Re: [Jmol-users] Chemistry For All (Nature, Murray-Rust)

[Rzepa, H. <h....@im...>]

>Higly recommended, in the current issue of Nature
>(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/full/451648a.html ):
>Peter Murray-Rust's ambitious and inspiring vision of the future of
>free exchange of, and wide access to scientific information,
>particularly in chemistry. The "emerging world of e-science or
>cyberscholarship" which "seeks to develop the tools, content, and
>social attitudes to support multidisciplinary, collaborative
>science". Many fascinating and promising initiatives are mentioned,
>including Blue Obelisk (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16711717 )
>(http://blueobelisk.org ), an on-line community that encourages
>openness in chemistry, and the Jmol community. The article includes a
>screenshot of Jmol within the CrystalEye resource
>(http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/crystaleye/ ), which provides open data
>(http://www.opendefinition.org/ ) for crystallographic information
>and coordinates on chemical compounds. A number of exciting projects
>are mentioned, including DBpedia, greasemonkey, and the Nature
>Publishing Group-provided discussion forums for open science in the
>virtual reality world Second Life.


Although it is interesting that  Nature policy prevents mention by
name of any of the principle players!  You will note that the only names
noted are those of football players. Perhaps that is a reflection of the
relative perceived importance of  "celebrities" vs "science".

I was indeed intrigued by a journal policy that  dis-favours any
mention of key players, or citations to them. This is editorialising
of a most unusual (worrying?) kind.

By the way, keep an eye out at the  ACS, since they too are about to
promote  Jmol in a big way, as part of their objective of promoting
"Web-enhanced" objects in all their key journals as a mechanism
for disseminating  "open data".   I have an email from the  ACS
which clearly indicates that all of my  "web-enhanced objects"
that make use of  Jmol carry  NO ACS copyright (!). I might add
that  unlike Nature,  ACS did allow names to be mentioned and
at least three of the regular posters to this list will find themselves
so embarrassed (OK, I actually was even more effusive in the
comments attributed to me, but they have been toned down somewhat
by the  ACS).
-- 

Henry Rzepa.
+44 (020) 7594 5774 (Voice); +44 (0870) 132 3747 (eFax); rz...@ma... (iChat)
 http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7  2AZ, UK.

(Voracious anti-spam filter in operation for received email.
If expected reply not received, please phone/fax).