Comments on: Material Contributions To Open Access

By: ChemSpiderMan

ChemSpiderMan — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:24:15 +0000

I think the lack of an answer from ACS regarding the CrystalEye data (now redeposited on ChemSpider and to be blogged shortly) , especially considering the multiple phonecalls, emails and face to face meeting in New Orleans confirms that there is no issue. Also, the data remain on CrystalEye even after PMR and I have brought attention to this on the blogosphere. By definition this should mean that all supplementary data are safe for data mining?

There are new possibilities now as we consider indexing Institutional Repositories for data and publications. I wonder what response this might initiate. Time will tell.

By: will

will — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:52:12 +0000

Yes, relicensing w/o permission is a terrible idea. But since e.g. the ACS have not responded to your requests for guidance on this with an answer, there is no reason to think they disapprove of our linking to / hosting CrystalEye data at this stage.

We have asked for their confirmation that the ‘Open Data’ relicensing is appropriate. No response means we assume CrystalEye are acting perfectly legally since we can’t be expected by default to assume that data is illegally licensed or we could not run a database.

By: ChemSpiderMan

ChemSpiderMan — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:48:56 +0000

So you would agree that taking someones data and declaring it Open Data without permission and without regard to licensing policies is a potential recipe for disaster especially if the data are then proliferated? For example, we have deposited the CrystalEye data and it had been declared as Open Data but taken from other sites mostly without permission. I assume that legally we would be protected since we have taken Open Data but somehow I feel that the cascade might head downwards…

By: will

will — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:31:06 +0000

That is certainly not an approach I’d used. closest comparison with us I can think of is E.g. a publisher has asked us to label their tick box on the lit search page with the recognisable blue Open Access label, but this is different since we were asked to do this.

By: ChemSpiderMan

ChemSpiderMan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:52:48 +0000

What is your thought regarding the labeling of “Supporting Information” from publications as Open Data? For example, the CrystalEye dataset at University of Cambridge is labeled as Open Data and was derived from many publishers Supplementary information pages and relabeled as Open Data. I don’t believe this to be appropriate but I may be wrong. I am not saying it’s not valuable but I question the appropriateness and legality of it. It is why we at ChemSPider have been in dialog with the ACS to get their permission…but have been unable to get a yes or a no after 9 months of asking.