Copyright and Promotion: Oxymoron or Opportunity?

Copyright in the cultural sphere can act as a barrier to the dissemination of high-quality information. On the other hand it protects works of art that might not be made available otherwise. This dichotomy makes the area of copyright difficult, especially when it applies to the digital arena of the web where copying is so easy and natural. Here we present a snapshot of the issues for online copyright, with particular emphasis on the relevance to cultural institutions. We concentrate on Europe and the US; as an example we include a special section dedicated to the situation in Italy.Comment: 10 pages, 0 figure

Empirical Patterns in Google Scholar Citation Counts

Scholarly impact may be metricized using an author's total number of citations as a stand-in for real worth, but this measure varies in applicability between disciplines. The detail of the number of citations per publication is nowadays mapped in much more detail on the Web, exposing certain empirical patterns. This paper explores those patterns, using the citation data from Google Scholar for a number of authors.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Cyberpatterns 201

Electronic Visualisation in Chemistry: From Alchemy to Art

Chemists now routinely use software as part of their work. For example, virtual chemistry allows chemical reactions to be simulated. In particular, a selection of software is available for the visualisation of complex 3-dimensional molecular structures. Many of these are very beautiful in their own right. As well as being included as illustrations in academic papers, such visualisations are often used on the covers of chemistry journals as artistically decorative and attractive motifs. Chemical images have also been used as the basis of artworks in exhibitions. This paper explores the development of the relationship of chemistry, art, and IT. It covers some of the increasingly sophisticated software used to generate these projections (e.g., UCSF Chimera) and their progressive use as a visual art form.Comment: 8 pages, 27 figures, EVA London 201