NMR spectroscopy lacks data management.

Raw NMR data are stored in isolated silos without any metadata and search facilities. The community of researches in the field of NMR spectroscopy would hugely benefit from a secure and effortless data storage system that would facilitate data sharing and exchange across the globe.

NOMAD (NMR Online Management and Data Store) is a project that aspires to address the problem with the raw NMR data management. It has been developed in St Andrews since 2012, in a collaboration between the Schools of Chemistry and Computer Science and was initially funded by EPSRC (Strategic Partners Project & Impact Acceleration Account).

The product has gone through several phases of development and has been customised to the needs of the School of Chemistry to support molecular synthesis activity. It has transformed the experience of the front line research community at St Andrews with a user base of around 200 researchers from about 25 research groups, as well as around 260 undergraduate students in the teaching laboratories.

NOMAD database is in the stage of MVP (Minimal Viable Product) and is ready to roll out its implementation in other university NMR suites. Currently, we plan to deliver the system to the NMR laboratories around Scotland which is welcome and supported by Scottish NMR User Group (SNUG) and ScottCHEM.

In long term, we envisage that NOMAD installations could form a peer-to-peer network of nodes that would facilitate exchange of raw NMR data between participants and potentially lead the way towards a decentralised NMR big data repository .