Will open science change chemistry?
Open science is growing in chemistry, promoting open access and collaboration, but faces barriers like data discoverability, cultural resistance, and closed peer review processes. Initiatives aim to improve data sharing.
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Open science is increasingly being adopted in the field of chemistry, with a notable shift towards open access, open data, and collaborative research practices. While approximately 25% of chemistry papers were open access by 2020, significant barriers remain, particularly concerning data discoverability and sharing. The prevalent use of PDF files hampers data accessibility, as they are not easily indexed by search engines. Initiatives like the UK Physical Sciences Data-science Service (PSDS) and Germany's NFDI4Chem are working to create infrastructures that facilitate open data sharing, focusing on making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). However, cultural resistance, concerns over intellectual property, and a lack of incentives for open practices continue to hinder progress. Peer review processes also remain largely closed, with few journals adopting transparent review models. Despite these challenges, proponents of open science argue that it fosters collaboration and accelerates innovation, as demonstrated by successful open drug discovery projects. The future of chemistry may see a transformation where shared data and machine learning tools are utilized to streamline research processes, although achieving this vision requires overcoming existing barriers and ensuring inclusivity in global scientific practices.
- Open science is gaining traction in chemistry, with increased adoption of open access and collaborative research.
- Significant barriers include data discoverability issues and cultural resistance to sharing.
- Initiatives like PSDS and NFDI4Chem aim to improve data sharing and accessibility.
- Peer review processes in chemistry remain largely closed, limiting transparency.
- The future of chemistry may involve using shared data and machine learning to enhance research efficiency.
9 commentsChemistry has the blessing and the curse of being an older disciple. Fundamentals have not changed in decades. If you grab an organic chemistry text from the 70s, I guess you would be missing on some cutting edge reactions, and you would be using hilariously obsolete analytical techniques, but the synthesis is going to be the same.
Which is to say, that I do not believe chemistry is particularly held back at this point. I think the author was angling for, “Would it not be great if we had standardized, digitized chemistry reaction libraries so we could have an AlphaFold moment?” Which sure, but someone is going to have to fund the effort of digitizing decades of chemistry knowledge.
You know it's legitimate science when Fortran libraries start compiling as part of the dependencies.
I'm a big fan of open source and open access, but I'm not sure that access to journals is really a big problem for any working chemist. So if the question is whether it will "change chemistry", I would say it's unlikely.
Why? This isn't an easy field and it's full of landmines, sometimes literally so. It's really only possible to work in the field if you're in a well-funded lab in a well-funded university. Not only that, but many of these chemicals are dangerous. You're just not supposed to be dorking around with them in your basement or garage.
It's nice to imagine that somewhere out there is some poor, underfunded genius who doesn't have $100 or $200 to pay for a copy of some article, but I think from a practical perspective that's just not something holding back the field. And really, most of his or her neighbors would be happy if he/she wasn't working with dangerous chemicals in a garage.
My Chemistry teach was a weird bass...he also taught diving to the local police departments for lake rescue in Lake Michigan and rode a motorcycle to school.
> The MicroLab is an open-source, DIY, automated controlled lab reactor (CLR) that people can assemble with parts available online. We hope this will do for chemistry what the 3D printer did for manufacturing.