Instant messaging on chemistry for scientific collaboration

Scientific collaboration needs efficiently communication within a team. At the same time, instant messaging (IM) is a popular real-time communication technology on the Internet. Whereas, chemists need to exchange information of chemical structure and chemical-reaction formula in time when doing their research work collaboratively. Thus, an instant messaging system named eChemIM is introduced in this paper to support communication with textual messages as well as 2D, 3D chemical structure, and protein sequence of bioinformatics. These special information can be transmitted and displayed on the communicate process with eChemIM. Moreover, if necessary, 2D chemical structure could be edited or analyzed by a visual chemical structure editor. In more than one years' use, it is indicated that eChemIM can help chemists to share resources and ideas, keep track of their issues. Accordingly it facilitates chemists' collaboration work.