International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)
The IUCr is an International Scientific Union, formed in 1947. Its objectives are to promote international cooperation in crystallography and to contribute to all aspects of crystallography, to promote international publication of crystallographic research, to facilitate standardization of methods, units, nomenclatures and symbols, and to form a focus for the relations of crystallography to other sciences. Since 1991 it has been responsible for the Crystallographic Information Framework, a collection of machine-readable ontologies facilitating the electronic interchange and deposition of scientific information in the structural sciences, including raw and processed experimental data, structure solution and refinement details, structural models and their subsequent publication in the peer-reviewed literature and deposition in curated databases. The ontological framework also includes extensive validation and quality evaluation tools. The IUCr is also a significant publisher of primary research journals and major reference works in crystallography and cognate sciences.
Key Research Facilities
The IUCr offices in Chester, UK, host the publishing activities of the IUCr and have on-site software managing article submissions, data validation and technical reviewing, and journals publication. They also host the official versions of CIF dictionaries relevant to non-biological sciences, and will provide the platform for the early development, peer review, formatting and dissemination of new dictionaries created as part of the NanED project.
