Database policy
I’m often asked where the NMR record should/will be stored. Whether the Inititiative should have NMR record servers, or a preferred one. I think that it will depend on the user’s wish and what he is required to do.
If journal ask for data to be available, the NMR records may be deposited on permanent storage such as Zenodo or Figshare (these two are considered by Magn. Reson. in Chem.) cheminfo.org, c6h6.org, etc. One required feature is stability using DOI, etc.
But there is another tendency which is for the universities to propose (and, in some case, request) long-term storage for the data of their researchers. (Remember that for academic work, the University is the owner of the data - not the principal investigator - or the researchers themselves!) This trend it probably the consequence of funding agencies requesting scientific data to be made available. In this context our job is essential because we want to avoid NMR spectra to be stored without the precious assignment data. Our task is to set the “standard” for "good" NMR records (i.e. NMReDATA compliant).
I think that we can support certain initiative, in particular if they propose a unique adn free service such as cheminfo.org / c6h6.org. But they have to provide details documentation/demo/tutorials etc. so that we can inform the memebers of the Initiative on what can be done with these tools. We will list the database on a dedicated wiki page and compare them.
Otherwise, we will not propose any “preferered" any specific “central” NMR database - we should probably remain neutral. Siversity is probably better than a given preferred choice. What we can do is to support that that all (or the largest possible part) of the data are as open as possible (with tools to facilitate harvesting, propose web api, etc.) so that different providers can build their own base and services.
Our job will be to certify that the data fulfil the format so that compatibility among database/tools/software is the best possible. One important aspect of our (future) work is to organize how data are not uselessly duplicated or files larger than necessary by a good use of links to original data. We may provide a “phone book” of long-term storage of NMR data/spectra so that the disappearance of one platform does not cause problems correcting broken links others. (To be developed.)
