The Royal Society of Chemistry has launched the first issue of the new journal Chemical Science, the first issues this year of which are available free of charge (www.rsc.org/chemicalscience) to help build up readership.  This is a competitive area for journals with Nature Chemistry also starting last year.

The first issue contains some interesting articles including an excellent review of the use of copper catalysts with diamine ligands in cross-coupling reactions (D.S.Surry and S.L.Buchwald, Chem.Sci., 2010, 1, 13-31). Use of these diamino-ligands allows cross-couplings to be carried out under much milder reaction conditions and to use catalytic amounts of copper, both of which should appeal to the process chemist.  Many of these reactions are robust and suitable for scale up.