NEW YORK, October 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Eight weekly challenges give future and professional chemists the chance to test skills against peers worldwide, earn a place on the champion leaderboards and support their chosen charity 

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, has today announced that the 2016 Reaxys ChemSearch Challenge is now live, following its successful debut last year. In a series of eight weekly online challenges, chemists can now use Reaxys, even if they are not a subscriber, to quickly find the information they need to answer chemistry-orientated questions. For example, last year's conundrums included "how do you get the skunk smell out of a dog?"

Starting today, entrants must solve a new challenge composed of multiple questions every week. This year, questions were written by members of the Reaxys Prize Club. Players compete based on speed and accuracy of answers, and can earn badges, challenge their peers and share their scores on social media. Winners are announced at the end of each week, and Elsevier will make a $200 donation to one of five charities in the winners' names. New entrants can sign up for the challenge at any time by registering at chemsearch.elsevier.com. Participants can follow the challenge and share results via the #ChemSearch hashtag.

"To achieve the crucial chemistry discoveries of tomorrow, researchers must navigate the massive volume and diversity of information, and cope with the speed at which it accumulates. The ability to integrate, access, filter and understand the relevance of information is critical," said Thibault Géoui, Senior Director of Solution Marketing, Elsevier R&D Solutions. "The ChemSearch challenge uses gamification to nurture these critical chemistry research skills and to enable players to experience how a modern information solution like Reaxys helps overcome research bottlenecks and data overload. The Reaxys Prize Club members have been very creative in their question development and the success of games such as Pokemon Go show just how much engagement winning badges and peer-to-peer competitions can yield."

In the 2015 ChemSearch Challenge, which attracted nearly 1,700 participants from 442 companies and academic and government institutions around the world, participants could use any chemistry tool to solve the challenge questions. Based on the results, Reaxys users performed more than twice as fast as users of any other chemistry research solution at getting to the correct answer. This year, Elsevier is providing all Challenge players with access to Reaxys through the ChemSearch Challenge platform. Notably, Reaxys just launched a major product upgrade, featuring a highly streamlined and intuitive user interface with powerful search and indexing enhancements, among other updates.

Reaxys empowers chemistry research and development by providing structure, property and reaction data, experimental procedures and literature. It is designed to support early drug discovery, education, material selection and synthesis planning; its capabilities include data export and integration to enable harmonized analysis of in-house and external data. Reaxys improves R&D productivity by delivering the facts the way chemists need them. For more information about Reaxys, visit elsevier.com/reaxys.

Reaxys is a trade mark of RELX Intellectual Properties SA, used under license.

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About Elsevier 

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 35,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com

Media contact
Christopher Capot
Director, Corporate Relations
Elsevier
+1 917 704 5174
c.capot@elsevier.com

SOURCE Elsevier