Chemical biology is a scientific discipline spanning the fields of chemistry, biology, and physics. It involves the application of chemical techniques, tools, and analyses, and often compounds produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and manipulation of biological systems. Chemical biologists attempt to use chemical principles to modulate systems to either investigate the underlying biology or create new function. Research done by chemical biologists is often closer related to that of cell biology than biochemistry. Biochemists study of the chemistry of biomolecules and regulation of biochemical pathways within cells and tissues, e.g. cAMP or cGMP, while chemical biologists deal with novel chemical compounds applied to biology.
Open access to the scientific literature means the removal of barriers (including price barriers) from accessing scholarly work. The alternative for a researcher is self-archiving (i.e., to publish in a traditional journal, where only subscribers have immediate access, but to make the article available on their personal and/or institutional Web sites (including so-called repositories or archives)), which is a practice allowed by many scholarly journals.
Open Access raises practical and policy questions for scholars, publishers, funders, and policymakers alike, including what the return on investment is when paying an article processing fee to publish in an Open Access articles, or whether investments into institutional repositories should be made and whether self-archiving should be made mandatory, as contemplated by some funders.
Last date updated on April, 2024