title: Chemistry in bioinformatics.
abstract: Chemical information is now seen as critical for most areas of life sciences. But unlike Bioinformatics, where data is openly available and freely re-usable, most chemical information is closed and cannot be re-distributed without permission. This has led to a failure to adopt modern informatics and software techniques and therefore paucity of chemistry in bioinformatics. New technology, however, offers the hope of making chemical data (compounds and properties) free during the authoring process. We argue that the technology is already available; we require a collective agreement to enhance publication protocols.
authors.affiliation: Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge. CB2 1EW, UK. pm286@cam.ac.uk <pm286@cam.ac.uk>
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Murray-Rust
authors.forename: John B O
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.forename: Henry S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Rzepa
mesh_terms: D022126:Access to Information; D002621:Chemistry / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D019992:Databases as Topic; D016208:Databases, Factual; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D011643:Publishing; D012984:Software; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface