这个视频是 Peter Murray-Rust 去年 9 月在 Google Tech Talks 做的报告。先是批判了一下现有学术出版过程的弊端，实验数据和结果，因各种人为因素不能被同行和大众方便地使用。然后，介绍了他们在化学领域的一些实践，比如用 Google API 和 PubChem 做的一个 Mashup 等等。我特别注意到他说：“Chemistry is the most tractable discipline for the semantic web – most chemistry can be turned into XML with little semantic loss, using Chemical Markup Language and complementary MLs such as XHTML, MathML and SVG.”似乎很有道理。我自然地会想能否把同样的思路应用到其他学科。

他不喜欢 ppt，这个还不太特别；他也不喜欢 pdf，这个就比较有个性了。他说，把语义数据转换成 pdf，实际上破坏了所有东西。而要把 pdf 转换回到语义数据，就像把汉堡包转换回牛一样不可能。：）

所以他用 html 来做报告。看他在报告过程中，不停地点链接，选书签。结果他们的服务器不幸地正好出了问题。。。下面是他报告的摘要。

ABSTRACT The millions of scientific papers published each year are an amazing source for scientific discovery but in most of them the experimental data is destroyed by the publication process. Publishers insist on converting semantic data into PDF which effectively destroys everything. We have been developing social and technical strategies to preserve and liberate this data and where this has happened have been able to create completely new mashups and other semantic resources.

Chemistry is the most tractable discipline for the semantic web – most chemistry can be turned into XML with little semantic loss, using Chemical Markup Language and complementary MLs such as XHTML, MathML and SVG.

We have to mobilise a bottom-up revolution through modern Internet ideas – blogs, communal source development, interoperability. We have done this in chemistry through the Blue Obelisk movement – an informal but coherent group of young-at-heart hackers. We are adopting lightweight web technologies (“REST”, etc.) to chemistry – an example will be CMLRSS which we run in a Bioclipse environment.