Supporting Sustainability of Chemistry by Linking Research Data with Physically Preserved Research Materials

Results of scientific work in chemistry can usually be obtained in the form of materials and data. A big step towards transparency and reproducibility of the scientific work can be gained if scientists publish their data in a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) manner in research data repositories. Nevertheless, in order to make chemistry as a discipline sustainable, obtaining FAIR data is insufficient and a comprehensive concept including the preservation of materials is needed. We describe in this article how we combined two infrastructures, a repository for research data (Chemotion repository) and an archive for chemical compounds (Molecule Archive), in order to offer a comprehensive infrastructure to find and access data and materials that were generated in chemistry projects. Samples play a key role in this concept: we describe how FAIR metadata of a virtual sample representation can be used to refer to the physically available sample stored in a materials’ archive and to link FAIR research data gained with the sample. We further describe the measures to make the physically available samples not only FAIR through the sample’s metadata but also accessible and reusable in the form of their material for others.