19 May 2009, 1945 (UTC)
The community of chemists who contribute to Wikipedia is happy to announce a novel collaboration with the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society. Wikipedia is one of the top-ten sources of online information; CAS is an acknowledged world-leader in the provision of chemical information to professionals.
CAS has provided Wikipedia with access to some of its most widely used data – its CAS Registry Numbers®, which are recognized throughout the world as the most commonly used identifiers of chemical substances. The collaboration between CAS and Wikipedia provides a free and, more importantly, verified dataset of CAS Registry Numbers® for common substances for all users.
CAS has published 7800 CAS Registry Numbers®, along with a wide selection of synonyms for chemical names, on a new site, www.commonchemistry.org – Wikipedia will continue in its role as a source of information for a wide audience (including professionals). The links between the two complementary systems will help to ensure a high quality of data for users of both sites, and both sides hope that their number will increase over the coming months.
The work leading up to this formal announcement has been going on for more than a year now. During that time, Wikipedia chemists have been able to audit the accuracy of the chemical data we present: our error rate before correction was comparable with printed compendiums of chemical data. Our aim is not to be authoritative, but to present a snapshot of knowledge in an accessible manner. We are sure that this new collaboration will help us make that snapshot even more accurate.
For more details, please contact Physchim62 or Walkerma.