In recent years the world of scientific publishing has seen an increased interest in the data behind scientific articles and in publishing this data, sometimes without the article at all. This can be seen in the rise of data journals and databases. For many years the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) has offered a way to share crystal structure data without an associated scientific paper, so called CSD Communication (CSD Comms). This allows authors to get credit for their work, which would gain them nothing sitting in a drawer or on a hard drive. However, one of the most common concerns we hear about CSD Communications is regarding the quality of these structures that have not undergone peer-review and how we ensure the continued integrity of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). With this in mind, we have used three methods to investigate potential differences in the data quality between structures from different journals and structures without traditional peer‑review. We selected a range of high impact journals covering science, general chemistry and crystallography, as well as a data journal along with the CCDC’s own CSD Communications.
