Earlier this year, California-based company Metamolecular, launched Chempedia, "a free and
continuously-updated online" encyclopaedia of chemical compounds. The database is seen as potentially offering a new approach to overcoming some of the shortfalls of numerous well established - but restricted access - reference works: notably the limited visibility of information, slow update rate, and sometimes-limited coverage of chemical information relevant to more niche areas of specialisation.
Chempedia is built upon two of the biggest free and open chemical information
repositories - Wikipedia and PubChem - whose contents the creators have sought to mash up.
Wikipedia contains a growing collection of 'chemical compound monographs', which
can be indexed relatively simply. However, at present further work remains to include all Wikipedia's 6,000-plus monographs in Chempedia. ...
The compound entries can be updated as soon as possible to reflect newly available information. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 5/14/2008 12:38:00 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.
