Friends: Here are two news stories on the ACS vs PubChem tussle. They appeared in Peter Suber's blog "Open Access News". Scientists around the world, especially those living in the United States should mobilise support for PubChem. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----------------------------------------- More on ACS v. PubChem 1. Stephanie Wright, Dueling Databases, TechnoBiblio, June 13, 2005. Excerpt: 'The dialog this issue has generated has been hot and heavy with PubChem supporters explaining that PubChem is complementary to CAS, not duplicative. CAS supporters are complaining of "unfair, improper competition from the government". Aside from the fact that I'm a librarian and believe that information should be free, I think I'm even more rankled as a taxpayer. ACS Chief Executive Officer, Madeleine Jacobs, wrote in a recent letter to Nobel Laureate Richard Roberts: "The fact that the data collected into PubChem is "public domain" is completely irrelevant. Assembling information and publishing it in a variety of forms is what the private sector does. We believe that taxpayers should not fund the entry of NIH into the information industry more broadly than is necessary to disseminate the information whose creation it funds." What this basically says to me is that as a taxpayer, I can pay for the research but if I want access to it, I have to pay the private sector....The logic in this escapes me. Of course, ACS was perfectly happy with government funding of information products when it accepted NSF funds for the development of the CAS Registry System. This issue is about so much more than NIH vs. ACS. It is yet another example of a dangerous trend. Just look at the Department of Energy's now defunct database, PubScience, shut down by the Software and Information Industry Association. If we let a valuable resource like PubChem (as well as other freely accessible databases: ERIC, Agricola, PubMed) get shut down, we might as well give up on the whole open-access venture and we'll only have ourselves as librarians, and taxpayers, to blame.' 2. Aliya Sternstein, Publishers make appeal to lawmakers in NIH dispute, Federal Computer Week, June 13, 2005. Excerpt: 'American Chemical Society officials are asking lawmakers to rein in those responsible for a federal database of molecular structures because they say it will cut into the society's income from the sale of similar information. The National Institutes of Health created PubChem in 2004 as part of NIH's Roadmap for Medical Research initiative to speed the discovery of new medical treatments....Brian Dougherty, senior adviser to the chief strategy officer at ACS, said the society suggested forming a technical working group to set parameters for PubChem. "NIH has been unwilling to put anything in writing," Dougherty said. "We think this is going to put us out of business if it keeps growing and no parameters are set." NIH officials said they are confused about why ACS insists that PubChem will harm the society's business interests. "What is in common is a relatively small number of compound structures and names," said Christopher Austin, senior adviser to the translational research director at the NIH Chemical Genomics Center at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "ACS has gotten hung up on this," he said. "CAS has 25 million structures. PubChem has about 850,000. PubChem is a subset. Not everything that is in CAS is relevant to biomedical research." NIH officials said narrowing PubChem's focus could slow medical progress. "It would have profoundly negative effects on this new paradigm of making medical discoveries," Austin said.' Friends: Here are two news stories on the ACS vs PubChem tussle. They appeared in Peter Suber's blog "Open Access News". Scientists around the world, especially those living in the United States should mobilise support for PubChem. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----------------------------------------- More on ACS v. PubChem [A] 1. Stephanie Wright, http://www.technobiblio.com/archives/2005/06/dueling_databases.php Dueling Databases , TechnoBiblio , June 13, 2005. Excerpt: 'The http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/acs_pubchem.html dialog this issue has generated has been hot and heavy with PubChem supporters explaining that PubChem is complementary to CAS, not duplicative. CAS supporters are complaining of "unfair, improper competition from the government". Aside from the fact that I'm a librarian and believe that information should be free, I think I'm even more rankled as a taxpayer. ACS Chief Executive Officer, Madeleine Jacobs, wrote in a recent letter to Nobel Laureate Richard Roberts: "The fact that the data collected into PubChem is "public domain" is completely irrelevant. Assembling information and publishing it in a variety of forms is what the private sector does. We believe that taxpayers should not fund the entry of NIH into the information industry more broadly than is necessary to disseminate the information whose creation it funds." What this basically says to me is that as a taxpayer, I can pay for the research but if I want access to it, I have to pay the private sector....The logic in this escapes me. Of course, ACS was perfectly happy with government funding of information products when it accepted NSF funds for the development of the CAS Registry System. This issue is about so much more than NIH vs. ACS. It is yet another example of a dangerous trend. Just look at the Department of Energy's now defunct database, http://www.fcw.com/article78138-11-13-02-Web PubScience, shut down by the Software and Information Industry Association. If we let a valuable resource like PubChem (as well as other freely accessible databases: ERIC, Agricola, PubMed) get shut down, we might as well give up on the whole open-access venture and we'll only have ourselves as librarians, and taxpayers, to blame.' 2. Aliya Sternstein, http://www.fcw.com/article89163-06-13-05-Print Publishers make appeal to lawmakers in NIH dispute , Federal Computer Week , June 13, 2005. Excerpt: 'American Chemical Society officials are asking lawmakers to rein in those responsible for a federal database of molecular structures because they say it will cut into the society's income from the sale of similar information. The National Institutes of Health created PubChem in 2004 as part of NIH's Roadmap for Medical Research initiative to speed the discovery of new medical treatments....Brian Dougherty, senior adviser to the chief strategy officer at ACS, said the society suggested forming a technical working group to set parameters for PubChem. "NIH has been unwilling to put anything in writing," Dougherty said. "We think this is going to put us out of business if it keeps growing and no parameters are set." NIH officials said they are confused about why ACS insists that PubChem will harm the society's business interests. "What is in common is a relatively small number of compound structures and names," said Christopher Austin, senior adviser to the translational research director at the NIH Chemical Genomics Center at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "ACS has gotten hung up on this," he said. "CAS has 25 million structures. PubChem has about 850,000. PubChem is a subset. Not everything that is in CAS is relevant to biomedical research." NIH officials said narrowing PubChem's focus could slow medical progress. "It would have profoundly negative effects on this new paradigm of making medical discoveries," Austin said.'