FAQs

We can help you share your data through the CSD if you would like to publish structures that feature in your PhD thesis or structures that you have determined but no electronic CIF is available. To find out more you can either email deposit@ccdc.cam.ac.uk summarising what data you would like help sharing or you can find more information below. 

Sharing thesis structures

To do this, simply deposit your data through Deposit Structures. When completing the publication information for your structure, add the journal name as "Thesis", the year your thesis was completed and the list of authors that have contributed to the dataset. To see an example of structures published in a thesis, please see the CSD entries for WOMXEE and WOMXII, published by CCDC's very own Jürgen Harter in his PhD thesis. 

Sharing structures without an electronic CIF

Although we would always encourage electronic depositions where possible via our online deposition service we know that sometimes it isn't possible particularly for historic structures. If these structures are from your thesis or you are happy to share directly through the database as a CSD Communications you can send us these hardcopy depositions and our team of Deposition Coordinators will help you get these into the CSD.

To do this please email deposit@ccdc.cam.ac.uk and attach any files you have. These may include .res or .ins files, and/or the crystallographic tables including the table of coordinates and basic crystallographic information. If you no longer have the crystallographic tables in electronic format, then please either scan your data to PDF, take a photo or type up the data into a text file, and send it to deposit@ccdc.cam.ac.uk. We would also ask you set the email subject as "Hardcopy Data" and provide information in the body of the email to indicate that no electronic CIF is available.

For cases where a CIF file is not available you will also need to include additional details about your structures in the email, including co-authors. If the structures were published in a thesis we ask you also include PhD supervisor name, institution and the name of the crystallographer (if this was someone else) and anyone else that has contributed to the dataset. If your data is not included in a thesis we can help you publish this as a CSD Communication. Please indicate in your email that you are happy to share as a CSD Communication and again provide details of co-authors that should be associated with the data.

Although we are on-hand to help you convert thesis or CSD Communication data it is your responsibility to convert this data yourself if you are planning to publish in an associated scientific article.