Raw diffraction data reuse: the good, the bad and the challenging

A major effort of the IUCr Diffraction Data Deposition Working Group (2011 to 2017) and now the IUCr Committee on Data since 2017 has been exploring the practicalities, the costs and benefits, and the opportunities for new crystallographic science arising from large-capacity data archives that have become available.  We think it timely to hold a full-day workshop aimed at: (1) discussing current practices in raw data archival and sharing, (2) educating those who generate and deal in crystallographic data on best practices in data reuse in various categories of crystallographic science by leading experts, (3) offering a summing up, including the role of IUCrData’s new Raw Data Letters. We expect attendees to learn about the opportunities for raw data reuse, including the use of raw data as test data sets for machine learning, and to achieve an understanding of how to effectively archive their own raw data to maximise the potential for data sharing and reuse in the future. This workshop will explore in detail the successes and challenges in practice of raw data sharing and reuse. Being a full day, it will complement the proposed microsymposium on "Raw diffraction data reuse: warts and all" in the Congress itself; most importantly the microsymposium will allow for the usual submission of up to four abstracts from anywhere in the world whereas the workshop is principally made up of invited speakers. Furthermore, the microsymposium will highlight the importance of databases. Of the workshop and the microsymposium the proposed keynote on the "European Photon and Neutron Open Science Cloud" (by Andy Götz of ESRF) is the major highlight, making it the world leading effort of this consortium of more than ten European synchrotron and X-ray laser radiation sources with raw data management and sharing.

Reminder: The CommDat user forum is at https://forums.iucr.org