engaging participation from the chemistry community
DESCRIPTION
I was invited to give a presentation regarding how we have engaged chemists in crowdsourcng chemistry. The presentation was to the Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications within the National Research Council. It was very educational for me to attend the meeting and interesting to observe so many of the common challenges.TRANSCRIPT
Engaging Participation from the Chemistry Community
Antony WilliamsFebruary 18th 2013
Crowdsourcing Chemistry How have I personally “crowdsourced chemistry” What have we done to enable the crowd to
participate? What is the Royal Society of Chemistry doing to
facilitate crowdsourcing? What are the benefits of encouraging involvement? And how big is the crowd??? What are our intentions moving forward? Lessons from our experiences and experiments
Personal Contributions
Wikipedia
Does one stereocenter matter?
Thalidomide
Validating Public Datasets
Challenging the Status Quo
With Great Fanfare…
NPC Browser http://tripod.nih.gov/npc/
NPC Browser http://tripod.nih.gov/npc/
What is the Structure of Vitamin K1?
Wolfram Alpha
DailyMed
The World of Online Chemistry Safety data Toxicity data Blogs and Wikis Property databases Experimental results Scientific publications Compound aggregators Open Notebook Science Metabolic pathway databases Encyclopedic articles (Wikipedia)
Public Domain Databases
Our databases are a mess…
Non-curated databases are proliferating errors
We source and deposit data between databases
Original sources of errors hard to determine
Curation is time-consuming and challenging
What you might not know about Chemistry Databases on the Internet Data-sharing between the databases is cyclic –
proliferating errors – “Linked Data”
Stop Whining – Fix it
Enable the crowd to participate….
We Want to Answer Questions
Questions a chemist might ask… What is the melting point of n-heptanol? What is the chemical structure of Xanax? Chemically, what is phenolphthalein? What are the stereocenters of cholesterol? Where can I find publications about xylene? What are the different trade names for Ketoconazole? What is the NMR spectrum of Aspirin? What are the safety handling issues for Thymol Blue?
Available Information…
Linked to vendors, safety data, toxicity, metabolism
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
Crowdsourced Curation
Crowdsourced curation: identify/tag errors, edit names, synonyms, identify records to deprecate
Search “Vitamin H”
“Curate” Identifiers
“Curate” Identifiers
Why are Dictionaries important?
The Final Search Strategy
Originally 15 compounds “called” Yohimbine54 Skeletons for Yohimbine
Community Contribution to ChemSpider
Curation through “gaming”
Data Curation
True Curation of Data
Mobilizing the Community
ChemSpider SyntheticPages
ChemSpider SyntheticPages
Submission Process Crowdsourced expansion?
A few regular dedicated authors only Online peer review and feedback small but useful
Crowdsourcing – does it work?
~200 people EVER have deposited or curated data
ChemSpider SyntheticPages small group of authors
Database hosts make the largest contributions
ChemSpider staff tend to do the most curation
Contributions
Curations
2009 – 8255 curations by 43 people
2010 – 10014 curations by 66 people
2011 – 16025 curations by 116 people
“Crowdsourcing” – the crowd is small!
www.SciMobileApps.com
8 contributors only…in 7 months
www.SciDBs.com
7 contributors only…in 6 months
www.ScientistsDB.com
38 contributors …in 6 weeks
How will it improve?
Participation and
contribution
What encourages participation?
“Interested” parties contribute
Marketing and self-promotion are primary reasons for participation
There are very few “selfless” participants
Relationships garner contributions…
How do “we” measure a scientist? The funding bodies, department heads etc. use
Publication profile Impact factors An index – h, m, g, i10, c, s … Grants brought in
The Measure of a Scientist?
Scientists Profiles
How do “we” measure a scientist? The funding bodies, department heads etc. use
Publication profile Impact factors An index – h, m, g, i10, c, s … Grants brought in
Scientists are notable in MANY different ways Technology can help measure different types of
“impact”
The Measure of a Scientist?
The Alt-Metrics Manifesto http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/
ImpactStory
ImpactStory
PlumAnalytics
Rewards and Recognition
Wikipedia Badges and Barnstarshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BADGE
ChemSpider SyntheticPages Awards
Lessons The “crowd” of contributing participants is likely
quite small – there are selfless participants and others who might want recognition
How will you recognize participation – what are the rewards and recognition??? “Altmetrics” is likely a valuable path moving forward
Gaming is an opportunity for participation Educators are encouraging participation – look to
the success of Wikipedia
Thank you
Email: [email protected] Twitter: ChemConnectorPersonal Blog: www.chemconnector.com SLIDES: www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams