Chemistry Central Blog
Thursday Jun 21, 2007
Chemrank gives a thumbs-up (or down!) to chemical research
The website Chemrank has recently opened with the intention of doing its bit to offer a debating forum aimed at 'overcom[ing]... historic limitations to academic communication'.
The concept behind the website is simple: users add research papers to the site's database; they can then rate the research either good (thumbs-up) or bad (thumbs-down). To broaden the voting past mere hand gesturing, there is also the option to leave comments.
The site's author explains why he feels Chemrank is timely, but also necessary: '...the only current method to leave a public record of your take on the literature is to either create a blog or a website and tell the world your views... [however] the vast majority of chemistry blogs do not have a huge audience and it can be quite difficult to build a readership in such a small niche.' He also suggests that by storing information in one place, the obligation to maintain individual blogs or websites is removed. Another benefit of the site, the author tells us, is that it can be used by those running blogs and websites to poll what audiences think about the literature in which he or she is interested.
Although presently the interface isn't hugely inviting and many features are lacking (something of which the site's author is aware), Chemrank's novel concept shows an element of ingenuity in highlighing a new avenue down which Chemists may wish to communicate, and also in addressing the broader question of communication within and with the scientific community.
From a Chemistry Central-centric point of view, we were also happy to see one of our recently published research articles ("Fast 3D shape screening of large chemical databases through alignment-recycling") in the website's database, and importantly, given a thumbs up!
Posted by Gino D'Oca at 13:46 Comments (0)
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