In May 2026, a group of inspiring colleagues convened at TIB Hannover for the first organisational meeting of the SCDSC. This meeting marked a pivotal step in transforming the collaborative momentum built during earlier workshops in Cambridge, Delitzsch and London into a structured, sustainable initiative.
The SCDSC is set to launch as an 18-month project under the initial stewardship of the Pistoia Alliance, with CODATA providing administrative support and IUPAC acting as a core scientific leader and partner.
The project has two main topics:
- The establishment of a formal institution. This lays the foundations for a long-term alliance capable of further developing, maintaining and managing these standards in a sustainable manner.
- The project will map the landscape of digital standards in chemistry, including use cases, stakeholders, and interdependencies, and will deliver a knowledge base that can be acted upon by both humans and machines.
NFDI4Chem is playing an active role in shaping and implementing the coalition: NFDI4Chem will contribute to strategic planning and coordinate outreach efforts. It will also leverage its network to engage additional chemistry-related consortia. NFDI4Chem will contribute expertise in metadata and ontology standardisation and data formats to actively support the development of the proposed knowledge base.
What’s next?
A call for participation will soon be published, inviting contributions to the project and long-term involvement in the coalition. The project is set to begin in Q4 2026.
If you are as enthusiastic as we are about shaping the future of sustainable chemistry data standards, stay tuned! There will be meaningful opportunities to get involved soon.
