Chemical information matters: an e-Research perspective on information and data sharing in the chemical sciences

Recently, a number of organisations have called for open access to scientific information and especially to the data obtained from publicly funded research, among which the Royal Society report and the European Commission press release are particularly notable. It has long been accepted that building research on the foundations laid by other scientists is both effective and efficient. Regrettably, some disciplines, chemistry being one, have been slow to recognise the value of sharing and have thus been reluctant to curate their data and information in preparation for exchanging it. The very significant increases in both the volume and the complexity of the datasets produced has encouraged the expansion of e-Research, and stimulated the development of methodologies for managing, organising, and analysing "big data". We review the evolution of cheminformatics, the amalgam of chemistry, computer science, and information technology, and assess the wider e-Science and e-Research perspective. Chemical information does matter, as do matters of communicating data and collaborating with data. For chemistry, unique identifiers, structure representations, and property descriptors are essential to the activities of sharing and exchange. Open science entails the sharing of more than mere facts: for example, the publication of negative outcomes can facilitate better understanding of which synthetic routes to choose, an aspiration of the Dial-a-Molecule Grand Challenge. The protagonists of open notebook science go even further and exchange their thoughts and plans. We consider the concepts of preservation, curation, provenance, discovery, and access in the context of the research lifecycle, and then focus on the role of metadata, particularly the ontologies on which the emerging chemical Semantic Web will depend. Among our conclusions, we present our choice of the "grand challenges" for the preservation and sharing of chemical information

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities

Examines the state of the foundation's efforts to improve educational opportunities worldwide through universal access to and use of high-quality academic content

Legal Classics: After Deconstructing the Legal Canon

The debate over the canon has gripped the University in recent years. Defenders of the canon argue that canonical texts embody timeless and universal themes, but critics argue that the process of canonization subordinates certain people and viewpoints within society in order to assert the existence of a univocal tradition. Originating primarily in the field of literary criticism, the canon debate recently has emerged in legal theory. Professor Francis J. Mootz argues that the issues raised by the canon debate are relevant to legal scholarship, teaching and practice. After reviewing the extensive commentary on the literary canon, Professor Mootz criticizes the polemical structure of the debate and asserts that an appreciation of classical, as opposed to canonical, texts opens the way for a productive inquiry. He defines a classical text as one that both shapes contemporary concerns and also serves as a point of reference for revising these concerns. Classical texts enable critical perspectives rather than submitting to them, he continues, because they provide the arena for debates about issues of public concern. Using Hadley v. Baxendale as an example of a legal classic, Professor Mootz contends that the power of such a classical text is its ability to shape hotly contested legal debates. Our time . . . seems unpropitious for thinking about the question of the classic, for . . . it seems to be a simple either/or that requires merely a choosing of sides: for or against? back to the classics or away from them? Our time calls not for thinking but a vote. And it may well be too late for thinking about the classic in any case, for the vote is already in, and the nays have it

Historic Preservation and its Cultured Despisers: Reflections on the Contemporary Role of Preservation Law in Urban Development

The past years have seen widely noticed critiques of historic preservation by “one of our leading urban economists,” Edward Glaeser, and by star architect Rem Koolhaas. Glaeser, an academic economist specializing in urban development, admits that preservation has value. But he argues in his invigorating book, Triumph of the City, and in a contemporaneous article, Preservation Follies, that historic preservation restricts too much development, raises prices, and undermines the vitality of the cities. Koolhaas is a Pritzker Prize-winning architect and oracular theorist of the relation between architecture and culture. In his New York exhibit, Cronocaos, he argued that preservation lacks an organizing theory, imposes inauthentic consumer-friendly glosses on older structures, and inhibits architectural creativity. Although these critiques are as different as the cultural spaces inhabited by their authors (although both are professors at Harvard), both seemed to strike nerves, suggesting an underlying unease about how large a role preservation has come to play in urban development. This article assesses these critiques as part of an ongoing effort to make sense of historic preservation law. This article proceeds as follows: First, it presents Glaeser’s critique in detail, placing it within the context of his larger argument about what makes cities attractive and dynamic. Grappling with the strengths and weaknesses of Glaeser’s critique leads to a discussion of how preservation regulation actually works and clarification of some of the benefits it confers. Second, this Article will attempt to specify Koolhaas’s critique, connecting it to similar complaints about preservation by more linear thinkers. Weighing objections to the coherence or authenticity of preservation leads to further discussion of the role that preservation plays in the larger culture. This article concludes with a call for future research

Overinterpreting Law

Overinterpretation has attracted considerable attention in other fields, such as literary studies, science, and rhetoric, but it is undertheorized in law. This Article attempts to initiate a theory of legal overinterpretation by examining the rhetorical nature of excess, the sociological dimensions of roles in team performances, and citation to legal and non-legal sources that have discussed overinterpretation. The Article concludes by positing illustrative categories of potential legal overinterpretation, and providing an examination of ways to minimize legal overinterpretation through a judicious, pragmatic balance between abstract considerations and concrete considerations in law

Estopped by Grand Playsaunce: Flann O'Brien's Post-colonial Lore

This article seeks to extend our understanding of the Irish writer Flann O'Brien (Myles na gCopaleen, Brian O'Nolan) by reading him from a Law and Literature perspective. I suggest that O'Nolan's painstaking and picky mind, with its attention to linguistic nuance, was logically drawn to the languages of law. In this he confirmed the character that he showed as a civil servant of the cautious, book-keeping Irish Free State. The Free State, like other post-colonial entities, was marked at once by a rhetoric of rupture from the colonial dispensation and by a degree of legal and political continuity. I suggest that O'Nolan's writing works away at both these aspects of the state, alternating between critical and utopian perspectives. After establishing an initial context, I undertake a close reading of O'Nolan's parodies of actual legal procedure, focusing on questions of language and censorship. I then consider his critical work on the issue of Irish sovereignty, placing this in its post-colonial historical context. Finally I describe O'Nolan's treatment of Eamon de Valera's 1937 Constitution. I propose that his attention to textual detail prefigures in comic form the substantial rereadings of the Constitution that have been made in the last half-century

Foreword: The Opposite of Property?

In November of 2001, Duke University School of Law held a conference on the public domain; the outside of the intellectual property system, the material that is free for all to use and to build upon.1 So far as we could tell, this was the first conference on the subject, which is surprising when one realizes the central role of the public domain in our traditions of speech, innovation and culture. In many ways, this imbalance-the hundreds of conferences, centers and initiatives that have intellectual property as their focus, and the comparative dearth of attention on the public domain-provided the best explanation for the event