Blog June 2018

You may not have yet heard about CSD Communications. Or you may have known them as they were previously recognized by the community: Private Communications. If you are one of our depositors we may have asked you if you would like your unpublished data to be included in the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) as one. If you use the CSD for your research then you may have found the answers you were looking for by using a unique structure or refinement, shared with the community as a CSD Communication, that otherwise would have remained unpublished, confidential and unknown.

Jack Dunitz is a well-known chemist and chemical crystallographer with an extraordinary research history in structural chemistry. A recurring theme in Jack’s research has been use of crystal structure analysis to study chemical problems such as molecular conformation, reaction paths, intermolecular interactions, molecular motion in solids and solid-state reactions. It is not surprising therefore, given his research history, that Jack has long had a close connection with both the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC). Not only has Jack been a staunch supporter and frequent user of the CSD, he was also one of the inaugural Governors of the CCDC when the centre was first established as an independent, not-for-profit organisation and served on the board from 1987-1999.

We announced in February a substantial change to our software release pattern with a target of four software releases during 2018, rather than the usual single release around November time. This shorter development and release cycle allows us to be more responsive to user feedback as well as helping to ensure a continuously improving and stable software system. This current update is our second software release of the year (2018 CSD Release Update 2) with two more planned in the second half of 2018.