WikiChem:Mission statement

DRAFT

Vision

The vision of ChemWiki is to be a compendium of all chemistry knowledge, applicable to learners, chemistry students, and professional chemists.

Mission

The mission of ChemWiki is:

1. Collate information (properties, uses, laboratory synthesis and industrial production, analytical data) on all chemicals, commercially available or not. Actual detailed synthetic procedures performed by contributors, with experimentally obtained properties and analytical data are particularly welcome.
2. Continually review topics of interest:
   1. Practical importance (alkylation, nucleophilic aromatic substition)
   2. On-going research (e.g. N-heterocyclic carbenes, asymmetric synthesis, alkyne metathesis)
   3. Topics of historic (structure of benzene) or pedagogical value (Haber process).
   4. Laboratory technique (air-free technique)
3. Serve as a resource for chemistry educators, discussing pedagogical tools and methods

Focus

The initial focus on ChemWiki should be to showcase the possibilities of this collaboration model. A range of articles, from well-established to the state-of-the-art knowledge, is desirable. To jump-start the project, articles form Wikipedia which are already appropriately licensed can serve as the base on which to grow.

Roadmap

1. Transfer ~ 200 appropriate articles from Wikipedia, falling into the categories outlined in Mission.
2. Expand and rewrite them to reflect the emphasis at ChemWiki, in order to serve as models for future articles.
3. Review and troubleshoot.
4. Launch the site into the WWW.
5. Expand membership, participation by professional chemists.

Anticipated issues

1. Licensing of contributions (GFDL?)
2. Checking of contributed syntheses.
3. Curation of data