There is an overwhelming number of new resources for chemistry that would likely benefit both librarians and students in terms of improving access to data and information. While commercial solutions provided by an institution may be the primary resources there is now an enormous range of online tools, databases, resources, apps for mobile devices and, increasingly, wikis. This presentation will provide an overview of how wiki-based resources for scientists are developing and will introduce a number of developing wikis. These include wikis that are being used to teach chemistry to students as well as to source information about scientists, scientific databases and mobile apps.

1. Navigating scientific resources
using wiki-based resources
Antony Williams, Valery Tkachenko, Alexey Pshenichnov,
Sean Ekins, Aileen Day and Martin Walker
ACS New Orleans
Sunday April 7th 2013

2. Show of Hands
• Does anyone here run a Wiki?

3. The Most Famous of Wikis

4. Show of Hands
• Who has used Wikipedia in the past week?
• Who has written an article on Wikipedia?
• Who has found an error on Wikipedia?
• Who has edited an article on Wikipedia?

5. Collaborative Authoring for Drug Discovery
• Pfizerpedia

6. So many Scientific Wikis…

7. Even Jimmy Wales cares…

8. What is a Wiki???
• “A wiki is a website which allows its users to
add, modify, or delete its content via a web
browser usually using a simplified markup
language or a rich-text editor.”
Technical Definition

9. It is so much more…
• A place to connect and collaborate
• A place for discussion and constructive conflict
• An EASY path to set-up an environment for you
to engage the community
• And….

10. Not all MediaWiki!

11. “Collaborative Environments”
…for anything!

12. http://en.wikibooks.or
g/wiki/Chemical_Infor
mation_Sources

13. Am I a poster boy?

14. Collaborative Knowledge Management
for Chemists

15. ChemBoxes

16. DrugBoxes

17. January 9 2008
th

18. Top 200 Drugs on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bestselling_drugs

19. Types of Errors Found
• Structure drawing errors
• Misassociation of names and structures
• IUPAC Name Errors
• Links out to databases were to wrong structures
• Property errors/validation
• CAS Number validation

20. CAS Discourages Using SciFinder
for curating 3rd party databases
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) objects to
anyone encouraging the use of SciFinder® and
STN® to curate third-party databases or chemical
substance collections, including the one found in
Wikipedia. SciFinder and STN are provided to
researchers under formal license agreements,
under which the researchers agree to refrain from
using these tools to build databases.

22. New announcement from CAS
• CAS, a division of the American Chemical
Society, is pleased to announce that it will
contribute to the Wikipedia project. CAS will
work with Wikipedia to help provide accurate
CAS Registry Numbers® for current substances
listed in Wikiprojects-Chemicals section of the
Wikipedia Chemistry Portal that are of
widespread general public interest.

23. Beneficial Outcome…

24. Full up curating Wikipedia
Chemistry

25. DrugBoxes

26. WikiBox Chemicals/ChemBox Validation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemicals/Chembox_validation

27. Wikipedia on ChemSpider

28. Wikipedia Chemical Linkouts

29. ChemSpider Limitations
• We handles compounds where there are
defined InChIs
• Poor handling of polymers, minerals, materials
• ChemSpider does not handle reactions

30. Wikipedia Polymers

31. Wikipedia Minerals

32. Named Reactions on Wikipedia

33. ChemSpider Development
• ChemSpider Reactions : working on rolling out
a half million reactions to the community
• Will integrate ChemSpider SyntheticPages,
Catalysts and Catalyzed Reactions and
Methods of Organic Synthesis
• Developing support for materials – where
InChIs are not available.

34. World without Wikipedia

36. Scientists on Wikipedia

37. Sean Ekins

38. Challenging the Status Quo
http://tinyurl.com/7e3l6rz

39. Scientists on Wikipedia

40. Where is your Wikipedia Page??
• The challenging notability criteria of Wikipedia
• But what about an environment to create your
own Wiki page on a database that you manage
• Harvested Wikipedia scientists and set it up

41. www.ScientistsDB.com

42. www.ScientistsDB.com

43. www.ScientistsDB.com

44. Sandy Lawson
• Skolnik Symposium

45. ScientistsDB to Wikipedia?

46. www.SciDBs.com

47. www.SciMobileApps.com

48. What encourages participation?
• “Interested” parties contribute
• Marketing and self-promotion are primary
reasons for participation
• There are very few “selfless” participants
• Relationships garner contributions…

49. www.SciMobileApps.com
• 8 contributors only…in 7 months

50. www.SciDBs.com
• 7 contributors only…in 6 months

51. www.ScientistsDB.com
 38 contributors …in 6 weeks

52. Learn Chemistry Wiki
– Last two years of secondary school to end of
undergraduate
– Integrated to a small slice of ChemSpider
– Introduction of more educational “games”:
Chemistry quizzes – e.g reactions
– Hosting training/educational resources
– Integrate to existing RSC websites
– An environment of participation. It’s a WIKI!

54. ChemSpider is too much…
Simplified interface
…..to this
From this…..

55. Substance Pages

56. Quizzes: Fill in the Blank

57. Detailed Quizzes

58. Immediate Answers

59. Learn Spectroscopy using a Wiki

60. Submit Structures as Answers!

61. Lab Experiments

62. Wonderfully Detailed Procedures

63. Searching Wikipedia by Structure
• Presently preparing the Wikipedia chemical
structure collection to donate to anybody who
want to link to Wikipedia by chemical
• Coming Soon – Contact me directly…

64. Acknowledgments
• Wikipedia Chemistry Team: especially Walkerma,
PhysChim62, Beetstra, Edgar181, MANY others
• RSC|eScience team –Aileen Day as technical lead
on Learn Chemistry. Alexey Pshenichnov for
SpectraSchool.
• Learn Chemistry Wiki: Martin Walker, Potsdam U
• Sean Ekins – ScientistsDB, SciMobileApps, SciDBs
• Alex Clark – SciMobileApps contributions

65. Video Online http://youtu.be/4vDeyean190
Thank you
Email: williamsa@rsc.org
Twitter: ChemConnector
Personal Blog: www.chemconnector.com
SLIDES: www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams