Open Tools

I've been hearing a lot of talk recently, on the web, about ways to keep track of literature in chemistry. Not only how to keep track of it, but how to access it publicly. The vast majority of the voices I'm hearing call for an open access answer. The basic idea is that the information is free and available for everyone. This might sound like a little too much to hope for, but here's why it's not: arXiv.

arXiv is, for those who don't have time to explore the link, an open access location where physics, mathematics, statics, computer science, biology, finance, and nonlinear sciences researchers post their journal articles before they are published. This pre-press version is called a pre-print. Since the pre-prints are electronic, this also makes them e-prints. These articles, however, usually don't come down once they become published in peer-reviewed journals. Physicists and others who research in fields covered by the arXiv don't have problems keeping up with relevant literature; their solution is to set up RSS feeds of articles who cite articles they find interesting, or simply a section of the arXiv where the information relevant to them gets published.

For many researchers and scientists, this sounds incredible. If you're like me, you probably spend a lot of time searching through the Web of Science, or some other abstract archive trying to cover all of our research interests through RSS feeds of citations much like those who can use arXiv. The problem that we have in chemistry is that we can't always access the right articles. I'm in an okay position with the research institution that I work for, since they pay for access to a wide variety of journal articles. This doesn't mean that I can access everything. I have a hard time accessing current articles from some journals that are important to my research. I can get them, but not directly off of the web like at universities. These searches are still tedious, even for those with unlimited access due to the number of journals and abstract services available.

I've probably been preaching to the choir so far. I'd like to use a future post to point towards already existent open source and access utilities for chemists, or any other scientists for that matter! Let me know what you use in the comments, open or closed.