| Content | |
|---|---|
| Description | More than 100 million chemical structures, properties and associated information |
| Contact | |
| Research center | Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Laboratory | |
| Access | |
| Website | www |
| Miscellaneous | |
| License | Creative CommonsAttributionShare-alike[2] |
ChemSpider is a freely accessible onlinedatabase of chemicals owned by theRoyal Society of Chemistry.[3][4][5][6][7] It contains information on more than 100 millionmolecules from over 270 data sources, each of them receiving aunique identifier called ChemSpider Identifier.
The database sources include:[8]
The ChemSpider database can be updated with user contributions includingchemical structure deposition, spectra deposition and user curation. This is acrowdsourcing approach to develop an online chemistry database. Crowdsourced based curation of the data has produced adictionary of chemical names associated with chemical structures that has been used intext-mining applications of the biomedical and chemical literature.[10]
However,database rights are not waived and adata dump is not available; in fact, the FAQ even states that only limited downloads are allowed:[11] therefore theright to fork is not guaranteed and the project can not be consideredfree/open.
A number of available search modules are provided:
The ChemSpider database has been used in combination withtext mining as the basis ofchemistry document markup. ChemMantis,[14] the Chemistry Markup And Nomenclature Transformation Integrated System uses algorithms to identify and extract chemical names from documents and web pages and converts the chemical names to chemical structures using name-to-structure conversion algorithms anddictionary look-ups in the ChemSpider database. The result is an integrated system between chemistry documents and information look-up via ChemSpider into over 150 data sources.
SyntheticPages is a free interactive database ofsynthetic chemistry procedures operated by theRoyal Society of Chemistry.[15] Users submit synthetic procedures which they have conducted themselves for publication on the site. These procedures may be original works, but they are more often based on literature reactions.Citations to the original published procedure are made where appropriate. They are checked by a scientific editor before posting. The pages do not undergo formalpeer-review like ascientific journal article but comments can be made by logged-in users. The comments are also moderated by scientific editors. The intention is to collect practical experience of how to conduct usefulchemical synthesis in the lab. While experimental methods published in an ordinaryacademic journal are listed formally and concisely, the procedures in ChemSpider SyntheticPages are given with more practical detail. Informality is encouraged. Comments by submitters are included as well. Other publications with comparable amounts of detail includeOrganic Syntheses andInorganic Syntheses. The SyntheticPages site was originally set up by Professors Kevin Booker-Milburn (University of Bristol), Stephen Caddick (University College London), Peter Scott (University of Warwick) and Max Hammond. In February 2010 a merger was announced[16] with the Royal Society of Chemistry's chemical structure search engine ChemSpider and the formation of ChemSpider|SyntheticPages (CS|SP).
A number of services are made available online. These include the conversion of chemical names tochemical structures, the generation ofSMILES andInChI strings as well as the prediction of many physicochemical parameters and integration to a web service allowingNMR prediction.
ChemSpider was acquired by theRoyal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in May, 2009.[17] Prior to the acquisition by RSC, ChemSpider was controlled by a private corporation, ChemZoo Inc. The system was first launched in March 2007 in abeta release form and transitioned to release in March 2008.
ChemSpider served as the chemical compound repository as part of theOpen PHACTS project, anInnovative Medicines Initiative. Open PHACTS developed to open standards, with an open access,semantic web approach to address bottlenecks in small molecule drug discovery - disparate information sources, lack of standards and information overload.[18]
