Open Data, Open Source and Open Standards in chemistry: The Blue Obelisk five years on

Noel M O’Boyle, Rajarshi Guha, Egon L Willighagen, Samuel E Adams, Jonathan Alvarsson, Jean-Claude Bradley, Igor V Filippov, Robert M Hanson, Marcus D Hanwell, Geoffrey R Hutchison, Craig A James, Nina Jeliazkova, Andrew SID Lang, Karol M Langner, David C Lonie, Daniel M Lowe, Jérôme Pansanel, Dmitry Pavlov, Ola Spjuth, Christoph Steinbeck, Adam L Tenderholt, Kevin J Theisen & Peter Murray-Rust. “Open Data, Open Source and Open Standards in chemistry: The Blue Obelisk five years on” J. Cheminf. 2011 3 Art. 37. Open Access.

Background

The Blue Obelisk movement was established in 2005 as a response to the lack of Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source (ODOSOS) in chemistry. It aims to make it easier to carry out chemistry research by promoting interoperability between chemistry software, encouraging cooperation between Open Source developers, and developing community resources and Open Standards.

Results

This contribution looks back on the work carried out by the Blue Obelisk in the past 5 years and surveys progress and remaining challenges in the areas of Open Data, Open Standards, and Open Source in chemistry.

Conclusions

We show that the Blue Obelisk has been very successful in bringing together researchers and developers with common interests in ODOSOS, leading to development of many useful resources freely available to the chemistry community.