"C&EN reporters attending the ACS national meeting in Atlanta last week ... filed a series of lively blog entries that appear exclusively on C&EN Online. " C&EN April 3, 2006 [Editor's Page] p.5
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/index.html [subscription required]
.: The American Chemical Society now offers a wide range of RSS feeds, including a News From ACS feed, as noted on e3 Information Overload. The full range of RSS feeds from ACS are listed here.
Speaking of the ACS, I will be attending its 231st Meeting in Atlanta in less than three weeks. I will be giving a presentation on blogs as part of the Social Software and Chemical Information session on Sunday, March 26.
.: Today's Knowledgespeak Newsletter reports the following:
The world’s largest scientific society, American Chemical Society (ACS), US, has announced the launch of its new peer-reviewed publication, ACS Chemical Biology, a global forum for biologists and chemists working jointly to understand cellular processes. Editor-in-chief Laura L. Kiessling, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and MacArthur Foundation Fellow at the University of Wisconsin will lead ‘ACS Chemical Biology’.
Abstract and indexing database Scopus, part of STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the launch of the Citation Tracker, a new feature that allows subscribing researchers to easily evaluate research using citation data. The feature was developed in response to users’ requirement to deviate from pre-defined metrics and analyse a topic at the individual author or article level.The original press release is here.Scopus Citation Tracker provides a more easy and efficient way for researchers and librarians to check and track citation data to gather knowledge on articles, authors, their own published work and research trends. It is projected as the only product to give an instant overview of citation data for any set of articles over a date range selected by the user.
A group of publishers, learned societies and librarians has launched an initiative using the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology to support a ‘large dark archive’. The archive is projected to serve as a reliable repository for published scholarly content.Original press release is here.The initiative, Controlled LOCKSS (CLOCKSS), assures the research community that access to journal content will not be obstructed by any calamity that prevents the delivery of content. The collaborative initiative addresses the uncertainty that librarians have faced in the digital environment. The initial two-year pilot will include at least five research libraries and several commercial and society publishers. During this period, libraries and publishers will continue to work closely to gather and analyse data and develop a proposal for a complete archiving model.
.: Geochemical Transactions has had a troubled history. Four lackluster years hosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry led to a transfer to the American Institute of Physics. AIP opted out due to a continuing dearth of manuscript submissions over the last two years.
With volume 7, the editorial board is trying a new tact. The journal is moving to BioMed Central and adopting an author pays [UK pounds 800, Euros 1185, US$1410], Open Access publishing model. Officially the move is effective on 1 January 2006. Currently, the new website has an announcement of the purchase of all of the backfiles (funded by the ACS Geochemistry division) and an editorial on the new vision for the journal.
Martin A A Schoonen, Ken B Anderson and Scott A Wood. Moving Geochemical Transactions forward as an open access journal. Geochemical Transactions 2006, 7:1. doi:10.1186/1467-4866-7-1
Geochemical Transactions, the first online-only journal in geochemistry and environmental chemistry, is now the first major open access journal in this subject area. All issues of Geochemical Transactions, including the back content, will be fully and permanently available online to all, without a subscription charge. Copyright of all future articles will be retained by the authors. Geochemical Transactions remains the official journal of the Division of Geochemistry of the American Chemical Society. The generous support of the Division has made it possible to make the back content available without a subscription charge.As the impact factor demonstrates (1.941), the content has been strong, even if the flow of articles has been meager. The journal has never received a noticeable push from the American Chemical Society. The Geochemistry Division of the American Chemical Society has done a poor job recruiting submissions from its own members, but perhaps, the journal has finally turned the corner. - George Porter, as posted on STS-L.
.: KnowledgeSpeak reports that BioMed Central will assume publication of Geochemical Transactions, the online journal of the Geochemistry Division of ACS, beginning 1 January 2006. From the BioMed Central press release:
BioMed Central is pleased to announce that it will publish Geochemical Transactions, the online journal of the Geochemistry Division of the American Chemical Society, from January 1, 2006. Geochemical Transactions ranks third in impact factor among geochemistry journals and will become the first open access journal in the field.Geochemical Transactions joins the 140+ open access journals currently published by BioMed Central, including over 70 titles that are run by independent editorial groups. In line with the publisher's open access policy, all articles published in Geochemical Transactions from January 1, 2006 will be immediately and permanently accessible online free of charge. All articles that were published in the journal prior to 2006 will also retrospectively become open access.
:: OK, that headline was a mouthful, I know. Previously I posted Gary Wiggins' commentary on ACS, PubChem and open access. A quick browse throught CHMINF-L led me to a number of other posts which may be of interest to you. First up is a link to the article in the 25 April 2005 issue of Business Week, called "Whose Molecules Are These?". The article notes:
The National Institutes of Health thought it had a great idea for advancing science -- but its concept is threatening the world's largest scientific society. The plan: Put information about a vast number of molecules, which could be used to probe genes and biological functions, into a public database, dubbed PubChem. Scientists then could use the data to uncover new knowledge or new drugs. The information would come from other public databases,scientific papers, and publicly funded research.Another article appeared in ACS's hometown newspaper, Columbus Dispatch. In early May, an article appeared in Science, Vol 308, Issue 5723, 774 , 6 May 2005, called "Chemists Want NIH to Curtail Database". The article describes how the ACS has enlisted the Governor of Ohio and Ohio's state delegation to push its case against NIH.But the project has run into fierce opposition from the 158,000-member American Chemical Society (ACS). The nonprofit group has its own database of 22 million molecules, the Chemical Abstracts Service, that typically costs thousands of dollars to access and accounts for more than half of the society's $421 million annual budget.
