[open-science] Why are we leaving it to Google?

Mon Sep 10 20:49:06 UTC 2018

I don't have a problem with Google indexing public datasets. I work with
Crystallogrophy Open Database which has indexed 350K data sets. What I take
exception to is the way that Big Corporations can buy privileged access to
paywalled datasets and publications.

I have a tool which will index science (chemistry, crystallography,
phylogenetic trees etc.) much better than Google (which doesn't do these)
but I am not allowed to use it. So  Google and Clarivate are handed a
monopoly on indexing the literature even though I can do it better. What is
even worse is the way that some publishers (Elsevier) take public data
(crystallography) and put it behind the accessWall of the Cambridge
Crystallographic Data Centre. Authors think they are making there data
Open, They are not, It's being monopolised by CCDC who sells it by
subscription and lets 1% or less out to the rest of the world.

I am sure there are many more of these cartels and monopolies.

I am happy to hear from others who want to build an alternative search
engine to closed monopolists of the scholarly literature because we can do
it better.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/attachments/20180910/e2f76dfc/attachment-0002.html>