http://depth-first.com/articles/tag/scientificdebate en-us 40 Walking the Web of Chemical Informatics <p><center><img src="http://depth-first.com/demo/20070116/screenshot.png"></img></center></p> <p>Recently I stumbled upon a new service called <a href="http://www.scientificdebate.com/">The Scientific Debate</a> by way of <a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/01/04/take_your_shots_for_real_this_time.php#177722">a comment</a> on Derek Low's blog <a href="http://pipeline.corante.com">In the Pipeline</a>. It's actually a very clever idea: think <a href="http://digg.com">Digg</a> for biology papers. Business seems to be slow right now, but the site is less than one month old.</p> <p>Would something like this work in Chemistry? Sites like <a href="http://postgenomic.com/index.php?category=Chemistry">Postgenomic Chemistry</a> and <a href="http://wiki.cubic.uni-koeln.de/pg/">Chemical Blogspace</a> already provide an intriguing window into what scientists themselves think of their literature. The blogs (and their numerous comments) demonstrate the willingness of large numbers of scientists to do this kind of work for free - not unlike CAS's long-gone <a href="http://depth-first.com/articles/2006/08/19/history-of-abstracting-at-chemical-abstracts-service">all-volunteer abstracter department</a>. Given that submitting a paper to a Digg-like site and offering a few sentences is much faster than writing a blog, maybe the idea would catch on if done right.</p> Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:00:00 +0000 urn:uuid:4dab434a-164b-4b04-9472-79322b9ecbf7 Rich Apodaca http://depth-first.com/articles/2007/01/16/the-scientific-debate-digg-meets-science Meta digg socialnetworking scientificdebate blogs