The Molecular Junction Database (MJD) began in 2020 in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southern California (USC). The project grew significantly through a collaboration between USC Chemistry and the Chemistry Department at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California.

 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Jeff Bradbury and collaborators at Cerritos College worked with the Inkpen Lab to develop a virtual literature-mining and data-indexing initiative for undergraduate chemistry students, as a substitute for conventional in-person laboratory experiences. The program introduced students to molecular electronics, scientific literature analysis, cheminformatics, and molecular junction research topics including scanning tunneling microscopy and self-assembled monolayers.

 

The broader goal of the MJD project was to establish a free, publicly accessible search platform capable of indexing studies relating to molecular junctions and charge transport across both single-molecule and large-area device architectures. The project also sought to address the increasing difficulty of identifying and organizing relevant literature within a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field.

 

To support the initiative, the American Chemical Society (ACS) generously provided temporary ACS “All-Pubs” journal access to the Cerritos College community between August 2020 and December 2021. This support enabled the Cerritos team to legally access and index a substantially broader range of publications.

 

Between Fall 2020 and Summer 2021, more than 100 Cerritos College students helped index over 1,500 publications and approximately 5,000 molecular junction entries. In parallel, researchers at USC contributed to data validation, standardization, and development of the database infrastructure and web interface.