Talk:Online Chemistry Nexus Proposal

Please discuss the proposal here! Martin A. Walker 19:44, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Broad guidelines from the NSF

There are two very basic points which the proposal must cover, according to the NSF, which Ican't find mentioned specifically on these pages. The proposal (and its one page summary) must separately address:

• the intellectual merit of the proposed activity; and
• the broader impacts resulting from the proposed activity.

Physchim62 22:45, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for getting the ball rolling! The first of these is difficult to define for a project like this. With a proposed total synthesis of X, it's a tangible thing, but for this, the intellectual merit could be regarded as either obvious or elusive, depending on your definition. (That's why I've struggled to respond). As for the broader impacts, I've contacted several people working on the edges of chemistry (see my email on possible advisers); I've got a "yes" from an anthropologist (she uses DNA to track ancestry, etc, and she has a biology BS), and also an enthusiastic "yes" from User:Proteins. I'll be asking these people to write a couple of sentences on how Wikichem could help their fields. Then we can write a broader overview to go with it. Thanks, Martin A. Walker 00:25, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

We seem to be interpreting the two criteria somewhat differently! For the first, I would say that there is intellectual merit in striving to produce tools which make it easier for chemists to share their data and to access others peoples data and publications with greater ease. This intellectual effort is shown through the development of both software tools and a robust classification system (or set of classification systems). For the second, I think that "broader impact" needs to be guaged for users outside of the group of self-defined practitioners of the chemical sciences: we are striving to make this data available to everybody. "Unrestricted access to data used to derive conclusions also builds public confidence in the processes and outcomes of research": it isn't me whose saying that, it is the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) of the National Academies in their recent report "Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age" (p. 55). All help in reading the report, especially its chapters 3 & 4, is welcome. Physchim62 00:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)