Chemistry Central Blog

The project seeks to merge chemistry and the Cornell University-based Open Archives Initiative 'Object Reuse and Exchange Project' (OAI-ORE), which aims at 'developing standardized, interoperable, and machine-readable mechanisms to express information about compound information objects on the web'. In short, the OAI-ORE, whose model protocols are to be officially outlined in March, sees 'the future as composed of a large number of interoperating repositories rather than monolithic databases', therefore allowing search engines to gather data from a wide range of disperate machine-readible sources, thus transforming the way in which scientific research is shared.

 

The eChemistry project was chosen as an exemplar to help demonstrate that the OAI-ORE standards are of use to scientists. The study will involve searching and indexing existing online databases and print archives, and determining how best to record chemistry data captured in laboratory experiments. The results will then be hosted by PubChem and other repositories, as Peter Murray Rust, eChemistry participant from Cambridge University, states: "...we shall be able to create a number of well-populated molecular repositories with heterogeneous content (everything from crystallography to Wikipedia chemicals for example). One that we are currently developing is an RDF/CML-based repository of common chemicals - perhaps 5000 - which could serve as an amanuensis for the bench chemist or undergraduate needing reference material."

 

The funding support is a further boost for proponents of open access to chemical data and research, especially in light of the fact that the 'chemistry community' is still less cognizant of the OA concept than researchers in some other disciplines, a point reiterated by Lee Dirks, Microsoft Research's head of scholarly communications.