A few days ago, I posted the results of a "What's related" search using Netscape 4.5 of the following conference http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/ectoc/echet98/ with the following results ORGANIC CHEMISTRY RESOURCES WORLDWIDE 2.Exorga, Inc. - Consultants in Organic Chemistry and Molecular Modeling 3.Basic reactions in organic chemistry. 4.Photochemical Reactions of Organic Compounds 5.IUPAC Nomenclature 6.Chemexper Chemical Directory 7.Unofficial Combinatorial Chemistry Website 8.Farchan Laboratories 9.Orgo-Tek 10.ChemKey Search 11.(null) 12.Search on this Topic... Having thought a bit more about it, I now realise several noteworthy points about this list a) All the sites are either .com, or are "selling" something b) Since ECHET98 is the fourth in a series, one might reasonably expect at least one of the first three to be present in this list! None are. c) The IUPAC entry is NOT to the official IUPAC pages (which are a .org) but to a mirror .com site. The site run by Gerry Moss for example (a university site) does not appear. c) A colleague has pointed out that Netscape make their money by charging (large organisations?) a lot of money to enable them to appear in lists such as this. Another organisation (SmartNames) charges $40 to translate an (otherwise obscure?) Internet name to a "smart name". I am forced to the conclusion that the result of a "What's related" seach is going to be driven almost entirely by commerce, ie presumably in part by who has paid Netscape to appear in such a list. This in turn has most interesting implications. Note for example the lack of any university sites (except No 10, and that's to a commercial operation located at a University). Do universities have the "purchasing power" to ever appear on such a list? This Netscape "portal" appears that it is not going to give you the most scientifically relevant information, but will attempt to direct you towards commerce at all times. Hardly a neutral or impartial system. One, I would have thought, to be avoided if you are searching for scientific rather than commercial answers. Or to put it another way, it appears true that you very rarely get something for nothing! So who IS going to look after the interests of the chemical community? Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)