{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "chem-bla-ics", "description": "Chemblaics (pronounced chem-bla-ics) is the science that uses open science and computers to solve problems in chemistry, biochemistry and related fields.", "home_page_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/", "feed_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2025/06/29/curation-is-an-essential-part-of-doing-research.json", "icon": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/assets/images/chem-bla-ics_logo.png", "language": "en", "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286", "_orcid": "0000-0001-7542-0286" } ], "items": [ { "id": "https://doi.org/10.59350/c4k5q-h8849", "url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2025/06/29/curation-is-an-essential-part-of-doing-research.html", "title": "Curation is an essential part of doing research", "content_html": "

Depending on your exact definition of doing science, keeping track as precise as possible of your observations\nis an essential part of doing science. The precision should be high enough that mistakes are obvious. This pattern is,\nof course, not limited to doing science and we see this in open source development too. Unfortunately, in the\nmodern way of doing science, this is not getting the attention it should get. Worse, with narratives (stories)\nabout the research, in the form of journal articles, are generally considered more important that a precise\ndescription of the observations.

\n\n

Is that a big issue? Hell, yes. Where do you think the FAIR ideas came from? And why FAIR in ten years has not\nbrought about the change it was hoping for?

\n\n

For me, my fascination for curation started as a student, around 1995, with the Dictionary on Organic Chemistry.\nAt that time, my interest came from wanting to learn about chemistry and biology. During my M.Sc. and PhD, it was\nobvious how essential it was to derivating correct scientific conclusions from your experiment. Data, knowledge,\nand software alike, imo. And because curation is expensive, not having to repeat it, I prefer to do it as\nOpen Science.

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Curation

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Of course, curation has been part of doing science, but to a large extens is separate step from doing science.\nIt is done by database developers, librarians, and chemo- and bioinformaticians. For example, Chemical Abstracts\nService (CAS) started over 100 years ago and started\nindexing chemical structures in 1965. The curation is an ongoing process, also for old records.

\n\n

Biocuration is getting\nmore and more attention:

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\"\"

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The recognition and rewarding by having the International Society for Biocuration\n(ISB, Scholia page) should not be underestimated\n(doi:10.1038/455047A). Their Annual International Biocuration Conferences\nhave been running since 2005. And with their\nawards, they give the biocuration work recognition and, literally, rewarding:

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My curation Curriculum Vitae

\n\n

I don’t have a good curation CV. For a large extend because the curation has been part of a study. The curation\nitself does not get recognized, and only the journal article does. With datasets slowly getting more recognition,\nso does data curation, but data curation is not really part of how we do FAIR at this moment, and via this route\nnot getting the attention it gets.

\n\n

But since I have been updating my CV anyway, I dug up some curation I am proud\nof:

\n\n\n\n

I am also curation my blog, which was originally in blogger.com but being ported to Markdown with extra annotation.\nThat includes updating URLs\nand annotation of blog posts with chemicals,\ngrants, and\nintention-typed citations.

\n\n

Long tail

\n\n

Of course, I have my Wikipedia edits, and contributed to projects like Bioregistry.io,\nFAIRsharing, regularly submit missed mentions to Altmetric.com,\netc. There is a long tail in curation. And there is a lot of curation hidden in my literature list.

\n\n

And that long tail matters to me. I want every researcher to pick up the challenge to curate their own\nresearch output. Put your experimental data in databases, add important provenance, get the details rights.\nThis is essential to reduce the cost of doing research, and that is more important than ever.

\n\n

BTW, I must note that our bioinformatics team colleagues too have done a tremendous amount of biocuration,\nin WikiPathways (Denise, Freddie,\nSusan), in nanosafety (Jeaphianne,\nAmmar), and in toxicology (Marvin),\njust to name a few. Often together with B.Sc. and M.Sc. students (which can work really well).

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Award nomination

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And I hope this makes it clear why I am delighted to was nominated last week\nfor an ISB Excellence in Biocuration Advanced Career Award. The list of past awardees is impressive,\nas are the other nominations:\nLaurel Cooper, Oregon State University/USA,\nSteven Marygold, University of Cambridge/UK,\nSaurabh Raghuvanshi, University of Delhi/India, and\nKimberly Van Auken, California Institute of Technology/USA.

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It’s an honor to be listed along these other nominees and being nominated is a great recognition! With a\nthank you to the person who proposed my nomination.

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References

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Guha, R., Howard, M. T., Hutchison, G. R., Murray-Rust, P., Rzepa, H., Steinbeck, C., Wegner, J., & Willighagen, E. L. (2006). The Blue Obelisk—Interoperability in Chemical Informatics. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 46(3), 991–998. https://doi.org/10.1021/ci050400b CrossRef Scholia
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Howe, D., Costanzo, M., Fey, P., Gojobori, T., Hannick, L., Hide, W., Hill, D. P., Kania, R., Schaeffer, M., St Pierre, S., Twigger, S., White, O., & Yon Rhee, S. (2008). The future of biocuration. Nature, 455(7209), 47–50. https://doi.org/10.1038/455047a CrossRef Scholia
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", "summary": "Depending on your exact definition of doing science, keeping track as precise as possible of your observations is an essential part of doing science. The precision should be high enough that mistakes are obvious. This pattern is, of course, not limited to doing science and we see this in open source development too. Unfortunately, in the modern way of doing science, this is not getting the attention it should get. Worse, with narratives (stories) about the research, in the form of journal articles, are generally considered more important that a precise description of the observations.", "image": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/assets/images/biocuration.png", "date_published": "2025-06-29T00:00:00+00:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-07T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": ["curation","openscience","nmrshiftdb","europepmc"], "_references": [ { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/455047A", "doi": "10.1038/455047A" } , { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1021/CI050400B", "doi": "10.1021/CI050400B" } ], "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286" } ] } ] }