Authentication of research resources, whether an antibody, biochemical reagent, or data set, is a key concept in making research reproducible. The use of unambiguous persistent identifiers of research resources enables authentication and aligns with the FAIR principles. Toward this end, Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) have been developed with support by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) of NIH. RRIDs are now cited in more than 50 journals.

SciCrunch describes itself as a curated searchable repository of research resources, with an emphasis on biomedical research resources. SciCrunch encourages the use of RRIDs.

SciCrunch is primarily an aggregator of data about particular research resources but does not store nor provide the data, per se. Users are directed to the identified federated data repositories and other primary sources to access the actual data. The current scope of SciCrunch content includes organisms, cell lines, and tools such as software, databases, and services (https://scicrunch.org/resources). The SciCrunch RRID registry service is limited to research tools such as software and data sets, and refers other resources to different registries (for details, see https://scicrunch.org/resources/about/faqs).

For further information on SciCrunch, contact Jonathan Pollock, PhD, NIDA, jpollock@mail.nih.gov.

Last Reviewed: June 5, 2023