Early in 1871 it was decided to print in the society's journal abstracts of all papers on chemistry appearing elsewhere.
In February 1871 a committee was appointed to superintend the publication of the journal and these summaries, but soon the abstracts were left entirely to Watts.
In 1848 he was engaged by the Cavendish Society to translate into English and enlarge Leopold Gmelin's classic Handbuch der Chemie, a work which occupied much of his time till 1872, when the last of its eighteen volumes appeared.
In 1858 he was engaged by Messrs. Longmans & Co. to prepare a new edition of the Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy of Andrew Ure; but the book was obsolete, and he transformed it, with the help of a staff, into an encyclopædia of chemical science.
[1] A new edition, revised and entirely rewritten by M. M. Pattison Muir and Henry Forster Morley, was published 1888–94, 4 vols.