The EPSRC is currently undertaking a review of its support for 'Mid Range' Services. As part of this process it has started a Community Consultation exercise (for details see links section). The Chemical Database Service (CDS) is one of the current Mid Range Facilities and the community it serves will be directly affected by decisions made by the EPSRC following on from its consultation procedure. As part of the overall review process, the EPSRC has asked all relevant communities to prepare and submit a Statement of Need (SoN). The intention is that these should come from the communities served by Mid Range Facilities rather than the organisations currently providing these services. The CDS is a National service providing on-line access to up-to-date, comprehensive, high quality chemical databases and ancillary facilities. These databases provide the three dimensional structure, spectroscopic data and physical properties of molecules which are crucial to the understanding, enhancement and production of new materials and processes. The communities served by the CDS are very far reaching and include users from not only chemistry disciplines but also material science, physics, engineering and biological sciences, etc. There are a number of distinct advantages in having a dedicated central facility of the kind provided by the CDS. These include much reduced cost, access to large systems which would be beyond the means of individual users, ready availability of specialist information all in one place, help, support and training. The diversity and range of the users who currently use the CDS makes production of a SoN document potentially rather difficult. However the Sponsors of this Petition represent important sections of the user community, and they have agreed to lead and coordinate production of the SoN document which will be submitted to the EPSRC. This petition has been put in place for the benefit of all community members with an interest in the continued availability of the kind of facilities that are currently provided by the CDS. It gives an opportunity for everyone to lend their support and, if they so wish, to contribute to the framing of the SoN. Please add your name, institution, research area and any other comments you have regarding a central chemical database service (name, institution and research area will be added to the end of the SoN). If you also feel that additional databases are needed as "must have" or "desirable" then please indicate this in the comments section. These might include, for instance, data on commercially available compounds, screening compounds and other database system of potential value to the organic chemistry and more general communities. *Note*: None of your details apart from your name will appear on the petitions Signatures page and you can even opt to display your name as anonymous. A donation (to iPetitions) is *not* required. Simply click the Sign petition >> button then close the window. Professor Rod Hubbard (York) Professor Paul Raithby (Bath) Professor Ben Davis (Oxford) Professor Jeremy Frey (Southampton) Dr. Amparo Galindo (Imperial College London) Dr. Andrew Fogg (Liverpool) Dr. Tim Claridge (Oxford)

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