CEO’s Message

Growth is essential to successful endeavors. 2024 was a truly remarkable year of growth, success, and achievement for the American Chemical Society.  

We made incredible strides in growing our community. The ACS global community grew to more than 234,000 in 2024, a 14% increase from 2023. Our growing global presence gives us enriching opportunities for connecting with each other, such as our first ever virtual annual member gathering in 2024. This was an opportunity for ACS members from South-East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America to connect and learn about ACS activities, member benefits, region-specific programs, and career-related sessions.

We saw an impressive increase in the global reach of ACS Journals. During 2024, our journal submissions from across all key regions grew 24%, and we published more than 74,000 peer-reviewed articles, which is a 15% boost from the previous year. In addition, ACS delivered over 346 million article downloads, up 13% over the prior year. We will continue to look at ways to expand our global presence and extend collaborations in years to come.

An exciting milestone was reached in 2024, with the commercial release of the CAS BioFinder™ platform. This is a significant achievement in our drive to provide information solutions by expanding into the life sciences. CAS will continuously introduce new content, data connections, and capabilities to ultimately span the workflow lifecycle for biologics and related research. If you haven’t already, I invite you to take a look at the platform and see all that it has to offer.

The growth of our multimedia platforms also continued during the year. A few highlights include over 25 million views and 76,000 new channel subscribers for our Reactions video series, bringing the overall channel subscriber count to more than a half a million. With double the metrics, it was the biggest year to date for Reactions. The Tiny Matters podcast also doubled its output, resulting in 173,000 downloads for the year and increased audience engagement.

Amid our growth, our finances remain robust. This stability allowed ACS to support the growth of our content and services to drive toward our mission of advancing the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and its people.

To ensure our continued growth, we undertook a careful review of the ACS Strategic Plan to ensure we are moving forward with purpose. The year-long effort resulted in the new 2025 – 2029 ACS Strategic Plan.

The new ACS Strategic Plan was put together with input from the Board of Directors, ACS members, and ACS staff. Building on the strengths of the previous plan, the new plan provides a compelling path forward for the organization. It maintains our commitment to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry and driving toward a vision of a world built on science.

The growth we’ve accomplished would not be possible without the contributions of our entire ACS community. People, after all, are the reason that the Society exists. The dedication and commitment to the Society of all involved with ACS helped make these accomplishments — and much more — happen throughout 2024. Many thanks for a great year, and I look forward to our future successes.