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Will open science change chemistry?

chemistryworld.com

21–28 of 28 posts

Re: Will open science change chemistry?

#22
post #16

Unfortunately computational quantum chemistry still dominated by proprietary software, like the infamous Gaussian. It seems physicists have better open source tools and culture,by comparison.

Many of the DFT calculations I needed for my PhD thesis were done in NWChem. Out of spite? Not really, but it did make me feel good to use something non-proprietary.

Re: Will open science change chemistry?

#23
post #2

> Twenty years ago the debate surrounding open science focused on access to journals. By 2020 around 25% of all chemistry papers published were open access, and now most of the major publishers of chemistry journals offer some version of open access. I'm a big fan of open source and open access, but I'm not sure that access to journals is really a big problem for any working chemist. So if the question is whether it…

>It's really only possible to work in the field if you're in a well-funded lab in a well-funded university.

It takes a lot more ambition than most people have, to do it otherwise, and it's now more difficult than ever, but it's been done.

>many of these chemicals are dangerous.

The first laboratory I built on my own was in a room rated by the fire marshal for storage of hazardous materials. So we could work with many kilos of chemicals and samples without running afoul of the regulations. I personally made sure there was way better ventilation than they have in the chemical plants before instrumenting the lab.

There were neighbors but it was an industrial suburb. For a while there they had more welding tanks, drums of paint, heavy diesel trucks, etc than we did toxins but eventually we outdid them with our growing storage sheds out in the yard.

You just don't try this at home.

You don't realize how nice it is to have a refuge from toxicity when that's not what you have at work.

Re: Will open science change chemistry?

#24
post #17
post #9

I'm a strong proponent of open data but I think it needs to go beyond science. Companies should also be incentivized or even required for keeping designs, data, interfaces etc. open. Because often scientists are reliant on devices and data platforms that restrict ownership. So even if the scientist wants to keep his data open, a product or a service that the scientist uses for his research might prevent this.

> Companies should also be incentivized or even required required sounds bad because you make the costs higher and prevents small companies from entering the market once its too much. as for incentives any idea on how that could work?

Marginally lower corporate tax rate.

After the floor on corporate tax rate is returned to a sustainable level.

Re: Will open science change chemistry?

#25
post #8

I think it’s okay if people take responsibility for their actions, to take risks known or unknown. It’s okay to live in a world where we’re not entirely insulated from negative consequences. Ive always been bummed by how inaccessible chemistry is.

As a person who grew up with:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2478325.The_Golden_Book_...

this is mostly a societal thing --- if one wants to do experiments, it's pretty straight-forward to research and begin and learn.

Re: Will open science change chemistry?

#26
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies should also be incentivized or even required required sounds bad because you make the costs higher and prevents small companies from entering the market once its too much. as for incentives any idea on how that could work?

Marginally lower corporate tax rate. After the floor on corporate tax rate is returned to a sustainable level.

I don’t understand the use of the word floor here. The current US corp tax is 21%. The average corporate tax rate in the EU is 21.3%. Are you saying the corporate tax rate in the EU should be higher?

Re: Will open science change chemistry?

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any open-source structure-based search?

Sure. RDKit supports SMARTS. https://www.rdkit.org/docs/source/rdkit.Chem.rdchem.html#rdk...

Interesting. Is there a chemical database you can plug this into?

Re: Will open science change chemistry?

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. RDKit supports SMARTS. https://www.rdkit.org/docs/source/rdkit.Chem.rdchem.html#rdk...

Interesting. Is there a chemical database you can plug this into?

Use any database you wish. They all use standard formats, which RDKit understands.
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