[tetrapyrrolic_nick]

Hi. I am a PhD student of organic chemistry and at the facility where I work quite a few people seem to think that the purpose of a university is to train people to fill roles in industry. I don't like that idea and I think that university research is important for doing intellectual exploration without the restrictions imposed by the necessity of direct profit.
If you have worked for a company in a chemistry-related job can you please tell me if you rely heavily on the literature that is published by university research groups or do you rely on knowledge inside the company or do you get information from some other source?

[Arkcon]

I've never met someone in industry who didn't review scientific journals for published information relevant to their work, and much of that is done by university researchers.  I get your statement, regarding the focus at your university, but I don't see how your question really addresses it.  I also don't know good examples of company inside sources or other sources.

[DrCMS]

As a process chemist there are few academic papers that are that useful to me.  We might get the starting idea for a new product synthesis from the literature or patents but the details that take it from something that worked in the lab to an industrial process that makes a profit tend to be our own work.

[discodermolide]

I was a chemist in industry, both in med. chem., and process research and I doubt that a university can train people to work in industry, only industry can do that. The two are worlds apart and the needs are completely different.
Anyway, to answer your question I always read the relevant journals to keep abreast of new reagents, reactions, applications, etc. Some of the information I was able to use in my work, but generally <10%. I obtained my knowledge from patents, and company sources, particularly in process research, where the academic world is not much help.

[Doc Oc]

Agree with DrCMS and discodermolide. 

If universities are trying to gear their papers to be useful in industry, they're failing.  And as disco said, the two settings are utterly different (and they should be because they serve different purposes).

[JGK]

In addition, I often find academic papers are somewhat "light" on specifics at key points which make reproducing the work difficult and unnecessarily time consuming.

[sschoe2]

As an analytical chemist I frequently read papers from academia. I am a big fan of Petr Husek and his derivitization of amino acids for GC/MS.  I work for a meat company and MSG (glutamate is a big issue). I also recently read papers on several other anaytical techniques such as capsaicin, Fatty acids, piperine...

On the other hand many industrial labs if they make any real cool discoveries will not publish it because it is a trade secret. Academia and Government labs are a bit more open with their discoveries.

[klsgmc]

They are used, but very loosely especially in terms of method development. The originators must be contacted, and often it's more trouble than they're worth. Sometimes it really pays off though, and those instances make it all worthwhile.

We use scifinder.