[OldGuyInTheClub]

Published chemical syntheses are described in very great detail. Physical chemistry/spectroscopy papers likewise describe apparatus, collection, and analysis often down to the nuts and bolts. I don't see how to open source work requiring a femtosecond mid-infrared laser or a prep requiring a synthesis lab with all the reagents, labware, and safety equipment. Buried in the open source PR is the unshakeable underlying belief that science begins when the data are in the can and ready for analysis.

[chrisseaton]

> I don't see how to open source work requiring a femtosecond mid-infrared laser or a prep requiring a synthesis lab with all the reagents, labware, and safety equipment.

You can put text documents on GitHub describing process, in the same way as you can code and data. If you have some setup with a femtosecond mid-infrared laser or prep requiring a synthesis lab with all the reagents, labware, and safety equipment you can open source the bill of parts, the build instructions and the lab book. It'd probably be very valuable to do that so please do!

[OldGuyInTheClub]

Here are the freely available supplemental data to a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society blending organic synthesis, computation, and spectral characterization. 122 pages of exquisite details from a multi-lab collaboration. Lots more like it out there.

Note: I am not in any way affiliated with this research or the labs involved. This came out of a quick search.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/jacs.6b13031/suppl_fi...

[chrisseaton]

Doesn’t that prove my point? I know people post their artefacts. I often review them. Not sure what you’re trying to say?

[OldGuyInTheClub]

Reproducing that paper will be very difficult even though all the information is out there. There is a world of science outside of data processing.

[dekhn]

I think most people who have worked in science long enough realize that publications are not even minimum-viable: they often omit absolutely necessary information. Sometimes this is intentional, but most of the time, it's just assumed that the reproducer is working in a world-class lab and gets advice/help to implement state-of-the-art work.

[chrisseaton]

> There is a world of science outside of data processing.

Yes, but that's documented in lab books and procedure documents. Or at least it should be! If it isn't, how are they able to explain their own research? And those can be open sourced.

[OldGuyInTheClub]

The ethos of documenting and describing research in detailed technical publications has been around for a very long time. That supplemental data I referenced has a phenomenal amount of detail and is only one example. They have done as good a job of open sourcing as is possible. Having read other papers from those lab chiefs (Zare, Houk, Baran, Grubbs, Stoltz) I know that they are scrupulous about the detail they publish.

Even so, very few people will be able to replicate that work outside without a very well funded laboratory or collaboration of their own. Lab notebooks contain a vast amount of tangential or irrelevant data which are distilled into the publication. What good is a process document for obtaining an x-ray structure if the diffractometer costs a fortune and is a shared departmental or even national resource? In your example, how deep does the bill of materials go? Is it sufficient to state that one needs a Bruker FTIR or Coherent optical parametric oscillator or do those have to be decomposed into the lowest-level components?