DIGChem, the Data Interest Group/Chemistry, is an effort to foster a culture of data sharing within the chemistry community. In order to accomplish this vision, DIGChem is analyzing the existing landscape of chemistry data standards and chemical data repositories, evaluating and updating existing standards, analyzing the need for domain specific repositories, and advocating for and educating researchers, librarians, publishers, and vendors on the benefits of research data sharing.
Anyone in the broader chemistry community who is interested is welcome to join the discussions. This is collaborative work between IUPAC Committee on Publication s and Cheminformatics Data Standards (CPCDS) Subcommittee on Cheminformatics Data Standards (SCDS), the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Chemistry Research Data Interest Group (CRDIG), and the GO FAIR Chemistry Implementation Network (ChIN). Discussions of the interest group have been held at earlier ACS National Meetings, with the Division of Chemical Information (CINF), at the RSC Chemical Information and in Computer Applications Group (CICAG), at the IUPAC General Assembly, at RDA Plenaries, and at the Beilstein Institute.
A number of working groups are being formed around areas of need and interest. Visit the following for linking to projects and sharing documentation:
https://sites.google.com/view/digchem/
DIGChem was launched during the webinar presented by David Martinsen on16 Feb 2018 and show-casing how SCDS is working across organizations to enable accurate exchange of chemical data within a FAIR data environment (FAIR = Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). The presentation is available from the DIGChem website (or here).
In conjunction with these working groups, a workshop is planned for 16-17 July 2018 in Amsterdam. This workshop, organized by IUPAC and CODATA (the Committee on Data for Science and Technology of the International Council for Science), will focus specifically on developing a GO FAIR network for chemistry, enabling access to chemical data by other domains, and spectral data standards and tools. For more details see <https://iupac.org/event/supporting-fair-exchange-chemical-data-standards-development/>
For further information, contact Leah McEwen (Chair) or Dave Martinsen (Secretary) of the Subcommittee on Cheminformatics Data Standards.
Announcement published in Chem Int July 2018, p. 32, https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2018-0315