Chemical information in the electronic era

The paper discusses broadly electronic publishing and types of electronic publications. An attempt has been made to group the select electronic resources of chemical information into portals, patents and dissertations, full‐text files with backfiles and e‐books, abstracting and indexing services, encyclopaedias and handbooks, periodic tables, property databases and specialty databases. The paper concludes that in delivering electronic information two major developments are gaining momentum as archives from major publishers and preprints from academic circles are used as alternative methods of accessing research information. Also, scholarly publication of chemical information in electronic form will continue to grow, adapting to meet changing needs of authors and readers alike.