The European Registry of Materials is a simple registry with the sole purpose to mint material identifiers to be used by research projects throughout the life cycle of their project (fairsharing.org entry). The identifier is nothing more than that identifier, and not by default linked to any information. Think of it as a pre-registration of the intention to study the material.
Once the identifier is created by a research project, the idea is that it is used throughout the whole study, from the design to the final reporting. It is meant to be used as unique, persistant identifier to be used in descriptions of experimental designs, in (open) notebooks, in reports, in project milestones and deliverables, and in journal articles.
More information and use cases can be found in this paper:
Van Rijn, J., Afantitis, A., Culha, M. et al. European Registry of Materials: global, unique identifiers for (undisclosed) nanomaterials. J Cheminform 14, 57 (2022). doi:10.1186/s13321-022-00614-7.
The identifier can be used in two ways. For regular writing, it can be used as in its compact form. For semantic web approaches, the full IRI can be used. Both will be considered equivalent and refer to the same identifier. The identifier is described by the CHEMINF ontology term CHEMINF_000569 and part of the eNanoMapper ontology (version 6).
To encourage wide adoption, the information that the registry will provide is kept to a minimum. This registry is not a database, though one is planned. For now, you can search for ERM identifiers in the following resources, e.g.:
The only required information to provide during a registry is a name or label. This label can be anything. It can be a anonymized label, a descriptive label, or a more rich description. Importantly, the label itself has no meaning. Moreover, the label does not have to be unique.
The following bits of information are welcome but not required (in random order):
- parent ERM identifier (identifier of the material that this material was derived from): identifier or IRI or Compact identifier
- unique chemical composition
- batch and/or lot number
- an ontological classification (could be suggested based on the chemical composition?)
- a webpage
- a provider, contact, or project name
Keep in mind that provided data is provided to the registry under the CCZero license.
This document explains how to register new materials.
This registry is supported by NanoCommons. NanoCommons has received funding from European Union Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020) under grant agreement nº 731032.
