Scientific publishing and career advancement are increasingly becoming more competitive. Given the plethora of scattered resources over the internet, a guide to productive utilization of such resources for a seamless publishing experience is extremely critical. Towards this, the American Chemical Society is delighted to look back at its successful partnership with the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India in conducting three virtual workshops over the last year, popularly called the DST & ACS workshop 2021, in association with Vigyan Prasar (an autonomous organization under DST).

These skill-building workshops are organized with an objective to provide our worldwide authors and readers a chance to hear from distinguished scientists, policymakers and esteemed editors on scholarly publishing, peer review process, ethics, plagiarism and presentation skills. In a nutshell, the workshops assist graduate students, postdocs and early-career researchers not only to master the publishing process but also to present their work in the best possible way to other researchers.

A significant feat in our collaboration with DST is manifested by the successful organization of the 10th DST & ACS workshop in 2021. This also marks the third consecutive year of the event. Three virtual one-day conferences were conducted. Collectively, over 3500 registrants, about 950 participants from approximately 300 institutes/universities across 25 countries were a part of these events. The event, live streamed on ACS Pubs Facebook page, garnered 1.1K views and reached out close to 4000 people over a period of 2.5 hrs. Despite the unprecedented times amidst the ongoing pandemic, the virtual events were phenomenal for their diverse speakers, exclusive content, pan-India outreach, and engaging panel discussions.

In all the three events, a 50% discount for one-year ACS Membership was offered to all the participants. Other activity like send “Your favorite ACS Article,” was also conducted before the event to engage with early career researchers.

The speakers from the 8th DST & ACS workshop conducted in early-March included Prof. Chris Jones (Editor in Chief, Journal of the American Chemical Society Au), Prof. K. N. Ganesh (Editor-in-Chief, ACS Omega) and Prof. Ruchi Anand (Editorial Advisory Board, ACS Sensors). Our Editors shared their words of wisdom on different stages of the publishing journey, starting from preparing a manuscript, addressing the peer review concerns to important pointers on research ethics. Besides the lectures on publishing, the kind presence of Dr. Bibiana Campos Seijo (Editor-in-Chief of C&EN & VP of C&EN) and Dr. Nakul Parashar (Director, Vigyan Prasar) were indeed motivating to the young audience for newer alternative career paths in scientific communication and popular science.

While guides to scholarly publishing hosted in the ACS Institute (https://institute.acs.org/) are generic, specific attributes are often essential when it comes to submitting a manuscript to a specialized journal. Therefore, the DST & ACS workshops advanced to yet another notable step in focusing on a specific broad subject domain. In this direction, the 9th & 10th workshops conducted in August and October were solely focused to deal with publishing specifically from environmental science & sustainable chemistry and materials domain, respectively. The speakers in attendance for these sessions included Prof. Greg Lowry (Executive Editor, Environmental Science & Technology), Prof. Sara Skrabalak (Editor-in-Chief, Chemistry of Materials & ACS Materials Letters) and Dr. Akhilesh Gupta (Senior Adviser/Head, PCPM Division, DST). Dr. Jim Milne (President, ACS Publications) delivered the opening remarks for the 10th workshop elaborating on some initiatives and programs in cognizance with ACS’s commitment to support the broader scientific community. A distinct addition to last year’s DST & ACS workshops is the session targeted to assist graduate students and postdocs with their poster presentation skills, mediated by Dr. Aditi Jain (Development Editor, ACS International India).

Another successful attribute of the DST & ACS workshops lies in the level of scope being offered to participants to interact and engage with distinguished speakers. Such interactions in the form of Question-Answer (Q&A) sessions at the end of each workshop were moderated by a team of Development Editors (comprising of Drs. Asha Liza James, Harshita Pawar and Abhinav Mohanty), ACS International India. Dr. Deeksha Gupta (Senior Associate Director, ACS International India) coordinated and chaired the inaugural sessions.

Recently, the 11th DST & ACS Workshop was organized on March 8, 2022, featuring Dr. Mary Beth Mulcahy, Editor-in-Chief, ACS Chemical Health & Safety. View Additional Workshop Resources and Links:

For further updates on events in India, please visit the ACS in India webpage.

Check out images from these events:

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