2012 meeting and ceased after the Fall 2016 meeting.
  4. Earlier titles of PMSE were:  Organic coatings and applied polymer science proceedings (1982-83); Organic coatings and plastics chemistry (1978-81); Coatings and plastics preprints (1974-77); Papers presented - American Chemical Society, Division of Organic Coatings and Plastics Chemistry (1960-73).

Full papers from selected topical symposia held at ACS meetings are later published as proceedings volumes.

All volumes in these two series are individually cataloged.  Search for them in the Library Catalog by series title + volume number as keywords (e.g. KW= acs symposium 1081), or by individual book title.

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers holds Spring and Annual meetings.

  • There is no comprehensive index or archive of AIChE meeting papers.  Some papers are indexed in SciFinder or Engineering Index.
  • From 1979 to 2000 selected papers were issued on microfiche, but these are not widely held in libraries; the UT Libraries do not own any.  Consult with a librarian before trying to request a paper via interlibrary loan, because a request is not likely to be successful.
  • Proceedings of conferences since 2003 (including their various topical symposia) are a mix of abstracts and full papers that have been sold only on CD-ROM.  The CDs are generally not held in libraries but may be purchased individually from the AIChE web site
  • The AIChE Symposium Series (1971-2002) and its predecessor Chemical Engineering Progress Symposium Series (1951-71) published post-prints of selected topical symposia from the AIChE meetings.  The Chemistry Library holds complete runs of these series at TP 1 A488/5.  These papers were fully indexed in SciFinder.  
  • Some meeting papers may have been revised later as articles in AIChE Journal or other journals, sometimes with slightly different titles.  Searching for the authors in SciFinder can reveal these revisions.

 

 


2005-current:

The ECS Transactions can be searched or browsed for conference papers from ECS national meetings.  

Pre-2005:

The ECS published print conference proceedings until 2005.  These books are individually cataloged in the Library Catalog by conference name and title, under the series heading Proceedings (Electrochemical Society) plus a year/volume number.  UT's holdings are mostly complete after 1988.  If you have a reference to a paper such as
   Proc. Electrochem. Soc. 97-12

search for this volume in the Catalog using keywords:
   proceedings electrochemical 97-12 [hyphen required]
 

 

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