Blog CSD Communications

It is that time of a year again when things get even busier in the Data Team with our annual summer programme that’s aiming to archive legacy data with the participation of young scientists. In this blog we wanted to highlight the impact this initiative has had on the wealth of structural data you can now access and share some insights from our amazing young scientists.

We are pleased to announce that the February 2021 data update of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) is now available! This data update is available to users of our CSD software portfolio bringing you 20,058 new structures (20,698 new entries) and increasing the total size of the CSD to over 1.1 million structures.

Last week, the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) has passed a total of 1,100,000 unique crystal structures within the database, marking the first milestone on the way to 2,000,000 structures! It wasn’t too long ago we were celebrating reaching 1 million structures (just 20 months!) and despite a year of global challenges and difficulties we are excited to start 2021 with this new achievement. A massive thank you to everyone who has contributed, not only to this feat, but to the continual growth of the CSD.

We started 2020 with a lot of excitement and expectations. After all, we had just achieved a major milestone with the millionth structure in our database, and an additional 60K entries by the end of 2019. We were all geared up with new strategies and plans to tackle the data that would start pouring in in 2020. And yes, we did have a lovely busy start. Little did we know 2020 had plans which none of us could have fathomed. By early March it was "crystal" clear that 2020 had made up its mind to make things difficult for all of us!

It’s a new year and we are planning our CSD Improvements for the upcoming year. Some of us may have already broken our resolutions (oops), but here at CCDC we have resolved to keep improving the database in 2021.

As we kick off the new year, we are delighted to announce the launch of a new workflow with the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) aimed at improving the accessibility of structural data. This initiative forms part of our overall strategy to improve structural data publication processes and ensure data is seamlessly made available through the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). ACS Publications are a key partner for us and the workflow has already been successfully adopted by Crystal Growth & Design,  Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Letters, Organometallics and more recently The Journal of Organic Chemistry (JOC).

This is the first blog in our CSD Educators series and I am delighted to introduce Greg Ferrence - @FerrenceG - from Illinois State University. In our CSD Educators series we will be hearing from lecturers and teachers about some of their experiences in education and their journey to using the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD).  We wanted Greg to launch this series because not only has he used the CSD at his institution, but he has helped the CCDC shape our own educational resources and if that wasn’t enough he is currently doing a virtual sabbatical with us. We asked Greg to tell us about how he has used structural data to help inspire a new generation of scientists, his long standing collaboration with the CCDC and his journey to having a guest editor slot on our popular #FeaturedStructureFriday social media campaign.

Data comes to us in many shapes and forms (or formats) and you might find it surprising but some of the deposits we get still occasionally come via post rather than via our online deposition process or email. But what good comes from the paper copies for the users of our electronic database?

Since a pandemic was declared nearly 6 months ago we have been closely monitoring what impact this has had for our users, depositors and the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). We thought it was about time we shared some of our observations and hopefully give you some positive news for a change.

We are pleased to announce the August 2020 data update of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) is now available! This third data update of the year brings you an additional 12,269 new structures (12,694 new database entries) and increases the total size of the CSD to over 1,060,000 structures (1,080,000 entries), with 27,298 entries from journal articles published in 2020.