The Internet and Chemicals News

The phenomenal rise of the Internet has brought about major changes in how news spreads, with a notable impact on Chemicals.

Economic restrictions are no more

In the past, peer review and the like were the main source of information in the Chemicals industry. With profitability an imperative and thus high media ratings as well, it was less likely to see extremely-specialised information be published. The result was a sector with only a small number of specialised publications, issued most often monthly or, at best, weekly.

With the Internet and its business model, the deal has changed fundamentally: the cost of publishing and spreading information has become marginal and thus done away with the audience imperative. Any subject, no matter how specialised it is, can now be taken up without requiring any substantial financial outlay from the author.

Publishing for the layman and spreading information

With platforms now specifically dedicated to hosting blogs, this trend is going to gain pace, as the creation of personal websites becomes child’s play and the resulting efforts are listed in the platform directories. As a result, anyone can now publish and spread information, without having to first become familiar with media working principles.

Increasing and diversifying the information available about Chemicals

With the Internet, no longer does one need the financial and logistical backing of a media mogul to publish and disseminate information. The amount of information published about Chemicals online is expanding like never before: a basic search with Google – the most widely-used search engine online – instantly turns up 332,000,000 hits for the terms chemistry, chemical or chemicals.

More diversified information – the second result of the aforementioned changes:

-     A wider variety of topics broached: authors are free to publish the topics of their choice online, no matter how specialised

-     A wider variety of authors: the media no longer have exclusive power to determine which information should reach the general audience.

            Those who work in Chemicals each day, whether institutions, companies or private individuals, can also create their own Web sites and/or blogs and publish themselves whatever information they wish to bring to the fore. This is an opportunity which many people have seized upon in the sector, in particular as a result of the interaction and cooperative efforts made possible by the Internet where research is concerned.     

The question of periodicity

Internet is gradually rendering the concept of periodicity obsolete. As the various source of information are continuously available online, they can be updated without any of the restrictions that come with paper reviews: new information can be added as they become available from the authors, and no longer depending on the issues’ publication dates.

It follows that there are stark differences in the frequency at which various sites are actually updated and even, within the same site, differing update intervals. Some sites put information online several times a day, others once a day, several times a week, several times a month or several times a year, without any recurring pattern being identifiable.

In light of this, the only way to be sure to be abreast of every new fact in a short time is to continuously watch the sites.

Farida Semmar

Open Source Intelligence Manager

LexisNexis Analytics