Author Archives: pm286

The cost of decaying scientific data

Posted on September 20, 2006 by pm286

My colleague John Davies, who provides a crystallographic service for the deparment has estimated that the data for 80% of crystal structures (in any chemistry department) never leave the laboratory. They are locally archived, perhaps on CDROM, perhaps on a … Continue reading →

Posted in data, open issues | 3 Comments

Moderatorial

Posted on September 17, 2006 by pm286

A recent anonymous comment on this blog read In that case, perhaps you should have parted with the observation “ACS is a problem”. :-), but partly serious. I thnk the tone of this is out of keeping with this blog … Continue reading →

Posted in open issues | Leave a comment

OSCAR reviews a journal

Posted on September 17, 2006 by pm286

In the last post I described OSCAR, which can review and extract chemical data from published articles. Here is how I used it to review the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry The BJOC unlike most other chemistry journals encourages reader’s … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry, open issues | 1 Comment

OSCAR, the chemical data checker

Posted on September 17, 2006 by pm286

I spent yesterday reviewing the data in BJOC (the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry) (articles). This is a new (ca. 1 year) and important journal as it is the first free-to-author and free-to-read journal in chemistry, supported by the Beilstein … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry, open issues | 6 Comments

Linus' Law and community peer-review

Posted on September 17, 2006 by pm286

Linus Torvalds of Linux fame is creand dited with the law “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” In a communal Open Source project every developer and every tester (or user when the code is released) can contribute bugs to … Continue reading →

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

GIFs and other horrors

Posted on September 16, 2006 by pm286

The GIF (and its extended family of PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, etc.) are major destroyers of scientific data. This post shows why they should be avoided for much scientific data. (The GIF has additional infamy through the patent fiasco). In … Continue reading →

Posted in chemistry, general | 5 Comments

Useful Chemistry: Publish and be…?

Posted on September 16, 2006 by pm286

It was great to meet Jean-Claude Bradley, the guru of the Useful Chemistry blog at the Am. Chem. Soc meeting. The Useful chemistry blog has a remarkable and valuale feature – J-C publishes chemistry as it is being done. To … Continue reading →

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

The Blue Obelisk: A volunteer!

Posted on September 16, 2006 by pm286

I flew back from SF to Heathrow yesterday and, as usual, was hacking on the laptop (with difficulty as Virgin doesn’t seem to give enough space to open a laptop). After a while my neighbour (S) asked: S: “do you … Continue reading →

Posted in "virtual communities", programming for scientists | 2 Comments

Blue Obelisk Award – Geoff Hutchison of OpenBabel

Posted on September 14, 2006 by pm286

A major problem in chemistry is that there is a plethora of file formats and it continues to get worse. Each manufacturer thinks they are the centre of the world and everyone else will use their approach. So they make … Continue reading →

Posted in "virtual communities", chemistry | 2 Comments

Blue Obelisk Award – Christoph Steinbeck of CDK

Posted on September 14, 2006 by pm286

Last night we met at the Thirsty Bear pub in San Francisco. This was the second anniversary of the first BO meeting (in San Diego). There were nine of us, and the membership and programs are growing. People are taking … Continue reading →

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