A cauldron bubbles; (over?)

A freely accessible public database of chemical information, produced by a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), is at the center of a controversy over publicly subsidized data competing with commercial information providers. The American Chemical Society (ACS), said to be the largest scientific society in the world, has voiced strenuous objections to the creation and availability of PubChem. The PubChem database provides information on the biological activities of small molecules. It is designed for medical researchers and is a component of NIH’s Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative. Since it was unable to resolve the controversy directly with the NIH, ACS has met with members of Congress about the issues. Read more...