Its been a busy year transitioning from spending most of my time with CDD to my start-up Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc etc. Along the way I found time to write a few book chapters. One of these recently published in
Our chapter is on small molecule databases and deals with the explosion in these over the past decade. We are at the point were there is a massive amount of data that can be used for machine learning to predict bioactivity. This has potential utility but the underlying quality of the data may be an issue that should not be forgotten either.
There is definitely a tension between publishing a paper / review and a book chapter. For one its an honor to be invited by the editors, to have your contributions recognized. On the other hand, the accessibility of these books is a challenge unless you have access to a library or significant budget. As both a book editor and contributor there is definitely a conflict here. Sure publishers have to make money to keep the enterprise going, but books and chapters rapidly age and then what? Its unlikely that the editors or contributors ever recoup their time investment in publishing these narrowly focused books. The model is ripe for disruption. Sure, instead of publishing in closed books we could just drop the file in some open publishing repository. There is no money to be made unless you self publish. As long as the contributors get credit, citations etc perhaps thats all that matters to some. Personally I like the physical feel of a real book, to see it on the shelf and to know that some small contribution will last for a while in a library or on some scientists shelf. A bit of permanence in this world were everything moves so fast.
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