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Author: egonw

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+---
+layout: post
+title:  "ChemSpider and the RSC: where next?"
+date:   2009-05-15
+blogger-link: https://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/2009/05/chemspider-and-rsc-where-next.html
+doi: 10.59350/a00pn-pjt64
+tags: cheminf chemspider opendata
+---
+
+Last Monday the [CHMINF-L](http://www.indiana.edu/~cheminfo/network.html) brought the news to me that [ChemSpider](http://chemspider.com/)
+was acquired by the [RSC](http://rsc.org/) (not the [press release](http://rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2009/ChemSpider.asp)).
+[Twitter](http://twitter.com/) ([my Twitter post](http://twitter.com/egonwillighagen/statuses/1763364256)) and
+[FriendFeed](http://friendfeed.com/) (see [this series](http://friendfeed.com/search?q=chemspider+rsc&friends=egonw)).
+
+Reading blogs used to be to get the news, but this has changed. Still, blogging gives more freedom, more space. Blogs did soon
+follow. [Chris](http://www.steinbeck-molecular.de/steinblog/) was the first to
+[blog about it](http://www.steinbeck-molecular.de/steinblog/index.php/2009/05/11/chemspider-bought-by-the-royal-society-of-chemistry/):
+
+> This is great news and I’m confident that it will be a move to even more openess in chemistry and cheminformatics.
+> It will also allow the RSC to use Tony fantastic tools for even more semantic markup of articles. I’m looking forward
+> to talking to everyone about the implications. For now, congratulations, Tony, and congratulations, RSC, for this
+> great deal.
+
+I think [Tony](http://www.chemspider.com/blog/) himself [was next](http://www.chemspider.com/blog/the-royal-society-of-chemistry-acquires-chemspider.html):
+
+> This is good for us for a number of reasons. Specifically we will no longer have to deal with our very significant
+> resource limitations but more than that it lends credence and validation to the work that we have been doing over the
+> past 2 years. It seems so long ago now but ChemSpider was first unveiled to the world at the ACS Spring meeting 2007.
+> What began then only as a hobby project is now being recognized by the community as one of the primary resources for
+> internet chemistry.
+
+His network and insight in required data curation is what I think made ChemSpider a success.
+
+Later views followed from [Peter](http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1891), [Rich](http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?p=1829) and
+[Neil](http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2009/05/the_rsc_and_chemspider.html). I have only congratulations,
+which I hereby join, and expect that only future will tell us if our cheers are correct.
+
+## Where next?
+As Tony indicated, the deal will practically mean better support for ChemSpider in terms of computing power, making if
+easier for them to make upgrades, hence better uptime, etc. It may, indeed, also mean more data, provided from RSC archives,
+as [suggested by Neil](http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2009/05/the_rsc_and_chemspider.html). More practically, I
+can imagine seeing Project Prospect contributing *InChI-DOI* links to ChemSpider very soon.
+
+And this would be one of the two recommendations I have to ChemSpider at this moment:
+
+1. now linked to a publisher, and with both text mining efforts and expertise, focus on these InChI-DOI links, and, in
+   particular, focus on those InChI-DOI links which involve papers that describe measured properties of the molecules;
+2. with the increased support, finish the Open Data work done, by making it easy for people to download the
+   ChemSpider-OpenData subset. This, I believe, is crucial for a wider adoption in the OpenData community, as OpenData
+   which is practically made impossible to easily download is not Open enough. Previous priorities may have been focused
+   on setting up a viable commercial alternative, but with the RSC backing, this can no longer be a reason to not do this.
+
+Once more, congratulations to the ChemSpider-team and the involved RSC people, and very much looking forward to seeing
+how this will change chemistry for the better!