
Organic Reactions® provides a compilation of an authoritative summary of a preparatively useful organic reaction from the primary literature. Practitioners interested in executing such a reaction (or simply learning about the features, advantages, and limitations of this process) thus have a valuable resource to guide their experimentation. Abstracting services, such Chemical Abstracts and Beilstein, allow for the practitioner to locate all of the literature on the subject, but without providing insight into the value of any particular reference.
Organic Reactions® chapters constitute a distillation of this avalanche of information into the knowledge needed to correctly implement a reaction and are much more than a surfeit of primary references. This capacity, namely to provide focused, scholarly, and comprehensive overviews of a given transformation, that Organic Reactions takes on even greater significance for the practice of chemical experimentation in the 21st century. The suitability of a given reaction for an unknown application is best judged from the informed vantage point provided by precedent and guidelines offered by a knowledgeable author as provide in Organic Reactions.
Complete list of published chapters may be found at: https://OrganicReactions.org/published-chapters/.
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Organic Reactions® regularly financially supports Organic Division programs and they cosponsor the Roger Adams Award which recognizes and encourage outstanding contributions to research in organic chemistry defined in its broadest sense. The award is presented biennially in odd-numbered years at the National Organic Chemistry Symposium (NOS). A video of the 2023 Award presentation including some of the history of Organic Reactions is available here.
Organic Reactions – Officers
Dr. P. Andrew Evans, Editor-in-Chief
Dr. Steven Weinreb, Executive Editor
Dr. Barry Snider, Secretary
Latest from Organic Reactions
Over the period of 1989–2019, many enantioselective (asymmetric) 1,4-additions of organoaluminum, Grignard, organozinc and other metals to a wide range of electron-deficient alkenes have been reported. The resulting enolate is [...]
Hydrogen-borrowing amination is a metal- or enzyme-catalyzed N-alkylation process that uses alcohols as alkyl transfer agents. In this reaction, alcohol dehydrogenation affords a carbonyl compound, which then undergoes condensation with [...]
Over the past two decades, a variety of protocols involving an enzyme and a transition-metal-based racemization catalyst have been developed for the dynamic kinetic resolution (DKR) of secondary alcohols. Several [...]
The traditional Nazarov reaction is the conrotatory 4π electrocyclization of conjugated pentadienyl cations, which are derived from Lewis or Brønsted acid activation of 1,4-pentadien-3-ones. This reaction provides an expedient way [...]
Atropisomeric biaryl compounds are prepared by coupling two aryl partners in the presence of a chiral catalyst. When these biaryl products contain three or more substituents adjacent to the new [...]
The regioselective C−H functionalization of arenes is an ideal method for preparing substituted aromatic compounds, which are ubiquitous scaffolds in natural products, pharmaceuticals, and advanced materials. Palladium(0)-catalyzed, norbornene-mediated C−H functionalization—now [...]
Conjugated alkynes are valuable intermediates in the synthesis of natural products, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, and organic molecular materials. Since its introduction in 1975, the palladium-catalyzed Sonogashira reaction has become [...]
The Meyer–Schuster rearrangement corresponds to a formal 1,3-shift of a propargylic alcohol to afford the corresponding α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compound via tautomerization of an allenol intermediate. The original acidic and harsh [...]
The reaction of allylic cations with 1,3-dienes is formally equivalent to the Diels–Alder reaction but leads to seven-membered rings. An allylic cation contains 2 pi electrons, and is thus precisely [...]