Recently John Haynes (RSC’s new Editorial Director) was in Addis Ababa shortly after they celebrated their Millennium (the Ethiopian calendar is more than seven years behind ours) to run a Strategic Online Journals workshop organised by INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications) and Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia.  It was BCSE’s 20th anniversary and the workshop was attended by their staff as well as staff from 10 other journals based across sub-Saharan Africa. The workshop was a great success covering a number of key areas and reinforced positive relations with RSC.The workshop was held in conjunction with the 1st Congress of the Federation of African Societies of Chemistry (FASC; which was created in 2006 with support from the RSC). The meeting occurred on the 12th-14th September and was held at Addis Ababa University.  Currently there are six societies represented (Tunisia, Egypt, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa), but in the next few years there are plans to extend membership to all African Chemical Societies.  The event comprised of a scientific meeting covering topics by a speaker from each society as well as a speaker from the UK, USA and Lesotho.  The focus of the meeting was analytical chemistry while also covering types of environmental problems faced by African countries.  The next FASC meeting is planned for 2009 and should be hosted in Tunisia by the Tunisian Chemical Society, along with a third one planned to be hosted by the South African Society in 2011.
Also the registration is now open for ‘Antibiotics-Where Now?’ -  this is a meeting which will focus on the challenges of discovering new antibiotics.  It will take place in London, UK on the 21st January 2008.  For more details visit the website: www.rsc.org/antibiotics08.
An international event occurring on the 9th October is the Belgium public event entitled ‘When Chemistry Meets Nature’.  Dr Willy Van Brussel will give a talk describing some life saving products which have been derived from a wide range of natural products. Dr. Willy Van Brussel is corporate R&D manager of OmniChem; he has an interest in organic chemistry and natural products. For more details on this event and other events occurring in the future, why not visit the International Forthcoming events page: http://www.rsc.org/Membership/Networking/InternationalActivities/InternationalSections/InternationalEvents.asp   

International publishing Snapshot   

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