Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, May 19, 2005

More on CAS v. PubChem

The American Chemical Society released a public statement and FAQ (May 18, 2005) on its complaint that the US government should not provide OA to chemical data through PubChem. Excerpt: 'As things stand, in PubChem, NIH has created a mini-replica of the CAS registry, and a replica poised to expand. That replica will, over time, post an insurmountable threat to CAS' survival for the very reason that it is a taxpayer-supported service. The fact that the data collected into PubChem is "public domain" is completely irrelevant. Assembling information and publishing it in a variety of forms is what the private sector does. We believe that taxpayers should not fund the entry of NIH into the information industry more broadly than is necessary to disseminate the information whose creation it funds.' (PS: I'll post responses to this statement as I find them.)