Welcome!

Welcome to the petermr blog! This is one of a series of blogs
from scientists in the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics at
Cambridge. I’ll indicate some of the others on my blogroll. For
now, just note that there is another blog specifically dedicated to
Chemical Markup Language (CML) and I’ll be contributing a lot to that as
well.
This blog will cover a wide range of topics that are mushrooing
on today’s web and which will change the practice of science. Areas
which I expect to blog frequently are:

• The relationship between human readable material (“full text”)
  and scientific data. Henry Rzepa and I have coined the term datumemt
  for the synthesis of these, especially using XML technology. the
  scientific publication in its current form is inspired by 19th Century
  orinting technology and “electronic publications” merely encourag
  outdated ways of communication. Web inspired technologies should
  revolutionize scientific communication. A particular interest is the
  development of the “robotic amanuensis” for scientists – personal
  software which can help indivduals read and publish information
  effectively.
• Open data, open source, open access, open knowledge. Unless we
  have free aceess to the primary outputs of science we are denied the
  opportunity to develop new ideas in informatics-driven science. I have
  argued publicly that primary scientific data belong to the scientific
  commons and that they must be free. A corollary is that the outout of
  funded science is not just full-text but the complete supporting
  information environment of the experiments.
• “programming for scientists”. Modern scientists are enhanced
  by “information prosthesis” – the ability to receive and repurpose
  information. If they are able to “program”, they have greater
  expressive power. Many of the future skills will not be with
  conventional programming languages but the tools emerging from the
  explosion of social and technical operations in today’s web. I’ll be
  learning from my colleagues and trying to give readers and contributirs
  a flavour of what is now possible.
• markup languages in (physical) science. These are the
  handmaidens of the goals above. Currently there are a few main
  approaches for content: MathML, GML (geography), Scalable Vector
  Graphics, Chemical Markup Language, AnIML (analytical chemistry),
  ThermoML (theorchemistry). There are many obvious gaps and I’ll suggest
  guidelines for any person or group interested in building a language.
• creation and management of virtual communities. I’v been involved with creating and nurturing communities for the last 15 years including
  BioMOO, the Virtual School of Natural Sciences, XML-DEV, and now the Blue Obelisk. I also believe strongly in
  Wikipedia and related efforts. I’ll review the features of successful communities and the
  guidelines for growth.

We welcome anyone as a poster but require them to register (to
prevent spam). We honour copyright, but ask that posters make there
contributions available under Creative Commons. This allows the posters
to retain their moral rights, but allows us to re-use the blog
(including their contributions) for other purposes if required (e.g. it
might be revised for supporting information, tutorials, etc.) We will
always attribute posters.
Technical note: I can edit this blog (e.g. if I make typos or get something wrong) but no-one else can. If you post a comment, we don’t think that anyone can change it. So be careful!
Please let us know your ideas.
P.