[PIUG List] Fw: [CHMINF-L] Representation of structural data on Wikipedia

I'm forwarding (with permission) this note because of increasing interest
within PIUG and the patent community about "e-gray zone" literature and
other e-publications, both for searching and as prior art. There has
recently been discussion on the List about the reliability of chemical
catalogs online and have had others on PubChem and the like.

This group, chemists on Wikipedia, has quite an endeavor going involving
over 6000 organic compounds. They seem to be concentrating on open data
sources but it could well be larger than that. I'm in contact although how
much I'll participate is not yet decided.

Wikipedia has a bad rep in many academic circles, some educators forbidding
its citation, and others requiring use of citations within an article for
citation rather than the Wikipedia URL itself. I have no idea how patent
attorneys and agents regard it. Personally, I find it an excellent resource
although my use for chemistry is limited.

I'm on the PIUG Vendors Committee, monitoring sources like PubChem. Looks
like we'd better add Wikepedia to the list. Please communicate to me any
experiences you have with either of these sources and I'll summarize, both
for the List and for the Committee.

-- Bob Buntrock
Buntrock Associates
buntrock16_at_verizon.net


----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin A. Walker" <walkerma_at_POTSDAM.EDU>
To: <CHMINF-L_at_LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 4:02 AM
Subject: [CHMINF-L] Representation of structural data on Wikipedia


> Thanks to work by Antony Williams, we (the chemists on Wikipedia) are
> currently validating the structural data on Wikipedia, and we are
> discussing the best way to present the information such as SMILES, InChIs,
> InChIKeys. To that end, I'd like to ask group members who use Wikipedia
> to reply to me (no need to clutter up the listserve) with their thoughts
> on the following:
>
> 1. Do you ever search Wikipedia, or the Internet in general, for a
> structure using SMILES, InChI or InChIKey?
> 2. Do you ever copy/paste such identifiers FROM Wikipedia into Google,
> etc, in order to do a search?
> (I am well aware of the reliability question with Wikipedia, but let's not
> open up Pandora's box with that issue!)
>
> We mainly want to find out if people need to SEE such identifiers in the
> article - bearing in mind they are designed for machines. We could hide
> them so a machine would see them but a casual reader would not, or
> "semi-hide" them (reader clicks to see). We could also place them on data
> pages such as this one:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_%28data_page%29
>
> We are discussing this issue in our next IRC meeting - please join us if
> this is of special interest to you.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry/IRC_discussions
>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> Martin A. Walker
> Department of Chemistry
> SUNY College at Potsdam
> Potsdam, NY 13676 USA
> +1 (315) 267-2271
> walkerma_at_potsdam.edu
>
> CHMINF-L Archives (also to join or leave CHMINF-L, etc.)
> http://listserv.indiana.edu/archives/chminf-l.html
> Search the CHMINF-L archives at:
> https://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?S1=chminf-l
> Sponsors of CHMINF-L:
> http://www.indiana.edu/~libchem/chminfsupport.htm
>


-------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PIUG List owner: Patent Information Users' Group Inc. (R), http://
www.piug.org
PIUG List rules and guidelines: http://www.piug.org/list.php
PIUG List admin: piug_discussion_list-owner(at)v2(dot)listbox(dot)com
PIUG Discussion List @ Listbox

Received on Mon Jan 28 2008 - 17:42:47