More reasons to share your data as a CSD Communication!
In recent years, CSD Communications has grown to be one of the most popular methods for publishing structural data among the crystallographic community with more than 15,000 CSD Communications published in the last 5 years and 28,000 published overall since the 1980s. This represents a formidable amount of structural data which without CSD Communications may never have been made available to the scientific community. To promote the benefits which this wealth of crystallographic data can offer to the research community, the CCDC has therefore recently been working to make CSD Communications more convenient to publish, access and cite.
For those of you who are new to this data sharing initiative, CSD Communications is CCDC’s unique collection of crystallographic data. It allows data depositors who do not plan to publish their data with an accompanying research paper to make their crystal structure data readily available to the community through the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). In this way, the main objective of CSD Communications is to grow the number and diversity of data available to the scientific community.
Thanks to this variety of data, CSD Communications provides access to many unique collections of data which cannot be found elsewhere, as well as additional datasets of previously published structures which provide valuable information to researchers. Whilst contributing to the quantity of structures available, CSD Communications also represent good quality datasets. This was demonstrated in the CCDC’s recent investigation into the quality of CSD Communications which indicated that CSD Communications exhibited similar levels of quality when compared to structures published in peer‑review journals.
CSD refcode CLTPOC01 – the first CSD Communication deposited at the CCDC
To further enhance this diverse collection of data, the CCDC has therefore recently acquired an ISSN number for CSD Communications (ISSN 2631-9888). As an international standard for journals, the ISSN number further consolidates CSD Communications as the most convenient way to publish organic as well as metal-organic structural data. The acquisition of an ISSN number will also make tracking and recording CSD Communications citations and publications more convenient for publishers and academic institutions. For data depositors, this means more recognition and visibility for their CSD Communications.
Along with a new ISSN number, all CSD Communications can now be accessed in one place at the new archive page. From this page, you can view all CSD Communications published within a specific year as well as gain insight into the growth of CSD Communications over the last 10 years with the CSD Communications growth chart. Go straight to the page to explore now!
The new CSD Communications Archive page
From now on the CCDC will also send depositors an email notifying them of their structure’s DOI as soon as their data has been published as a CSD Communication. Since 2014, all CSD structures have received DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) upon publication; providing every structure in the CSD with a permanent access link which can be easily referenced along with the CCDC number in a publication. By receiving the data DOI directly, depositors of CSD Communications will now be able to more conveniently access, cite and share their structures using this identifier. Citing the DOI in publications will also allow researchers inspired by the structure to access and reference the data using the DOI; therefore, contributing to the number of citations.
Thanks to these enhancements to CSD Communications, we hope to encourage more members of the scientific community to explore our published structures, cite data which has inspired them and make their own contribution to the number of crystal structures available to the world by depositing their structures as CSD Communications!
If you have any feedback on the CSD Communications Archive, please let us know by contacting us at deposit@ccdc.cam.ac.uk