IUCr journals are developing standards for depositing raw data
collected from single-crystal and powder experiments, in collaboration
with the relevant commissions and committees. These standards would
then inform automated checking tools, in the same way that CheckCIF
verifies structural results. Such standards consist of two parts: a
list of precisely-defined metadata that should be contained in the
deposited data files, and a list of acceptable formats expressing that
metadata. There are several challenges in producing these two lists,
for example, defining what information is sufficient to process a
powder measurement is complicated by the variety of possible uses,
including phase identification, quantitative phase analysis and
structural refinement. A further consideration is that data from an
area detector requires more description than data from a point
detector, and area detector raw data formats are bewildering in their
variety. The presentation explains how these challenges have been
addressed by the current draft, and how CheckCIF for raw powder data
might operate.