Re: [dddwg] Please comment on the attached for ICSTI's InsightsSeries

Dear John, Tom and Brian and others

Just had a quick look at this and, irrespective of whether it is suitable for ICSTI (which it should be), it is a very nice account of the issues and a valuable document in its own right.

For the “raw” images, the question is raised regarding who will fund and maintain any archive, with the suggestion

“Costs could be minimised by preserving each raw diffraction data set at the local centre (synchrotron facility, neutron research centre or university) thus avoiding quite large network file-transfer costs.”

Essentially this is putting the main burden for data deposition  on the facilities used to generate the data and it is not at all clear whether they will be able to do this. I think we need to find out.

The attached gives a list of synchrotrons which I believe are active in producing results from macromolecular crystallography. I am happy to initiate a survey of these but will need help for contacts, particularly for the synchrotrons in the USA which seem to have lots of autonomous groups, each responsible for an instrument. I don’t think we can be complete with this but it would be good to be representative.

I believe the main driving force for data deposition is macromolecular crystallography so this is the initial priority. It would be worth finding out the position of neutron sources for data archiving. I presume that if facilities are able to archive for MX, they will be able to do something similar for SAXS, fibre diffraction, chemical crystallography etc. Some definition of what needs to be archived for these techniques would be good (e.g. background subtracted data or otherwise for SAXS).

If people think the survey would not be useful, please say so. Otherwise, can people please send suggestions for contacts. I will also circulate this to the IUCr synchrotron commission members.

Best Regards

Colin