Total Synthesis: Backbone of Organic Chemistry, a Discipline in Decline?
- 1Department of Mathematics & Statistics
- 2Department of Chemistry School of Science, GITAM (Deemed to be University
Abstract
Total synthesis has long been regarded as the intellectual backbone of organic chemistry, driving reaction discovery, stereoselective methodology, and molecular design. Yet its place within the contemporary discipline is actively debated, largely on the basis of editorial opinion rather than evidence. In this Perspective we bring quantitative data to that debate. We examined the annual share of articles carrying the phrase “total synthesis” in their titles across four leading journals—Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Journal of Organic Chemistry, Organic Letters, and Tetrahedron Letters—from 1959 to 2025. The share rose through the late twentieth century to a peak of about 4.79% in 2009, then fell to 1.85% by 2025, a relative decline of roughly 61%. Structural-break analysis places a consistent inflection near 2020, and an AIC-selected ARIMA(0,1,0) model with drift projects continued decline to about 1.40% by 2030. Crucially, the fall is relative rather than absolute: the annual number of total syntheses has held broadly steady while overall journal output has expanded dramatically. We argue that total synthesis is not disappearing but being diluted and redefined, and we outline how researchers, editors, and funding agencies might sustain it as a driver of innovation.
Related
- α-CF3 radical chemistry: from generation to application in organic synthesis† † Dedicated to Prof. David O′ Hagan on the occasion of his retirement.
- Multi-electron chemistry for high-energy-density aqueous organic redox flow batteries.
- LinkerGen: Guided Autoregressive Generation of Organic Linkers for Reticular Chemistry
- Solid-State Host–Guest Chemistry of Cyanoborate-Bridged Cubane-Type Tetranuclear Ruthenium Complexes: Solvate Crystal Formation and Reversible Sorption of Volatile Organic Compounds
- DNA Directed Chemistry: Scalable Programmed DNA-Encoded Library Synthesis for More Chemically Diverse and Drug-Like Libraries
BibTeX
@misc{meghana2026total,
title = {{Total Synthesis: Backbone of Organic Chemistry, a Discipline in Decline?}},
author = {B. Meghana and Sofiya Sultana and S. Chandrasekhar and Motahar Reza},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15007939/v2},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15007939/v2},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Total Synthesis: Backbone of Organic Chemistry, a Discipline in Decline?
AU - B. Meghana
AU - Sofiya Sultana
AU - S. Chandrasekhar
AU - Motahar Reza
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15007939/v2
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15007939/v2
AB - Total synthesis has long been regarded as the intellectual backbone of organic chemistry, driving reaction discovery, stereoselective methodology, and molecular design. Yet its place within the contemporary discipline is actively debated, largely on the basis of editorial opinion rather than evidence. In this Perspective we bring quantitative data to that debate. We examined the annual share of articles carrying the phrase “total synthesis” in their titles across four leading journals—Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Journal of Organic Chemistry, Organic Letters, and Tetrahedron Letters—from 1959 to 2025. The share rose through the late twentieth century to a peak of about 4.79% in 2009, then fell to 1.85% by 2025, a relative decline of roughly 61%. Structural-break analysis places a consistent inflection near 2020, and an AIC-selected ARIMA(0,1,0) model with drift projects continued decline to about 1.40% by 2030. Crucially, the fall is relative rather than absolute: the annual number of total syntheses has held broadly steady while overall journal output has expanded dramatically. We argue that total synthesis is not disappearing but being diluted and redefined, and we outline how researchers, editors, and funding agencies might sustain it as a driver of innovation.
ER -