We all want to use reactions that work. OrgSyn is a portal into that privileged class of processes because there are people who actually reproduce everything that is being submitted. With the continuing expansion of resources available on the internet, I started noticing a range of other mechanisms that involve feedback from the users. I have always thought that Wikipedia was a great idea that has been displacing conventional Encyclopedias (when was the last time you looked at anything in Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance? Exactly… You no longer do it…) because of one profound and useful concept: user involvement. User-corrected articles are the way to go and I am convinced that we will see more of this applied to science in the future. But how about the present? There are some really marvellous initiatives out there with ChemSpider Synthetic Pages being one of them. This is a U.K. Royal Society of Chemistry’s program which I learned about at the Editors’ meeting in Brussels last Spring. I love this engine. Please take a look at the link below. I highly recommend using it in order to scour for procedures and comments by the users:
And all of you grad students out there – why not try to publish some of your tricks there? This will be a neat addition to your resume that will show that you are “modern resource”-savvy.
amphoteros 