We are pleased to share our participation in the ACS Fall held in San Francisco. This year’s event built on our previous contributions to the ACS Spring (read more here), providing an excellent platform for engaging with members of the global chemical information community, particularly those with whom we collaborate with in IUPAC projects. Together, we are tackling the challenges associated with data management, acknowledging that these difficulties affect everyone across the globe and therefore require collective action on an international level.
We are especially thankful for the opportunity to have co-chaired two symposia at ACS fall, including the following:
1. Symposium: “Helping Chemists manage their Data”
- The symposium explored the complexities of managing and publishing data, highlighting the emergence of electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs).
- Our goals were to address these pressing issues, promote the acceptance of the FAIR guiding principles, and engage in open discussions with our community.
- We discussed the cultural and psychosocial barriers that hinder data publication and explored essential aspects such as training, workload, funding, and publisher requirements.
- Additionally, we examined the various phases of the data lifecycle, encompassing data processing software, ELN integration, data transfer to repositories, and data collection and storage practices adopted by developers and researchers.
2. Symposium: “Elevating Data with Smart Metadata and Knowledge Graphs”
- In our second symposium, we turned our attention to the crucial role of metadata and ontologies in providing context for generating meaningful knowledge from data.
- This session emphasised diverse facets of data and metadata, including data formats, standards, and terminologies.
- Our overarching goal was to facilitate the creation and utilisation of machine-readable data in contexts such as electronic laboratory notebooks and knowledge graphs.
Lastly, we look back fondly on many insightful discussions at the various networking events. These interactions have paved the way for promising collaborations that we are eagerly looking forward to.
