Hi everyone, this edition starts with two announcements before it dives into the topic of software engineering skills for data science. This newsletter started as a weekly newsletter in which I shared topics around FAIR data and updates about my work. Selecting one or more topics each week is fun and helps myself to summarize and understand topics better.

In a previous post, I looked at the Findability of FAIR data in common chemistry journals. Here I move on to the next letter, the A = Accessible. The attributes of A[cite]10.1038/sdata.2016.18[/cite] include: (meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardized communication protocol. the protocol is open, free and universally implementable.  the protocol allows for an authentication and authorization procedure.

In recent years, findable data has become ever more important (the F in FAIR). Here I test that F using the DataCite search service. Firstly an introduction to this service. This is a metadata database about datasets and other research objects.

Another occasional conference report (day 1). So why is one about “persistent identifiers” important, and particularly to the chemistry domain? The PID most familiar to most chemists is the DOI (digital object identifier). In fact there are many; some 60 types have been collected by ORCID (themselves purveyors of researcher identifiers). They sometimes even have different names;

The title here is taken from a presentation made by Ian Bruno from CCDC at the recent conference on Open Science. It also addresses the theme here of the issues that might arise in assigning identifiers for any given molecule.

Blogging in chemistry remains something of a niche activity, albeit with a variety of different styles. The most common is commentary or opinion on the scientific literature or conferencing, serving to highlight what their author considers interesting or important developments. There are even metajournals that aggregate such commentaries. The question therefore occasionally arises;

In the beginning (taken here as prior to ~1980) libraries held five-year printed consolidated indices of molecules, organised by formula or name (Chemical abstracts). This could occupy about 2m of shelf space for each five years. And an equivalent set of printed volumes from the Beilstein collection.