InChI Project Update for 2024 (January 7, 2024)
In 2021-2023, the InChI Trust decided to significantly invest in creating additional roles for outreach and technical direction – spending from our reserves to accelerate InChI development and transition this to a more open and transparent model. This was followed by the sad passing of Igor Pletnev, our primary developer, in late 2021.
Since then, much progress has been made transitioning the existing code to a GitHub environment, developing additional understanding of the code, fixing bugs and creating testing protocols that build on previous practice. This work has taken place at RWTH Aachen, supported by the NFDI4Chem project and the Volkswagen Foundation. The next ‘new’ version of InChI – rebuilding of the current version 1.06, cleaned-up and with additional bugfixes, is in testing and will be available for the IUPAC InChI Subcommittee and CPCDS to approve soon. The code now lives on GitHub – we are also working through the governance needed for this new development model aligned with IUPAC.
In parallel, much has been achieved by the Working Groups and the IUPAC InChI Subcommittee in agreeing the scientific requirements for extensions of the standard, and for implementation investigations to inform our technical roadmap.
The roadmap below covers both extensions to core InChI, and to InChI applications (RInChI, MInChI, the web demo and the resolver). Additional Working Groups are still considering their requirements.
In addition to the development resource at RWTH Aachen, we will also be supported by cheminformatics expertise from a new position at the Beilstein Institute. The InChI Trust is very grateful for this in-kind support from these organisations, and partnerships such as these are a fantastic way to achieve step-changes in speed of delivery, building on the core financial support from the Trust’s members, and input from IUPAC’s expert volunteers.
Having drawn on our reserves to catalyse these activities, the Trust now needs to reduce its annual spend so this is covered by core revenue. Given the focus on the technical roadmap for 2024-2025, we have prioritised our support towards technical oversight, coordination and planning. As a result we are reducing the support for roles in other areas. This refocus will enable us to deliver enhancements to InChI that have been long desired by our user community and grow partnerships and member contributions that will support further scientific activities to push the standard forward.
