This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Andrew Dalke. Original Post: What's the name of my field? Feed Title: Andrew Dalke's writings Feed URL: http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/diary/diary-rss.xml Feed Description: Writings from the software side of bioinformatics and chemical informatics, with a heaping of Python thrown in for good measure. Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Andrew Dalke Latest Posts From Andrew Dalke's writings

I say that I work in "cheminformatics." Others use "chemoinformatics". What's going on?

When I entered this field in the late 1990s I said "chemical informatics" and the main journal was the "Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences." Before 1975 it was the "Journal of Chemical Documentation" and in 2005 it became "Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling". You also see the older term in older company names. Daylight's full corporate name, for example, is "Daylight Chemical Information Systems."

Cheminformatics? Chemoinformatics?

"Chemical informatics" is no longer so common. Which of the two newer names do people use? There's a "Journal of Cheminformatics" but no "Journal of Chemoinformatics." In 2006 some 100 scientist from 20 countries in Europe and North America wrote the "Obernai Declaration" (no longer online?) to define and promote the field of "chemoinformatics."

Let's take it to the masses. Molinspiration reports the result counts from Google:

Cheminformatics is now (December 2009) used about 2.5-times more frequently than chemoinformatics. In 2006 this ratio was 1.6, in 2007 1.5 and in 2008 1.9. So it looks like that the term cheminformatics is winning the race!

More specifically, if you search for "cheminformatics" you'll see "About 6,960,000 results". Try to go to item 900 and you'll get the message:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 654 already displayed.

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 671 already displayed.

The other day, Google Labs released the Books Ngram Viewer, which lets you view and compare the publish rate of word use over time.

This gives a different way to compare those three rather distinct terms. Here's the results:

You can clearly see that "chemical informatics" was in the lead when I started, with a time when "chemoinformatics" dominated, and now "cheminformatics" is pulling ahead. If only those graphs could be extended to the present!

These numbers likely have their own bias. I assume Google made no mistakes so the years and counts are correct. Book authors are more likely to have been in the field for a long time, so perhaps they collectively lag or lead the trends, or perhaps there are several prolific authors who simply prefer to use minority terminology. There's also likely few books involved, making for large error estimates, and I use Google's results as a proxy for the number of different books.

In other words, this pretty plot isn't confirmation, only data. But it's data which reinforces the growing belief that "cheminformatics" is the dominate term and it's data which corraborates my understanding of the history.

For more discussion or to provide your own input, see the Blue Obelisk/Shapado thread: Chemoinformatics or cheminformatics? Or just go a Google seach for "cheminformatics chemoinformatics" where it responds:

Did you mean: cheminformatics cheminformatics

Some other interesting terms:

• sulpher,sulfer: Mentioned very often in the early 1800s
• aluminium,aluminum: with a huge peak for the American spelling during World War 2
• phenol,phenyl: peaks in the 1950s
• thee,thy,thine,thou: watch these terms disappear