ACS Letter to NIH on PubChem

A letter from the American Chemical Society (ACS) to the National Institute of Health on Pubchem has been obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on the SPARC Open Access Forum. The ACS apparently expects the NIH to avoid making chemistry information available, or creating links and relationships between different kinds of materials, to avoid competition with "private databases".

PubChem's aim is to disseminate information in the public interest. Building the relationships between different elements facilitates the process of chemistry research.

Why is ACS, a nonprofit organization, fighting the public interest in the interests of private, commercial-like profits, and why is it doing so clandestinely? CWB members - please ask ACS, or friends who are ACS members, about this.

I have sent a letter to the current President of ACS, E. Ann Nally, called Open Access: Transformative Change, explaining very pleasantly the potential of new web-based technologies to rapidly advance research in chemistry - and why this is important. For example, by openly sharing information and working collaboratively, the world's researchers and research funders succeeeded in mapping the human genome in record speed. We could be taking the same basic approach and applying it to finding sustainable, environmentally-friendly energy sources, solutions for malaria, AIDs, bird flu, and so forth.

So far, I have not received a reply.

Solar-powered donkey libraries

Solar-powered donkey libraries, an extension of the new Prince Rupert Library, are bringing books, literacy - and electronic gadgets, including computers and internet access - to children throughout Zimbabwe.

Perhaps a future partnership opportunity for a CWB chemistry education program?

Environmental Research Letters: new OA journal

Environmental Research Letters is a new, open access journal from the Institute of Physics. ERL is the first open-access journal that will cover the whole of environmental science.

ERL will serve the entire environmental science community, including both specialist researchers and the wider public, by providing free access to wide-ranging content on topics extending across environmental science. The journal will offer a combination of research letters, commentaries, job and other advertisements, reviews and news items. ERL will be completely free to read online and published authors in the journal will be required to pay an article publication charge....

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.