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

Tue Sep 11 13:38:51 UTC 2018

Everybody who is advocating openness including commercial re-use should not complain if this re-use actually occurs.

But of course there is a danger that Google’s search engine will sideline other discovery tools and thus become a gate keeper and we also should not oversee that Google can get a lot of insight from analysing the searches for data sets.

The research community needs to enhance its ability to collectively fund key research infrastructure in order to avoid developments like this current one with its possible negative implications.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Christoph Bruch

Helmholtz Association

Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office

 <http://os.helmholtz.de> http://os.helmholtz.de

W: +49 (0)331 28 82 87 61

M: +49 (0)151 14 09 39 68

Von: open-science [mailto:open-science-bounces at lists.okfn.org] Im Auftrag von Peter Murray-Rust
Gesendet: Montag, 10. September 2018 22:49
An: Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen) <j.bosman at uu.nl>
Cc: opencon-discussion-list at googlegroups.com; open-science <open-science at lists.okfn.org>
Betreff: Re: [open-science] Why are we leaving it to Google?

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

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