As a result of the advent of internet technologies supporting participation on the internet via blogs, wikis and other social networking approaches, chemists now have an opportunity to contribute to the growing chemistry content on the web. As scientists an important skill to develop is the ability to succinctly report in a published format the details of scientific experimentation. The Royal Society of Chemistry provides a number of online systems to share chemistry data, the most well known of these being the ChemSpider database. In parallel the ChemSpider SyntheticPages (CSSP) platform is an online publishing platform for scientists, and especially students, to publish the details of chemical syntheses that they have performed. Using the rich capabilities of internet platforms, including the ability to display interactive spectral data and movies, CSSP is an ideal environment for students to publish their work, especially syntheses that might not support mainstream publication.

1. Engaging students in publishing
on the internet early in their
careers
Antony Williams, Valery Tkachenko, Colin Batchelor,
David Sharpe and Jon Steele
ACS New Orleans April 2013

2. How will the internet influence
you?
• How many of you visit the internet/check your
email less than a dozen times per day?
• Where do you go for fact-checking?
• How many of you “Bookmark” anymore?
• How many on Facebook? How many on Twitter?
• How many of you are working on building a
scientific profile online?
• How many of you online now???

3. Measuring You as a Scientist

4. Google Scholar Citations

5. As a Young Scientist…
• It takes a while to bring up a strong publication
profile
• Writing, submitting, getting reviewed, getting
published could be many months!
• But it’s easy to become an Online Scientist
today!
• Contribution to science is a few keystrokes away
– sharing, part of the likesonomy culture

6. The Alt-Metrics Manifesto
• http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

8. AltMetrics via Plum Analytics

9. Detailed Usage Statistics

10. So back to the title….
• “Engaging students in publishing on the internet
early in their careers”
– The internet has changed what it means to “publish”
– In terms of recognition of publishing online the
internet is now a publisher
– Publishing is not just papers – commentaries, data,
reports, presentations, videos etc. All are valuable
– But DOI’ed publications are still good for the CV!

11. Tweets are “publications”

12. Tweets are “publications”

13. Places to “Publish” for Profile
• Blogs – easy to setup, generally free, part of the
portfolio of contribution
• Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, etc.
• Contributions to Wikipedia
• A myriad of chemistry communities
• Publish chemicals, syntheses and data
• AND be rewarded and recognized via AltMetrics

14. Blog
• Opinions, procedures, observations, experiences
• Rich environment for delivery and engagement

15. Presentations
Presentations,
Videos, Report,
Pre-publications

16. YouTube/Vimeo/SciVee
• Presentations are easy to turn into movies
and publish to these services
• Literally “gives you a voice”

17. Is Data A Publication?

18. Is Data A Publication?

19. Data & Curations to ChemSpider
• 28.5 million chemicals and growing daily
• The Royal Society of Chemistry free database
• Amenable to community contribution
– Deposit structures, property data, spectral data
– Collections of data
– Associated directly with the depositor
– Annotations and curations all logged to user

20. ChemSpider

21. Deposition of Data
• Deposit structures, spectra, properties, data
collections (thousands of compounds etc)

22. Being a Data Source

23. How much data is lost?
• How many reactions in a thesis never get
published?
• How many spectra of common materials could
be shared?
• How many properties are measured and lost?
• What stands in the way of sharing?
– Is it technology?
– Permissions? “The Boss”, Licensing?

24. What about Syntheses?

25. ChemSpider SyntheticPages

26. Submission process
• Register
• Use the Submit
button and fill in
the fields…

27. Submission Process
• Submissions reviewed by editorial board
• Published as is or comments sent to author
• Online Peer Review process – engage
chemists in ongoing discussions and feedback
loop
• Data supported include web movies, images,
live spectra etc.

28. Recent Submissions

30. Profile

33. Interactive Data

34. Most Accessed

35. Is it working?
• Show of hands…
– How many of you know CSSP?
– Have any of you submitted to CSSP?
• Low submissions but some dedicated authors

36. Popular Authors

37. Is it working?
• What reasons are there you would not publish?
– Time
– Approval from supervisor
– Need to keep the science quiet
– Publishing on CSSP prevents future publishing?

38. Work in Progress – >500k Reactions

39. Rewards and Recognition
• The badgesonomy culture
of recognition is growing.
• Badges are commonplace
– FourSquare
– Klout

40. Rewards and Recognition
• Rewards and Recognition
starting with CSSP then
expands to other platforms
• Including paths to expose
such recognition on
AltMetrics platforms – in
discussion…

41. Future Recognition on
Data
IC50 Measurements for 62 substituted benzoxazoles
ChemSpider Data Repository: DOI: 10.1356/CSID784.4

42. Future Recognition on Plum Analytics?
ChemSpider

43. Benefits of “Publishing“ Early..
• Publishing is changing and has many forms
• Data, figures, reports, videos, and…
• Online exposure develops reputation, benefits
the community, engages discussion and
collaboration.
• RSC Platform open to chemistry data: chemicals,
property data, spectral data, syntheses etc.

44. Thank you
Email: williamsa@rsc.org
Twitter: ChemConnector
Personal Blog: www.chemconnector.com
SLIDES: www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams