First publisher abandons impractical elemental analysis standard as journals eye next move

Following an eye-opening study published last year, journals published by Wiley have abandoned the ±0.4% accuracy standard for elemental analysis.

First developed in the 18th century, elemental analysis quickly became the gold standard of compound characterisation, allowing early chemists to accurately determine the relative proportions of different elements present in a sample. Even today, with many more modern techniques available, elemental analysis remains a valuable data point and most journals require this analysis to within ±0.4% as standard. However, this tight error margin has historically caused a lot of frustration within the research community. Most teams must pay for commercial analysis and the high failure rate, coupled with the lack of raw data, delays publication.