Peer reviewed Chemoinformatics: Why OpenSource Chemoinformatics should be the default | chem-bla-ics

"The battle for scientific publishing is continuing: openaccess, peer reviewing, how much does it cost, who should pay it, is the data in papers copyrighted, etc, etc.

The battle for chemoinformatics, however, has not even started yet. The Blue Obelisk paper (doi:10.1021/ci050400b) has gotten a lot of attention, and citations. But closed source chemoinformatics is doing fine, and have not really openly taken a standpoint against open source chemoinformatics. Actually, CambridgeSoft just received a good investment. I wonder how this investment will be used, and where the ROI will come from. More closed data and closed algorithms? Focus on services? Early access privileges? At least they had something convincing.

There are many degrees of openness, and many business models. I value open source chemoinformatics, or chemblaics, as I call it. There is a striking similarity between publishing and chemoinformatics. Both play an important role in the progress of sciences. A big difference is that (independent) peer review of published results is done in scientific publishing, but not generally to chemoinformatics. Surely, algorithms are published… Ah, no; they are not. They are described. Ask any chemoinformatician why this subtle difference is causing headaches…"