PubChem Funding in Place for 2006
PubChem, the National Institutes of Health-funded database of chemical compounds, appears to be safe–for now. After a House of Representatives subcommittee in June declined to recommend pulling PubChem’s funding or otherwise limiting its mandate, the Senate followed suit last week. In comments appended July 13 to the Senate Appropriations Committee Report on FY 2006 Labor-HHS Appropriations Legislation, the bill that funds the NIH and related agencies, the committee noted that it was "aware of the development of PubChem" and added only that it expected NIH to "work with private sector chemical information providers, with a primary goal of maximizing progress in science while avoiding unnecessary duplication and competition with private sector databases." In sum, the NIH was slated for a total budget increase of about 3.5 percent.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) has lobbied lawmakers to limit the scope of PubChem, charging that the NIH had "created a mini-replica of the CAS [Chemical Abstracts Service] Registry." The situation hearkens back to the closing of the Department of Energy’s nascent PubScience database, an online database of scholarly articles which database publishers argued competed with their products. PubScience was shuttered in 2002. In both cases library groups joined with scientists to support the government’s access and archiving efforts. Despite Congress’s refusal to scale back PubChem, ACS officials hailed the language in the Senate committee report as a victory, leaving open the possibility of increased opposition to the NIH effort in the future. In a statement, ACS said it was "delighted" that both the House and Senate appropriations committees urged the NIH to "avoid unnecessary duplication and competition with private sector databases." The Senate’s action, the statement said, was "another significant step toward a resolution that will supplement and not supplant private scientific information services."
Library Journal Academic Newswire, July 19, 2005
