Resource description framework technologies in chemistry

Editorial The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is providing the life sciences with new standards around data and knowledge management. The uptake in the life sciences is significantly higher than the uptake of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and even relational databases, as was recently shown by Splendiani et al. [1] Chemistry is adopting these methods too. For example, Murray-Rust and co-workers used RDF already in 2004 to distribute news items where chemical structures were embedded using RDF Site Summary 1.0 [2]. Frey implemented a system which would now be referred to as an electronic lab notebook (ELN) [3]. The use of the SPARQL query language goes back to 2007 where it was used in a system to annotate crystal structures [4]. The American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Chemical Information (CINF) invited scientists from around the world to present their use of RDF technologies in chemistry on 22nd-23rd August 2010 at the 240th ACS National Meeting in Boston, USA. During three half-day sessions, the speakers demonstrated a mix of smaller and larger initiatives where RDF and related technologies are used in cheminformatics and bioinformatics as Open Standards for data exchange, common languages (ontologies), and problem solving. The fifteen presentations were grouped in the themes computation, ontologies, and chemical applications. Figures 1, 2 and 3 display the most important keywords reflecting the abstracts of the talks in each session as word clouds [5]. The goal of the meeting was to make more chemists aware of what the RDF Open Standard has to offer to chemistry. We are delighted to continue this effort with this Thematic Series, for which the speakers (and others) were invited to present their work in more detail to a wider chemistry community. The choice of an Open Access journal follows this goal. At this place, we would like to thank Pfizer, Inc., who had partially funded the article processing charges for this Thematic Series. Pfizer, Inc. has had no input into the content of the publication or the articles themselves. All articles in the series were independently prepared by the authors and were subjected to the journal’s standard peer review process. In the remainder of this editorial, we will briefly outline the various RDF technologies and how they have been used in chemistry so far.