Following on from the Chemint98 conference, the 13th CIC (Chemical Information with Computers) Workshop was held in Germany. The "Internet" theme was fairly strong with many interesting presentations. I note below some of the URLs associated with the talks. 1) Wolf-Dietrich Ihlenfeldt showed the new Web-based interface to the NCI database. With some 250,000 entries, it constitutes the largest freely accessible database of compounds available. http://www2.ccc.uni-rerlangen.de/ncidb or http://cactvs.cit.nih.gov/ncidb/ 2) Another theme is the emergence of smaller specialised databases, which the Internet has made viable to mount. An excellent example is the glycostructures database. Amazingly, some 49,000 such compounds have been characterised; http://www.dkfz-heidelberg.de/spec/ 3) Some interesting work in developing "progressive" 3D image viewing comes from Erlangen. We all have seen progressive GIF or JPEG images (where a low res picture comes first). Now see it n 3D using VRML or Java3D http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/eng/research/prolet/ 4) Another storng theme was the emergence of a new generation of tools to assist authors to contribute active informatrion to electronic journals. Thus in conjunction with the scientific publisher Wiley and Chemical Concepts, LabControl have made available a freely downloadable analytical data viewer and processor. Viewpoint is a JCAMP viewer which allows analytical data to be viewed and saved. TransSpec NT is a simple tool for transferring primary data to a publisher site using a factual database (SpecInfo) as an intermediate container; http://www.labcontrol.com/ This "synergy" between information software developer and publisher was reinforced by the presentation by MDL of Mentor, a "bundle" of tools to allow users to create local databases associated with electronic journal articles, with a veiw to fullscale integratation of database handling techniques with the electronic article.
From these last two presentations, we were left in no doubt that the tight intergratoin of the e-journal with the database was very much the way the commercial publishers view the future of electronic journals. If I can add a personal comment here; it is most welcome to see publishers thinging how the e-journal can be "enhanced" beyond simply delivering electronic versions of paper. Of course, one must remember that al these extra features are likely to cost. I can see the era of "light" and "pro" versions of e-journals just around the corner. The light version perhaps for students (and impoverished academics), the pro versoin for industry.
Finally, I note that chemistry "portals" continue to be developed. A German portal http://www.chemie.de/ is an excellent and probably definitive collection of German sites. It also has an International section, via collaboration with Liverpool University (aks the ChemDex UK Site at Sheffield). There are other presentations, but I have to leave early, so apologies to not quoting those speakers! Henry Rzepa (Bad Duerkheim, Weinstrasse, Germany) 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)