For more CHMINF-L posts on this developing story, go to the CHMINF-L Archives search page, search for "pubchem and acs", and restrict your search from April 2005 to the present.
:: The following commentary by Gary Wiggins, Director, Program in Chemical Informatics and Interim Director, Program in Bioinformatics, Adjunct Professor of Informatics School of Informatics, U Indiana, appeared on the CHMINF-L discussion list today. My thanks to George Porter for bringing this post to my attention. It's well worth the read:
Dennis P. Curran, coeditor of Organic Syntheses, writes in the May 9, 2005 Chemical & Engineering News (pp. 3-4) that Organic Syntheses provides a model for free open access. Since the Web version of that well-respected tool at http://www.orgsyn.org can be accessed by anyone at no cost, his comments have some bearing on the current debate on open access, not to mention the threat of a lawsuit by the American Chemical Society (ACS) against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for creating PubChem.Curran attributes the capability to give away Organic Syntheses to the fact that the nonprofit corporation was so successful in selling the product throughout the years, "primarily to libraries," that the board of directors decided to give it away. He says, "In essence, the revenues of yesterday help bankroll the operations of today." He labels this the "endowed publication" model.
That reminded me of an argument I made some years ago when complaints about access to SciFinder Scholar by small academic organizations were much more in evidence than they seem to be today. I suggested that Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) allow the larger academic institutions of the world to subsidize the smaller schools by purchasing additional seats that would be pooled and shared by the small schools. If enough of the large schools bought into this, the less-well-endowed schools, in effect, could have had "free" access to SFS. Of course, we are in a different budget era now, and I am sure that with the new options available from CAS for small schools to license SFS, there is surely little need for such altruism (and even less ability of the large schools to afford it), right?
:: Issue 6.4 April 2005 of LiveWire, from ACS, is available.
:: Issue 6.1, January 2005, of ACS's LiveWire is now available.
:: The 228th ACS National Meeting was held in Philadelphia in August, 2004. A selection of slide presentations from some of the 98(!) sessions of the Division of Chemical Information are available for viewing on the web site. On the ReedElsevier discussion list, Joe Kraus noted that Karen Hunter of Elsevier gave a presentation on open access:
CINF 31: Elsevier: A commercial publisher's perspectives on Open Access Karen Hunter, Elsevier, 360 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010, k.hunter AT elsevier.comDana Roth commented on Hunter's presentation:Abstract: The publishing industry, academia, and scientific research itself, have gone through a tidalwave of change since the emergence of the internet. During the early days of the transition to online publishing, many perceived a revolution of science in the making. Today, usage of scientific journals online has doubled year on year, indicating that scientific information is reaching users like never before. At the same time, library budgets continue to be reduced and libraries are forced to make difficult decisions about collection development and access. Various forms of "pay to publish" models are surfacing, as well as alternative distribution models. Now once again, revolution is in the air. This presentation will include proprietary Elsevier research and focus on Elsevier's view, as a commercial publisher, on Open Access and related activities, such as Open Archiving and institutional repositories, as well as the general outlook for the future.
Thanks to Joe for this 'heads up'. It is interesting to see the cost/article for varying from $10K down (Science) to $3.8K (estimated STM mean cost).One suspects that Science is dividing their total cost of production by the number of research articles.
The AIP is offering 'open access' for $2K (in 2005 for J. Math. Phys., Rev. Sci. Instrum. & Chaos), in contrast with Springer's charge of $3K.
Acta Crystallography is offering it at $800 (450GBP), which includes "editorial and production costs of editing, markup, hyperlinking, validation and assembly of an article and any associated supplementary materials".
Optics Express is charging $450 (for 6 pages or less)and $800 (for 7-15 pages), but is specifically not offering copy editing.
**It would be nice to have a tabulation of journals and 'open access' charges so, if you have info on others, please post.
:: Chemical & Engineering News reported on Friday that the American Chemical Society has filed a complaint in US District Court in D.C.:
The ACS complaint contends that Google's use of the word scholar infringes on ACS’s SciFinder Scholar and Scholar trademarks and constitutes unfair competition. SciFinder Scholar, a desktop research tool designed for academic scientists, was launched six years ago. ACS’s Chemical Abstracts Service estimates that about 1,000 colleges and universities have bought the service, which provides access to all of CAS’s databases, including information on journal and patent references, substance information, regulated chemicals, chemical reactions, and chemical supplier information.A discussion began almost immediately on CHMINF-L: see entries in the December archive by topic, under "ACS Sues Google..."