At the 2019 World Chemistry Congress in Paris, the subcommittee of the IUPAC Committee on Publications and Cheminformatics Data Standards (CPCDS) held a symposium on Advancing Frontiers in Digital Chemistry during which there were several presentations on FAIR data in Chemistry (data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reproducible for humans and machines). Laura Howes, a senior science reporter for Chemical & Engineering News, the American Chemical Society’s newsmagazine, covered the Paris symposium. Speakers, including Leah McEwen, the newly-elected Chair of CPCDS, were interviewed with regards to the need to “fairify” chemistry, and the resultant article, Chemistry data should be FAIR, proponents say. But getting there will be a long road, has just been published in the September 8, 2019 issue of C&EN (see: https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/Chemistry-data-should-FAIR-proponents/97/i35)
IUPAC has taken a leading role in creating an awareness of the GO FAIR movement in Chemistry, having formally endorsed the Manifesto of the Chemistry GO FAIR Implementation Network (ChIN) earlier this year (see: https://iupac.org/iupac-endorses-the-chemistry-go-fair-manifesto/). CPCDS’ subcommittee has held several workshops on this topic over the past few years and more are planned.