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Chemistry Open Access Searching In Google
By Jean-Claude Bradley | March 15th 2007 12:55 PM | 3 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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About Jean-Claude

Jean-Claude Bradley is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and the E-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University

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The way people search for and find chemistry information is always in flux.

Right now, Open Access is a hot topic (e.g. Open Source Archivangelism post) and it is interesting to see how those seeking OA sources are connecting with those who choose to share information in that way.

This morning I noticed from our SiteMeter referrals that someone had found some of our experiments (EXP019) involving anisaldehyde by doing a Google search with the advanced features set to include only documents with usage rights set to "free to use or share". A nice benefit of using Wikispaces as our lab notebook is that the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license is applied by default to all content using the basic free account.

Looking at some of the other hits from that search provides an interesting sample of Open Access sources in chemistry currently being used:


anisaldehyde search on Google

Comments

Man, the ACS really gives you a good deal.  I mean paying twice for something that is essentially free generally feels pretty good... 

Albert (not verified) | 03/15/07 | 17:01 PM
Hank's picture
Have they always been like this? A few weeks ago I saw an article by one of their writers and I thought it would be excellent for a general readership also so I wrote the author abour reprinting it here. He was fine with it, of course, but whoever they have in their marketing/editorial group wouldn't even let us print a blurb. Their policies 'allowed' us to link to the story and that was it.

Even UPI, Time, etc. allow fair use of passages if they're cited and linked. Nonetheless we aren't here to do advertising for ACS articles, we want people to be able to read things here so I didn't pursue it.

It was the only experience I have had, including dealing with UPI and various news agencies about their work, where the publisher was completely unreasonable.

Hank Campbell | 03/15/07 | 17:42 PM
jcbradley's picture

Hank and Albert,

You guys are clearly pointing out some major difficulties with the immiscibility of open and closed source information feeds in chemistry.  As scientists, teachers, journalists, students, etc. we'd like to be able to write, quote and link freely with the expectation that our readers will have full access to everything being discussed.  The reality is that we can't always do that but if there is any way that I can avoid using a closed information source I will.  My experience with publishers is that they will allow the reproduction of figures but it is a pain having to ask. 

This problem is not limited to chemistry of course but the ACS does come up often in discussions of the challenges we face in the implementation of Open Access. Ironically, next week at the Chicago ACS meeting there are a few fantastic symposia on communicating chemistry with new technologies like blogs and wikis :)


Jean-Claude Bradley | 03/18/07 | 04:15 AM

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