The Advantage of Automatic Peer-Reviewing of C-13-NMR Reference Data Using the CSEARCH-Protocol

A systematic investigation of the experimental C-13-NMR spectra published in Molecules during the period of 1996 to 2015 with respect to their quality using CSEARCH-technology is described. It is shown that the systematic application of the CSEARCH-Robot-Referee during the peer-reviewing process prohibits at least the most trivial assignment errors and wrong structure proposals. In many cases, the correction of the assignments/chemical shift values is possible by manual inspection of the published tables; in certain cases, reprocessing of the original experimental data might help to clarify the situation, showing the urgent need for a public domain repository. A comparison of the significant key numbers derived for Molecules against those of other important journals in the field of natural product chemistry shows a quite similar level of quality for all publishers responsible for the six journals under investigation. From the results of this study, general rules for data handling, data storage, and manuscript preparation can be derived, helping to increase the quality of published NMR-data and making these data available as validated reference material.

Automated summary

This study systematically investigates the quality of experimental C-13-NMR spectra published in the journal Molecules from 1996 to 2015 using CSEARCH technology. The results show that using the CSEARCH-Robot-Referee during peer review can prevent trivial assignment errors and wrong structure proposals. Comparison of key numbers with other journals in natural product chemistry indicates a similar level of quality among publishers.