PubChem Debate Heads to the Hill
The American Chemical Society’s (ACS) campaign to at least limit the scope of the National Institutes of Health’s PubChem database could wind up in Congress shortly, via the FY 2006 appropriations bill (see LJ Academic Newswire 5/19/05). The bill is now under consideration by the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. Rep. Ralph Regula (D-OH), chair of the subcommittee, is reportedly considering adding language to the bill that would address ACS’s concerns. Meanwhile, the ACS has stepped up its public relations campaign, asserting in an open statement that in PubChem the NIH has "created a mini-replica of the CAS [Chemical Abstracts Service] Registry." ACS officials state that NIH has duplicated both the "platform and content" of the CAS Registry, owned by ACS. "If a scientist obtains this data from PubChem, there is no reason to purchase it from the CAS Registry," ACS said. "We therefore believe that statements that PubChem is complementary to the CAS Registry rather than competitive are wrong." ACS wants PubChem to include only the research funded by NIH.
At present, PubChem contains less than one million compounds, compared to 25 million in the CAS Registry. Library groups meanwhile, are supporting PubChem, this week releasing a letter written to Regula that disputes ACS’ claims. The letter, sent by SPARC, was also signed by the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, Association of College & Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries and the Medical Library Association. PubChem, the groups said, "is a powerful tool" that enables medical researchers to harness NIH-funded and other public resources about chemical structures. "We reject the ACS contention that PubChem will compete with the giant CAS. Not only is it implausible that NIH’s modestly funded program would be a substitute for the wide range of resources integrated by CAS, there appears to be remarkably little overlap in either content or likely users of PubChem and CAS."
[Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM), The Publishing Report, June 02, 2005]
