Dear Reader,

This issue places a welcome emphasis on hands-on topics: our team of trainers has published both checklists and a README template, and Christoph Steinbeck’s group together with our partner, the Beilstein Institute, have developed Orthonym, a tool for naming structures – all of which are very useful tools for your day-to-day work!

And again, we want to promote the FAIR4Chem Award, which is for many reasons one of our annual highlights. The application period for 2027 runs until 15 November 2026; as in previous years, the prize money of 500 euros is kindly provided by the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (FCI). We look forward to receiving lots of applications.

Enjoy the read and
stay healthy!

Orthonym: Verified IUPAC Names for Chemical Structures

Orthonym is a new open-source tool that generates an IUPAC name from a chemical structure and indicates how reliable that name is.

AI in Data Curation - Presenting Automation at RDA Plenary 27

Our co-speaker, Oliver Koepler, presented how research data is curated through a network of coordinated services.

Improved metadata interoperability and machine-readable dataset access.

Chemical research data can be found in PubPharm

The NFDI4Chem Search Service’s database is now fully indexed on the PubPharm portal.

After euroSAMPL1 the organizers would like to pre-announce the next, more ambitious challenge.

RDM Checklists for Chemistry now available!

Eight practical checklists published to guide you through every stage of data handling.

A README Template that actually gets Chemistry!

Our new, chemistry-specific README template fills the gap left by generic repository metadata, providing your data with the context it deserves.

The FAIRest Dataset in Chemistry!

The FAIR4Chem Award honours researchers in chemistry who publish their research data. The award is given for published chemistry research datasets that best meet the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable), and thus make a significant contribution to increasing transparency in research and the reuse of scientific knowledge. NFDI4Chem will award the FAIRest dataset with a prize money of 500 €, supported by the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (FCI). The price also includes a talk about the winning dataset by the awardee as a part of the award ceremony.

APPLY for the FAIR4Chem Award 2027!

Applications open until Nov 15

Events

Consortium Meetings

We have scheduled the next two Consortium Meetings.

7.5 As we switched the online/onsite rythm, we meet online next.
Dec 9, 9 am-12 pm, registration is open
8.0 We don't have an agenda or registration yet, but SAVE-THE-DATE:
May 11, 11 am - May 12, 4 pm, at RWTH Aachen

New Workshop Series

Over the next months, we will be offering a whole series of online training events covering various aspects of RDM in chemistry:
NFDI4Chem Training Series Autumn/Winter 2026/2027.

thumbnail: RDM-Workshop in Hannover 17.01.24 - NFDI4Chem

Nov 05: Chemotion ELN Hands-on Workshop

Dec 03: Leading RDM in Chemistry: Essentials for PIs

Dec 10: Chemotion Live Demo + Q&A Session

Dec 15: Publishing Chemical Data: Meet the Repositories

Jan 19: DMP Writing Made Easy: A Hands-on Workshop for Chemists

Feb 16 - 17: Share with Confidence: Rights and Licensing in Chemical Research

Further Workshops & Events

Nov 3: Open Access publishing in chemistry – Webinar

Nov 16: Describing Data for Discovery: Metadata in Practice

Nov 18: FAIR RDM Workshop at HHU University

Dec 7: 5th BioHackathon Germany

Stammtisch

Oct 30: Schema-based research data management: concept, tools, and use case in MOF synthesis with ELN (Kenichi Endo & Felix Neubauer)
Nov 27: FAIR4Chem Awardee Talk (Marius Michael Engler / Johannes Schenk)

Don’t miss any upcoming Stammtisch (every last Friday of the month, at 2 pm) and sign up now! In the meantime, you can find recordings of previous presentations on our website!

Conference Train

As always, we are traveling a lot, so it's worth taking a look at the Conference Train page to see where we have been in 2026.

September is conference month. This year, we’ve been on the road a lot, attending events including the Wöhler Tagung, the 47th FGMR Annual Discussion Meeting, the DPhG Annual Conference 2026, the Transforming Chemistry Summit 2026, MAKRO 2026, and the Fellowship of the Data.
As you can see, we now have offers covering all sub-disciplines of chemistry, such as inorganic, physical or sustainable chemistry, photochemistry, etc.