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For university faculty to gain tenure, we’re evaluated on three components: scholarly research, teaching, and service. The weighting given to each component obviously varies based on the university and the topic.

My recent post on open chemistry software stressed the research aspect, in part because chemistry leans heavily on the research component when evaluating faculty at a research university like the University of Pittsburgh.

But there are huge benefits to open chemistry software for teaching and service as well.

For example, take the case of Prof. Robert Hanson who teaches chemistry at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He’s a significant contributor to the Jmol project, which is widely used as a visualization and teaching tool for chemistry.

For Prof. Hanson, Jmol isn’t a research project. It facilitates his teaching and obviously also benefits the larger chemistry and scientific community, which can build on his open source work in Jmol. One great example is his Jmol Crystal Explorer, which I intend to use in my upcoming class on molecular symmetry.

Even in the realm of research, many grant agencies like the National Science Foundation, or the National Institutes of Health consider proposals on the basis of scientific merit (i.e., original scientific research) and on the basis of “broader impact.”

Broader impact may be evaluated in many different ways. But the end result is whether the research has benefits to the larger scientific community or society as a whole, beyond the question of the detailed research interest.

To me, it’s clear that open science has benefits beyond just research. I’d really like to use Avogadro in a class I’m teaching this winter.