PubChem Periodic Table and Element Pages: Improving Access to Information on Chemical Elements from Authoritative Sources.

Sunghwan Kim,Jian Zhang,Paul A. Thiessen,Asta Gindulyte,Evan E. Bolton

doi:10.1515/cti-2020-0006

Abstract

PubChem (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) is one of the top five most visited chemistry web sites in the world, with more than five million unique users per month (as of March 2020). Many of these users are educators, undergraduate students, and graduate students at academic institutions. Therefore, PubChem has a great potential as an online resource for chemical education. This paper describes the PubChem Periodic Table and Element pages, which were recently introduced to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the periodic table. These services help users navigate the abundant chemical element data available within PubChem, while providing a convenient entry point to explore additional chemical content, such as biological activities and health and safety data available in PubChem Compound pages for specific elements and their isotopes. The PubChem Periodic Table and Element pages are also available as widgets, which enable web developers to display PubChem's element data on web pages they design. The elemental data can be downloaded in common file formats and imported into data analysis programs (e.g., spreadsheet software, like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, and computer scripts, such as python and R). Overall, the PubChem Periodic Table and Element pages improve access to chemical element data from authoritative sources.

Highlights

The periodic table of chemical elements is one of the most recognized tools in science
This paper describes the PubChem Periodic Table and Element pages, which were recently introduced to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the periodic table
The PubChem Periodic Table and Element pages are available as widgets, which enable web developers to display PubChem’s element data on web pages they design

Summary

Introduction

The periodic table of chemical elements is one of the most recognized tools in science. The following PUG-REST request URL allows one to retrieve key elemental data presented in the Periodic Table in CSV format: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/rest/pug/periodictable/CSV. It is possible to download the annotations presented on the Element page using the following PUG-View request (with hydrogen as an example): https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/rest/pug_view/data/element/1/JSON. Both the PubChem Periodic Table and Element pages are available as widgets. The PubChem Periodic Table can be used to find select properties of elements and their trend or periodicity across rows and columns In addition to this traditional use case, it serves as an entry point to the respective Element pages, which provide more detailed information on chemical elements.

Discussion

Conclusions