The Value of a Unique Researcher Identifier to ChemSpider Projects

Antony WilliamsORCID Meeting, Boston, May 18th 2011

RSC: Publisher and community hub

Authors: 20,000 articles a year†

100 books†

Magazine articles†

Referees*, subscribers*, readers

* We know who/where these people are† we knew who they were at the time of writing

RSC: Membership organisation

46,000 members worldwide

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for our members

What would help to link everything our members do towards CPD?

What more can we do to serve the community of chemists?

A Pragmatic Vision“Build a Structure Centric Community to

Serve Chemists”

Integrate chemical structure data on the web Create a “structure-based hub” to information and

data Provide access to structure-based “algorithms” Let chemists contribute their own data Allow the community to curate/correct data

ChemSpider

>26 million chemicals from over 400 data sources, generally linked out to the original sources

Serving Chemists and Life Scientists around the world. Thousands of users and approaching a million transactions per day

Linked into primary internet resources such as Wikipedia

Search for a Chemical by name

Available Information….

Crowdsourced “Annotations”

Users can add Descriptions/Syntheses/Commentaries Links to PubMed articles Links to articles via DOIs Add spectral data Add Crystallographic Information Files Add photos Add MP3 files Add Videos

Spectra

Antony Williams vs Identifiers

Passport ID

Dad, Tony, others

SSN

Green Card

License5 email addressesChemSpiderman (blog, Twitter account, Facebook, Friendfeed)OpenID….

Aspirin names and synonyms

• Text searches depend on correct association

• 335 suggested identifiers for Aspirin just on PubChem!

• Disambiguation dictionaries are necessary, not just for authors!

The Final Search Strategy

All Those Names, One Structure

Inherited Naming Errors

Inherited errors from every database… all public compound databases, including ours, have errors

“Incorrect” structures – assertions, timelines etc

“Incorrect” names associated with structures

ENORMOUS CHALLENGE

“Curate” Identifiers

Community annotations to curate datawww.chemspider.com/feedbackcurated.aspx

ChemSpider Contributions

Over 130 people have curated and annotated data on ChemSpider

Crowdsourcing…but a small crowd A long tail effect – thousands down to one (many) About a dozen people have deposited spectra and

other analytical data

No formal recognition vehicle for contribution…yet!

How can we recognize contribution?

SyntheticPages

A database of reaction syntheses: “How to make a particular chemical”

A crowdsourced effort to build the database

Feedback and Comments from the community (blog-like)

Each publication gets a Digital Object Identifier

Authors and Commenters

Would be ideal to have the author registered with their ORCID and expose readers, downloads and associated comments

Commenters on a synthesis would be associated with their ORCID

SyntheticPages

Alt-Metrics easily apply to CSSP

ORCID IDs will be directly associated with registered users

Researchers page will capture and list all activities

Every curation, annotation and deposition will expose the activity to an AltMetrics engine

ChemSpider needs ORCID

ChemSpider is a crowdsourcing community

Contributors deserve recognition

Wikipedia “Barnstormer Awards” are unlikely to suffice!

ORCID offers professional recognition within the community of choice

RSC, ORCID and Education

RSC supplies free educational resources through school and undergraduate level

How can altmetrics help to 1) build a CV? 2) to get a job? 3) to get a grant? 4) to find collaborators? 5) To contribute to research reviews?

Is school too early to get an ORCID ID?

With Great Fanfare…

NPC Browser http://tripod.nih.gov/npc/

Curation required

Curation required

Request to Curate

What’s in it for Me?

If databases start taking ORCID IDs then contribution is measured, tracked and fed back to the “AltMetrics engines”

Reputation is captured, and hopefully enhanced

About reputation…

ORCID to Preserve Reputation

ORCID will connect things together ORCID enables an organization to improve

interactions with its “community” - authors, reviewers and users

To enable Continuing Professional Development for the future

To help build up a complete CV of contributions for career advancement

To give credit for crowdsourced activities

Thank you

Email: williamsa@rsc.org Twitter: ChemConnectorPersonal Blog: www.chemconnector.comSLIDES: www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams