Egon has just posted about Nature Precedings, which looks like a no-brainer as an additional publication outlet for UsefulChem. I've requested an account and we'll see how it works.
In my view, producing knowledge in a Science 2.0 world is about communicating through redundancy, making it easy to prove who-knew-what-when. That is difficult to do with the traditional scientific publication system of giving away copyright. (Not impossible, because concepts and results can be rewritten using different words, but still difficult).
This should be interesting. Here is a description of Nature Precedings:
will enable researchers to share, discuss and cite their early findings. It provides a lightly moderated and relatively informal channel for scientists to disseminate information, especially recent experimental results and emerging conclusions. In this sense, it is designed to complement traditional peer-reviewed journals, allowing researchers to make informal communications such as conference papers or presentations more widely available and enabling them to be formally cited. This, in turn, allows them to solicit community feedback and establish priority over their results or ideas.
Jean-Claude Bradley
Jean-Claude Bradley is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and the E-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.
He teaches organic chemistry and runs UsefulChem, an open source science project dealing with the synthesis of anti-malarial compounds.
Chemistry Wide Open
