Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Doctor Galactic penned the June 2013 column.

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Twitter’s new #chemclub aims to help you find exciting chemistry to read.

A weekly laboratory journal club is a great way to encourage researchers to read the literature and share their enthusiasm for great pieces of chemistry. Writing at Behind NMR Lines, Andrew Bissette found that he often caught wind of interesting papers via the watchful eyes of the chemistry crowd on Twitter. So he came up with an idea: why not form an online journal club that draws attention to ‘cool papers’ and spark some discussion? Thus began #chemclub.

Chemists of the Twitterverse have thrown themselves in with wild abandon. Andrew posts weekly round-ups of the best material, and the contributions so far range from the most cutting-edge total syntheses to the dusty old classics of yesteryear. Anyone can join in with #chemclub, so if you’re reading a truly fascinating (or even slightly weird) paper, why not let the rest of us know about it?

Meanwhile, JessTheChemist who writes at The Organic Solution has been wondering just how academically interconnected the online chemistry community really is. Jess started out building her own chemistry ‘family tree’, but the project has since blossomed and is still growing. We’re encouraged to add our own branches to the tree and who knows where your branch might lead. Perhaps even to the not-long-departed Maggie Thatcher? And on that note, Kat Day of The Chronicle Flask tells us to ‘never mind the politics’, Thatcher will always be one of those very famous female chemists who ‘ignored the limits’. Besides, once part of the club, always part of the club, right?

Written by Doctor Galactic, who blogs at http://doctorgalacticandthelabcoatcowboy.wordpress.com/

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the June 2013 article]