On a long term view, I am really afraid, that we divide the scientific community into the rich ( = industry + a few universities) and the poor (= 90% of academia). The ‘rich’ have access to open systems and to systems like CAS/scifinder, the poor have only access to free-of-charge systems, nice but incomplete ! Even if prices at CAS go up, industry will pay them – the additional costs will be simply added to their products !

1) Excellent!
2) ChemSpider goes offline for a number of reasons. Interruptions with the ISP, power outages based on weather systems and other related challenges

3) We have a level of redundancy now as a result of some contributions of servers and software. However, it is not where we want to be yet. I’ve blogged about this many times. I don’t think the challenge is going to be my enthusiasm for the project. It’s the reality of the needs to pay my bills and, ultimately, have some form of compensation for the team building ChemSpider. While we get much joy out of our efforts the demands on us to keep producing, at no cost to the community, a Free Access site that is available 24/7, cannot be done without funding. I have contributed to grant applications with the hope of deriving some funds to accelerate the system and support fulltime rather than night time only team members.

7) I do NOT want to destroy by any means. I want to work with, support, integrate, participate with CAS. ChemSpider has grown a lot in less than a year with limited resources and challenges of not enough hardware and software. I don’t think a comparison of CAS vs ChemSpider is worth considering and the more appropriate comparison is likely CAS and PubChem, then PubChem and ChemSPider. If you have seen the statement now by CAS regarding their support of Wikipedia I can only say that I am joyful with their decision and what I hope for are similar collaborations and exposure of public service efforts and I am excited by the opportunities.

1) I like CAS/Scifinder and I like emolecules+Chemspider and I make use of them.
2) My access to Scifinder was never denied (except when the number of concurrent user was exceeded) – the only downtime is in the night from SAT to SUN. The access to Chemspider was sometimes (not often) impossible (system maintenance, etc.), but in a more unpredictable way.
3) Has Chemspider a redundant hardware-configuration and a redundant access to the internet ? Same question to CAS ?
What happens when Tony is less enthusiastic with this project ? It will either be stopped or at least a visible interruption will occur. What happens when Mr.X from CAS is less enthusiastic and leaves the organization ? Nothing!
4) Does anybody discuss here about ‘free chemicals, free solvents, free NMR-spectrometers’
5) You have to pay for watching television (at least here in Austria and many other countries) – should also be free, at least the news (=information!)
6) I definitely do not agree with some parts of the politics of CAS – but without offering alternate business models any discussion will be impossible
7) The slogan ‘destroy them’ is no solution ! What will happen (sorry, worst case): Industry will never use systems like Chemspider to the same extent as they use CAS, academia will switch to free systems (open is not so important, free of charge is important !) – long term perspective: academia will not use CAS, industry will use, prices of CAS will go up, usage of academia will be prohibited by prices. The consequence: Industry will add 10 cents to every Viagra-pill and overcompensate the costs – every person having ED will pay …… (feel free to substitute Viagra/ED by any other combination of tradename and disease)
8) The end of the story: Academia has now open systems and free access – but the systems are incomplete and more or less a “private initiative” from a single person. Industry pays (more + (over)compensates !) and has all information available ….. in principle we pay again as customer !!!!!!! Its just another channel !
9) Sorry for being sarcastic, INFORMATION is like chemicals,spectrometers,etc. – you have to pay for it, then you can expect stable systems !

( I put my kevlar vest on !)

The real issue is, as Peter MR has pointed out, that access to the CAS databases are largely through electronic means (SciFinder, STN) and a contract between the user and CAS restricts what can be done with the information in the database, including the CAS Number.

Since the only way to verify that some string of numbers actually is a CAS number and it corresponds to a particular chemical substance requires access to the CAS Registry file, one will have to abide by the contract that dictates how that information may be re-used. And that restriction can be very limiting.

http://www.chemspy.com/chemistry-news/copyright-and-cas-numbers.html

db

That is not to say that there still isn’t a problem. The query above used the CID as a search term so you got all substances that were given the CAS number and had CID = 36314. Erase the CID term and you search for just those substances where the CAS is 33069-62-4. Now you get 9 substance records with a total of 3 different CIDs so there really are differences in assigned structures. But that’s a problem anyway. Every journal I know what’s you to identify not just the structure of key compounds, but the source. If the source deposits its data in PubChem, the SID becomes a perfectly reasonable substitute, with the added advantage that the data exists in a framework the lets you check to see if the name/structure/Id assigned is consistent with other organizations usages. Of course there is the very real problem that not all sources deposit data in PubChem, but that is problem that exists to some extent in any external identifier.