Yearly Archives: 2008

In a recent post ( Chemical names – the challenge) I addressed the question of how to identify chemical names in text and referred to the problem of generic rather than specific names. Here’s an example showing how we cannot … Continue reading →

Antony Williams on Chemspider posts a serious question and I give a serious answer. I wonder if it’s what he was expecting… I’ll state it, and then comment on NLP before giving an answer: This is NOT a Trick Question … Continue reading →

In an email from Klaus Graf, one of the most consistent supporters of BBB-OA (and CC-BY): http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4931334/ In German. [PMR: It translates quite readably with Babelfish]. Reasons for re-use OA and my mantra “Make all research results CC-BY”: (1) Data … Continue reading →

An excellent account from Cameron Neylon of the frustration (and possibly ruined young careers) when experiments are not repeatable because they haven’t been done properly. While there is no algorithm that guards against this, the deposition of raw data is … Continue reading →

ChemConnector (from the Chemspider stable – anonymous, but possibly Antony Williams) has posted on searching for chemical structures in Word anf PDF files. S/he rightly concludes that (a) it’s possible and (b) not done – at least in public. I’ll … Continue reading →

The preposition is “at”. Next Thursday the RSC is organising a one day meeting in Burlington House London (next to the Royal Academy if you want a change afterwards. Here’s the programme Open Access Publishing in the Chemical Sciences Final … Continue reading →

PMR: Recent comments on this blog about derivative works of Wikipedia… Physchim62 Says: May 15th, 2008 at 6:38 pm eI would be very interested in having a chat with you about this project, either here or by email. Although I … Continue reading →

ChEBI has been very important to us – here’s Duncan Hull: Building a Better ChEBI Chemical Entitites of Biological Interest, ChEBI, is a freely available dictionary [1] of molecular entities, especially small chemical compounds. Like all big dictionaries and ontologies, … Continue reading →

Antony Williams (Chemspiderman) has posted a useful comment on this blog under ( I am still DELIGHTED with Chemspider – May 10th, 2008) – [I sometimes have trouble with permalinks to comments]. I’ll pick up some points and reply, but … Continue reading →

Wikipedia is (rightly) becoming the first place that people look for well-understood scientific information including chemistry. Chemical compounds are particularly suited as the concept is over 150 years old and it is universal practice to index parts of chemistry through … Continue reading →