Chemoinformatics and the World Wide Web: An Interview with Professor Peter Willett

This report is the direct transcription of an interview with Professor Peter Willett in March 7, 2006 and seeks to illustrate some general issues in chemoinformatics and its linkage with the related areas. Professor Willett is the head of Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield and is one of the well-known researchers in information retrieval (IR) in general and chemoinformatics in particular. The interview consists of two parts. The first part is related to Professor Willett's specific research area and its relation to the World Wide Web. In the second part he addresses some general issues about his personal experience of using the Web as an end-user rather than an expert in IR.