Here is an interesting new web site that I was informed about recently. The idea is to let you, the synthetic chemist, post your own synthesis. You know the ones that never quite made it into the publication or the patent. Or, indeed, it lets you upload literature procedures you have tried, allowing you to review the said procedure “did it work as stated?”, if not what happened?”.
It’s very easy to use and allows no frills publication, which is great. Here are the words of the creator of this valuable database, who can explain it much better than I can:
“I have spent the last few months putting together a website that allows users to review syntheses, whether from a paper, patent, or online. Additionally, a new, non-published synthesis can be published on the site and cited in one’s CV, and this synthesis will remain open access, as the entire site is free to use.
With this, I hope to establish a community of synthetically-experienced people who enjoy calling out the literature for what works and what does not, with the end goal of being a scifinder-like resource that collects syntheses from all mediums, and allows quick searching for how to make something, with easy filtering by how well a procedure works as crowd sourced from the user base.
Of course, that is only the adding syntheses and reviews part of the site. One can search for a chemical name, formula, or structure to find the best routes to a material (of course assuming it has been added to the site already, eg. search 1-amino-1,2,3-triazole). One can also search by DOI or author to see how well rated syntheses in a given paper or by a certain author are.”
So go have a look and please put your results and reviews into the resource and with time it will become a major starting point for searching the synthetic organic chemical space.
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I’m not sure this is needed. Reactions can be published at ChemSpider SyntheticPages (http://cssp.chemspider.com) and the site sports a more “professional” feel. Other sites have also attempted to “rate” experimenatal procedures, e.g. NotVoodoo’s “may require mojo” page (http://chem.chem.rochester.edu/nvdcgi/mojo.cgi) and BlogSyn (which was hugely successful but had little longevity due to the demands of such a task; http://blog-syn.blogspot.co.uk/). Whilst the concept is good, I feel the current format is lacking, and some of the comments/aliases give the feel of a forum rather than an academic/professional tool.
Thanks for the comment. This site is not of my doing, however, I feel that it is quite a valid concept and more than complements the mojo offering. I’m aware of ChemSpider but do not find it very user friendly, especially as I can never find what I am looking for, or even close to it. The comments were there from the beta test and I suppose I should try and remove them.
Anything which helps us search for information can’t be a bad thing, especially for those persons without institutional access.
Dan: thanks for your comments! In response to your first point regarding chemspider, like dangerdackel I never found that site user friendly, or ever having reached broad enough appeal for general use. In regards to BlogSyn, I found the crowdsourcing of reviews to be a solution to the problem that they encountered; that of not enough time on the part of the authors. By allowing easy contribution of user content this can be overcome. Forum feel/format: please let us know what you think we can do to improve the user experience.
ChemSpider can be a little difficult to use, but it’s easy to browse through the chemistry and find reactions that appeal to me. NMR spectra is provided in some cases, alongside a relatively detailed experimental procedure and author’s comments.
What I like about SynEvaluate is the search capacity. There are multiple options for finding what you’re looking for (so long as the appropriate tags are applied to the procedures) Adding a search for Patent number may be useful. It’s a little difficult to browse, and to do so requires me to search without writing anything in the field.
What I find most discerning is the ability for anyone to write an entry, with no background of that person’s ability. Perhaps coupling with a LinkedIn (or other “professional”) profile would be a reasonable way of determining if you can trust someone’s review.
The format is a little unclear at the moment. Rather than “From:” perhaps it would be clearer if it was “Reference:, Author(s):,Reviewed by:” and then additional user comments could follow. Additionally, I know that analytical data should be given by the reference but having it written “as the reviewer sees it” is also useful as they may use a different NMR solvent or provide additional data not originally detailed (melting point? refractive index? Who uses those anymore?). Attaching an image of the spectra is also helpful for comparison by anyone using the review, to observe that they produce a “typical” material.
I’m also concerned that it may not be long until those from the “research chemicals/designer drugs” community start posting up preparations. The LinkedIn suggestion above may significantly deter that.
Re: Patent number search: This was a massive oversight on our part! Patent number search coming up as we do the next stage of revisions on the site!
Browsing: Functionality to browse all syntheses on the site is there, however it is not enabled until the database has grown a bit more.
Anonymous authors: Anonymity is a mixed blessing. It can be beneficial to some reviewers, but negative to others. In the user profile there is the ability to enter one’s affiliation after registration. But I will be looking into the ability to log in and post with linkedin, I like this idea. I can see a system where the average rating of a prep is affected more by a verified account than an anonymous one, however no plans to prevent anonymous reviews.
Format: We will clarify this when the FAQ is updated this weekend. It should clear up some confusion. When adding a synthesis to the database, only info contained in the lit should be added. After adding the prep to the database, any of the reviewer’s experiences can be entered in the review. Reviews should not be added at the time the prep is added, that should be for lit info only. Thanks for pointing out this was unclear. And we do have the ability to add a reviewer’s spectrum. 🙂 There is the option during review to upload photos, and NMR or other analytics can be added at this stage. Again, we need to flush out the FAQ a bit.
Drugs: The team gets emails when a new prep/review is added. If someone posts something inappropriate like shake and bake meth or something it will be removed.
Will be interesting to see how this goes. Like the various post-publication review sites, the difficulty may well be achieving a critical mass of users/commenters/reviewers.
Re: ChemSpider Synthetic Pages, my impression has always been that most of the content is unpublished reactions from theses and that sort of thing, rather than reproductions of literature reactions. I think that, as the appetite for BlogSyn showed, there’s definitely a niche for this, if it can be done right.
Good luck Davin.
Thanks!