InChI Version 1.07 Approved

IUPAC InChI moves to GitHub to support sustainable chemical standards development

“The InChI (International Chemical Identifier) is a widely used standard chemical identifier that enables the connection and interoperability of chemistry data across the web. The core code and development framework of the InChI has now been migrated to GitHub, providing a foundation to support future extensions of the standard and associated applications, and to broaden the expertise supporting the standard. The first milestone of this work is the 1.07 version, recently approved by IUPAC (International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry) and the InChI Trust and available for download at GitHub.

The InChI has been used to identify unique chemical structures for over 20 years and is implemented in chemistry toolkits and in databases across the world. The work to maintain and develop the software rested on the shoulders of one expert, Igor Pletnev, and following his sad death in 2021, it became urgent to move the code to a more open model. Completion of this move with a new fully tested and approved release makes the development of this digital standard more transparent. It will also enable the extension of the InChI to further classes of chemical compounds, in particular inorganic and organo-metallic compounds, as well as future modernisation of the codebase.”  

Read more: InChI Trust News Release, July 16, 2024.

“For over 20 years, InChI (International Chemical Identifier) has uniquely identified chemical structures in databases, journal articles, and supplier catalogues, across the web. It helps quickly determine if a chemical compound in a library is present in an internal repository or match data about chemical compounds across different databases. Reliable standards like InChI are essential for the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable) in chemical data exchange.”  

Read more: Fit for Future: InChI Standard Moves to GitHub. ChemistryViews, July 28, 2024.