Over the past year ChemSpider has been challenged over the nature of our offering in terms of Open Data etc. A small number of people focused a lot of time talking about this while we remained focused on improving the website and having it available for people to use as a Free Access website. I spoke to Peter Suber about Open Access and then John Willbanks about Creative Commons.
Since ChemSpider is the aggregate of a number of people’s work (including provision of software by collaborators) I had to get into conversation to see what licenses would be acceptable to those groups.
With the redesign of the website we have structured ourselves in a way to add licenses as we see appropriate now. So, as of today we have added the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 United States License and the appropriate logo is on all sections of a Record View except for the predicted properties. Once we get approval from our collaborators for this same license (and discussions are underway) then the whole record view will be Licensed. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 5/06/2008 05:52:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
