DISTRIBUTED BY NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP ON BEHALF OF THE INCHI TRUST

21 July 2009

 

Contact: Grace Baynes

Corporate Public Relations, Nature Publishing Group

T:+44 (0)20 7014 4063

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The InChI Trust, a not-for-profit organisation to expand and develop the
InChI Open Source chemical structure representation algorithm, is formally
launched this week. Originally developed by the International Union of Pure
and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier
(InChI) is an alpha-numeric character string generated by an algorithm. The
InChI was developed as a new, non-proprietary, international standard to
represent chemical structures.

The Trust aims to develop and improve on the current InChI standard, further
enabling the interlinking of chemistry and chemical structures on the web.
The connection with IUPAC is maintained through IUPAC's InChI Subcommittee.

 

The InChI algorithm turns chemical structures into machine-readable strings
of information. InChIs are unique to the compound they describe and can
encode absolute stereochemistry Machine-readable, the InChI allows chemistry
and chemical structures to be navigable and discoverable. A simple analogy
is that InChI is the bar-code for chemistry and chemical structures. The
InChI format and algorithm are non-proprietary and the software is open
source, with ongoing development done by the community.

 

"The goal of the InChI Trust", says Project Director Stephen Heller "is to
continue to develop the InChI and InChIKey, the condensed machine-searchable
version, as a tool to enable widescale linking of chemical information."

 

The InChI Trust was formally incorporated in the UK in May 2009, and now has
6 charter members: The Royal Society of Chemistry, Nature Publishing Group,
FIZ-Chemie Berlin, Symyx Technologies, Taylor & Francis and OpenEye. Further
organizations and publishers are in the process of joining the InChI Trust.

 

"Nature Publishing Group is delighted to be a charter member of the InChI
Trust", says Jason Wilde, Publisher for the Physical Sciences, Nature
Publishing Group."We view the ongoing maintenance of the InChI algorithm,
and the resulting adoption of InChI, as important for the development of
chemistry communication. The interlinking that the InChI offers between
journal content and databases ensures that chemistry is the first truly
web-enabled scientific discipline."

 

"The InChI has already gained a wide user base," says Richard Kidd,
Informatics Manager at the Royal Society of Chemistry, "and the Trust will
ensure continuing development and support for this key standard, helping to
link together chemical resources across the internet. The RSC is proud to
support the InChI Trust."

 

Since the introduction of the InChI in 2005, there has been widespread
take-up of InChI standards by public databases and journals. Today, there
are more than 100 million InChIs in scientific literature and products.

 

To date, numerous databases, journals, and chemical structure drawing
programs have incorporated the InChI algorithm. These include the NIST
WebBook and mass spectral databases, the NIH/NCBI PubChem database, the
NIH/NCI database, the EBI chemistry database, ChemSpider, Symyx Draw and
many others.

 

The initiative serves chemists, publishers, chemical software companies,
chemical structure drawing vendors, librarians, and intermediaries by
creating an international standard to represent defined chemical structures.
This provides a consistent, credible and compatible way for databases of
chemical structures to be linked together for the benefit of users of
chemical information around the world.

 

-ENDS-

 

For further information, please contact:

 

Project Director, Dr. Stephen Heller at [log in to unmask]

 

Background notes:

 

The InChI project was initially undertaken by IUPAC with the cooperation of
National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). In 2009, a standard
version of InChI and the InChIKey were released. Members of the InChI Trust
will pay annual dues to support the continued development of InChI, and
maintainance of the InChI algorithm. This income will be used exclusively
for InChI algorithm development, maintenance, outreach, and educational
activities associated with the project

 

Details of the up-take by many chemical database providers, software
developers, and educational activities associated with the project

 

Details of the up-take by many chemical database providers, software
developers, and journal publishers are available at
www.iupac.org/inchi/adopters.html

 

 

Dr. Wendy A. Warr

Wendy Warr & Associates

6 Berwick Court, Holmes Chapel

Cheshire, CW4 7HZ, England

+44 (0)1477 533837

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