Developments in Scientific Data Transfer

The development and publication of the JCAMP-DX standard transfer format for infrared spectra has opened up a new era of format standardization in spectroscopy. The acceptance of the standard by IR instrument manufacturers has ensured the broad implementation of the standard and has opened the way for a multitude of data exchange and comparison possibilities previously limited to the mass spectroscopists with their EPA format. The simplicity and success of this standard has brought about the call for and development of JCAMP-DX similar standard formats for structure information, NMR spectra, UV/Vis spectra, Mass spectra and crystallographic information so that data exchange between scientists can now be a simple matter of decoding ASCII files with standard software. In this paper we present some of our work as the Data Standards Test Center for the German Unified Spectroscopic Database Project where we look into the current state of the implemented software handling these transfer standards and at future developments. Some of the benefits of this standardization will also be discussed.