Online Chemistry Nexus Proposal/Summary
NOTE This summary of the main proposal should be around one page long, and in prose rather than bulleted points.
An Open Online Nexus for Chemistry: Summary
The World Wide Web has transformed the way chemists work, and yet we are still a long way from realizing the full potential of this technology for an open network of chemical information. What is needed is some organization of resources, so as to create some major hubs for the new information landscape. This document outlines how one such "chemistry nexus" might be created, and what services it might provide for the community.
1. Introduction a. Chemical information needs • Chemical literature • Common properties of chemical compounds • Chemical reaction information • Personal networking • Resources • News and general chemical knowledge
b. Current networks To develop a successful network hub, we must consider what works well for chemists at present. Current networks include: • Professional societies. • Wikipedia, ChemSpider and government sites. • Fee-based resources - Chemical Abstracts Service, Science Citation Index and Beilstein/Gmelin. • General science resources - Derwent World Patents Index, Lexis-Nexis, publishers.
c. Why we need this Web nexus With such great resources, why do chemists need yet another website? • Many current sites are closed and fee-based. • Younger chemists start with Google – why try to fight this? • Existing resources are mostly separated – we need a site to bring them together. • Wikipedia is necessarily quite narrow in scope, and can never serve the broader needs of chemists, though it provides an excellent model. • To develop an online community of chemists. This is the means to an end – to produce a large amount of chemistry content – it is not the purpose of the proposed site.
d. What works well on the Web We must learn from what works well, and try to avoid the pitfalls of past failures. To be successful, the site must know the needs of chemists and speak the language of chemistry.
e. What works well with a wiki With the success of Wikipedia. wikis have become popular in recent years, yet many wikis fail to achieve even a basic level of use. Our wiki needs to have: • Clear scope, a reason to contribute, a community of users, and a community of contributors. • Critical mass, scalability, a clear set of rules, a style guide, open access, free content.
2. Goals of the website We would like to see the website serve two main purposes: a. A repository of user-generated content The site should allow for chemists to place information and data easily on the web, in a place where others can find it through a simple search. Rather than follow the traditional "top-down" model, this site would allow the contributors to decide what is presented and how.
b. A free chemistry portal We aim to provide chemists with a simple, portal through which they can find chemical information on other sites. There would be some core content uploaded onto the site, but information outside the core would ideally be provided through mashups.
3. Structure of the site a. General layout In order to meet the dual goals of being both an information repository and a portal, the site should allow users to achieve both efficiently. Functionality and mashups should work seamlessly around the user's needs. All pages will have a simple URL that is "human-friendly". Data will need to be readable both by machines and human users.
b. Components of the site • Chemical compound pages – listing physical properties, links to other sites, and if possible, prose content. • Chemical reactions, reagents – these might link to relevant literature references • Experimental data – physical properties, reaction results, etc. – these pages could incorporate data from open notebook science groups. • Literature reviews, summaries • Experimental procedures • Educational materials – lesson plans, study problems, teaching materials, at every level from grade school to graduate school. • News – the latest information on important breakthroughs, industry takeovers, government regulations, as well as site news. • Chemistry connections – links to professional societies, blogs, scientific publishers, information on grants, conferences, etc. • Blog – commentary on new chemistry or news • Wikichem community – interest groups, technical help, rules & guidelines, etc.
4. Searching the site We expect that most users entering via the main page will use the search feature by default. The search options will be as follows: a. Text searches This will be most suitable for topic searches, e.g. "nanorods" or "DSC".
b. Structure searches Structure searches would have one or more chemical structures to be input by the user, and results could be limited by namespace if desired. These searches could be done in two ways: through a structure drawing, or through a machine-representation of that structure such as an InChI or SMILES.
5. Resources needed To build a site of this complexity cannot be done as a hobby project – it will require paid employees. We envisage the following full-time employees being needed on a permanent basis: • Overall site administrator • Technical developer • Content administrator Support during the development phase would also be provided through summer work by students (including undergraduates) and faculty.
