Author Archives: pm286

More on the state of OA in chemistry

Although I have already blogged Rebeeca Trager’s article it’s worth reading Peter Suber’s comments on it.  More on the state of OA in chemistry He uses facts and analysis precisely to take apart the various arguments of the publishers.  

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Talks at Berlin5 on Open Access

  Antonella De Robbio has very kindly made available the talks ate Berlin 5 Open Access : From Practice to Impact : Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination 19 – 21 September, 2007 They can be viewed starting from the Conference website … Continue reading

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Open Access – Chemistry World reviews the dilemma

In this month’s Chemistry World (a magazine from the Royal Society of Chemistry) there is an important article by Rebecca Trager (US) reviewing the increasing fission within the chemistry publishing community: Chemistry’s open access dilemma   This was a commissioned … Continue reading

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Data for common chemicals

As part of a project on chemical synthesis we need to collect some data on common chemicals. So what better place to start than with water? Before looking at the answers, see if you can find the density of Water … Continue reading

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Predictions for OA 2008

Peter Suber offers some OA predictions for 2008 in the December issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Peter is very clear-headed and I think they should be taken seriously. However if they come to pass I think we will … Continue reading

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Bioclipse awarded [prize] at Trophees du Libre

Ola Spjuth reports that Bioclipse – the  collaborative bi/chem client based on Eclipse – has won another prize. Bioclipse awarded at Trophees du Libre I [Ola] just arrived home from the international contest for free software, Trophees du Libre 2007, … Continue reading

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author-doesn't-pay OA

Bill Hoooker has taken a limited vow of silence on his blog but some things make him break it. One is dis/misinformation about OA… If it won’t sink in, maybe we can pound it in… Another brief un-hiatus, this one … Continue reading

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Scraping HTML

As we have mentioned earlier, we are looking at how experimental data can be extracted from web sources. There is a rough scale of feasibility: RDF/XML > (legacy)CIF/JCAMP/SDF > HTML > PDF I have been looking at several sites which … Continue reading

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Survey of open chemistry in Chemistry World

Richard Noorden has written a balanced and informative view of Open Chemistry ( Surfing Web2O, Chemistry World, December 2007. )  He has read much of the chemistry blogosphere and talked with many of us on the phone. The article highlights … Continue reading

Posted in data, open issues, open notebook science | 2 Comments

SPECTRa tools released

The SPECTRa tools allow chemists (perhaps group or departmental analytical spectroscopy groups) to submit their data (spectra, crystal structures, compchem) to a repository. From Jim Downing SPECTRa released Now that a number of niggling bugs have been ironed out, we’ve … Continue reading

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