A new standard is being rolled out at the meeting today. ThermoML – “an XML-based approach for storage and exchange of experimental thermophysical and thermochemical property data” is a system was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in conjunction with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

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Interestingly, some journal publishers are already on board. ThermoML files corresponding to papers in several journals will be available on the main site: https://trc.nist.gov/ThermoML.html

The system is designed to be readable both by people and by computers. Now that there is a standard, the hope is that computers can talk to each other better. Why not let them do the grunt work while the researchers think lofty thoughts?

Each file captures many of the same things as a regular article: citation data, chemical compounds involved and data about them (sample source, purification methods and so on), information about who did the work and why, methods, results, and even information about uncertainty and level of precision.

The most interesting technical challenge seems to have been the uncertainties, which were based on the Guide to the expression of Uncertainty in Management (GUM), which has been around since 1995 but does not seem to be used very much.

“We need an efficient, well defined way to get information from measurements to engineering applications,” says Rob Chirico, from NIST.