1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Although I always had some ability as a chemist, I only really became interested in pursuing chemistry as a career when I was doing my PhD. I particularly enjoy the moments when you make a molecule for the first time or discover something new, and this first struck home when I was doing it for myself during my PhD. Although I rarely go into the lab any more, I still get that buzz when my research group makes that step forward.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I’m afraid I would be a politician. I know this will surprise many people, but I have a strong sense that we should use our gifts for the benefit of other people and I have always felt that politicians have the potential to make more of a difference than most, even if what they do doesn’t always work! I have strong political views and have probably been interested in politics for longer than chemistry. I also think more scientists should become involved in politics, after all we have a lot to contribute.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

As you can tell from my previous answer, I feel that it is extremely important that chemists use their abilities for the wider benefit. Chemists already make a huge contribution to the world-at-large through new drugs and many new technologies. Almost everything we come across in the modern world has been improved by chemists in some way. One area where chemists will make a huge difference over the coming years is in controlling the effects of climate change. If you think about it, chemists are the only people who understand the problems and also know how to overcome them.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Robert F. Kennedy. Although he isn’t as famous as his older brother, JFK, he was a remarkable man who had a real vision for reaching out to the less fortunate in our society. Politically he has been extremely influential and was the real thinking behind what is called the Third Way which people would recognize in Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. If he hadn’t been shot whilst campaigning for the democratic nomination in 1968, he may well have beaten Nixon to the presidency, pulled out of Vietnam and I am sure that the world would be a very different place today.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

Apart from in the teaching labs it has been some years, I’m struggling to remember! I used to give demonstration lectures with bangs and flashes and that was probably more recent than any research oriented experiment.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

It depends whether we have the Bible and Shakespeare? If I don’t have them I would have to take the Bible. If I already have that, then it would be far harder as I read a lot of different books. For fiction, I would probably take “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami, for non-fiction I would take “Make Gentle the Life of This World” which is a collection of speeches by Robert F. Kennedy. My CD would have to be “Blonde on Blonde” by Bob Dylan, even though it was made before I was born, it doesn’t get better than that.

Neil Champness is in the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham and works on all aspects of molecular organization, including nanoscale surface supramolecular assembly and organization in the solid-state via crystal engineering.

The text below is an adaptation of a Correspondence submitted to PLoS Biology on October 22 and published October 31 as a “”https://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=read-response&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050285#r1918">Reader Response" linked to the Editorial “When Is Open Access Not Open Access?”, (MacCallum, 2007)

I am pleased to announce that Molecular Systems Biology has changed its license to publish for all articles accepted after October 1st, 2007 (see updated instruction to authors). The new license allows our authors to choose between two Creative Commons licenses: one that allows the work to be adapted by users (by-nc-sa), the other that does not allow the work to be modified (by-nc-nd). The first articles to be published under the new license are expected to appear online beginning of next month.

Our content is therefore not only freely available to all but our authors can now also decide to make their research fully open for reuse and adaptations.

The current explosive development of data and text mining, semantic-web and information aggregation technologies is profoundly changing the publishing landscape (eg Tim O’Reilly visits Nature). When we were contacted a few months ago by the OpenWetWare community who envisaged the “wikification” of one of our Reviews (see post), we decided that Molecular Systems Biology should strongly support such initiatives by providing our content in an as open form as possible. Our Senior Editors fully supported this transition to a more open license but also encouraged us to allow authors to have some influence on the decision.

Providing authors the possibility to choose their license has some decisive advantages: first, by enforcing a conscious choice by authors it will inevitably raise awareness on the implications of the various publication licenses; second we would like to see the question of “what should be open access” being addressed in a more democratic way by the community itself rather than through incantations of what the ideal solution should be. My guess – and my personal hope – is that most of the authors will indeed choose the most open version of the license, but I think that it is important to respect the opinions of those who think differently and who would feel uncomfortable with the idea that their article can be remixed or adapted without them being aware of it.

Our attitude is motivated by the fact that, at Molecular Systems Biology, we see the role of a scientific journal more as a catalyst facilitating and accelerating scientific discovery rather than a policy-making instrument. What is Systems Biology? Rather than providing a rigid definition of a rapidly evolving field, we prefer to let the community define the scope of this field and we adapt to it. What is open access? Rather than relying on a dogmatic position in a still fluid situation, we prefer to let scientists define their priorities.

Note: To avoid confusion, I initially wanted to make this announcement only after the first paper published under the new license (that is, accepted after Oct 1st) had appeared online, but a recent Editorial from PLoS Biology (“When Is Open Access Not Open Access?” MacCallum, 2007) forced me to anticipate a little on this. In this Editorial, Catriona MacCallum reviews in details the subtleties of publishing licenses and clarifies their implications for the concept of “open access”. Unfortunately, this Editorial, at the time of its publication (Oct 16), included also erroneous information on Molecular Systems Biology, given that we had updated our policy already on Ocober 1st. In any case, it is somewhat ironic that MacCallum chose to stigmatize Molecular Systems Biology as an example of a journal that “promulgates” confusion about open access. As it turns out, Molecular Systems Biology is dedicated to the concept of making research freely available and to engage authors themselves in decisions that would achieve this goal with their own research. It is in this spirit of openness and respect for authors that we have recently adapted our license to publish.