Author Archives: pm286

Do we really need discovery metadata?

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

Many of the projects we are involved in and interact with are about systematising metadata for scientific and other scholarly applications. There are several sorts of MD; I include at least rights, provenance, semantics/format, and discovery. I’ll go along with … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry, open issues | 3 Comments

Build your own Institutional Repository

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

I have alluded to Institutional Repositories (IR) before. Although I am an enthusiast and early adopter (having reposited 250, 000 digital objects) a year ago I would have said they were still a minority activity. Not now. Universities and related … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | Leave a comment

Open Map Data?

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

From Peter Suber’s Blog: Mike Cross, Ordnance Survey in the dock again, The Guardian, October 26, 2006. Excerpt: On one side of an electoral boundary, people might buy sun-blushed tomatoes; on the other, economy baked beans. Retailers like to know … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | 4 Comments

Commons in the pharma industry?

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

I was excited to see the following in Peter Suber’s Open Access Blog: var imagebase=’file://C:/Program Files/FeedReader30/’; Pfizer explores data sharing with Science Commons 17:54 24/10/2006, Peter Suber, Open Access News Pfizer is exploring data sharing with Science Commons. There are … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | 2 Comments

Rich Apodaca: Closed Chemical Publishing and Disruptive Technology

Posted on October 26, 2006 by pm286

Rich Apodaca, a founder member of the Blue Obelisk, has a thoughtful blog, DepthFirst. Besides the interesting stuff on programming – especially Ruby – there are useful injections from outside chemistry and IT. Here’s one: The Directory of Open Access … Continue reading →

Posted in "virtual communities", chemistry, open issues | Leave a comment

Silicos contributes Commercial Open Source – thank you

Posted on October 25, 2006 by pm286

It is very uncommon for commercial organizations in chemoinformatics to make any of their material Open Source. (Unlike the contributions of many IT companies – e.g. Eclipse, Netbeans, etc.) So I was very pleased to see an announcement of open … Continue reading →

Posted in "virtual communities", chemistry, open issues, programming for scientists | 1 Comment

Chemistry Theses: How do you write them?

Posted on October 25, 2006 by pm286

As I have shown it is hard and lossy to recover information from theses (or anything else!) written in PDF. In unfavourable cases it fails completely. I have a vision which I’ll reveal in future posts, but here I’d like … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry | 3 Comments

Inorganic InChIs

Posted on October 25, 2006 by pm286

Mark Winter – who has done an enormous amount to promote web-based chemistry such as WebElements – makes an important point: Mark Winter Says: October 18th, 2006 at 10:18 am eOK – having carefully and rather too obviously written in … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry | Leave a comment

Organic Theses: Hamburger or Cow?

Posted on October 25, 2006 by pm286

This is my first attempt to see if a chemistry thesis in PDF can yield any useful machine-processable information. I thank Natasha Schumann from Frankfurt for the thesis (see below for credits). A typical chemical synthesis looks like this (screenshot … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry, data, XML | Leave a comment

Presentation to Open Scholarship 2006

Posted on October 20, 2006 by pm286

I am presenting this “talk” from the Web and including parts of my blog. This means I have to decide what I think I am going to say before I do or don’t say it. You know by now what … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | 2 Comments