Progress in metathesis chemistry II

Five years have passed since the first publication of the Thematic Series on Olefin Metathesis in the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry [1]. During these years the research continued to progress at full speed. Astute readers of this Thematic Series, as well as readers of the recent books devoted to olefin metathesis [2,3], can easily see that a great number of studies in this field have advanced from the basic research phase to the commercial application stage. While new, active and more selective catalysts that solve some longstanding limitations are still being developed, a growing number of projects deal only with applications using olefin metathesis as one of many stock transformations.