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Welcome to the NOMAD documentation for nomad-simulations, a schema for computational materials science data.

Where to Start

The documentation is split into three complementary sections:

• Schema Navigation > Overview: auto-generated reference for section trees, quantities, inheritance, and relationship diagrams.
• Schema Explanation > Overview: hand-written guidance for design rationale, modeling conventions, and usage patterns.
• Contributor Guides > Overview: contributor-focused references, development process guidance, and documentation automation guidance.

Context

NOMAD is a free, open-source data management platform for materials science aligned with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). For broader platform documentation, see the NOMAD docs and NOMAD base sections guide.

The nomad-simulations schema provides reusable core sections that can be extended for code-specific and domain-specific schemas while preserving consistent structure, interoperability, and discoverability.

When designing sections, we follow established object-oriented design principles and patterns (for example, SOLID and Design Patterns by Gamma et al.).

Throughout this documentation, we use UML class diagrams to represent schema relationships. UML is specified by the Object Management Group (OMG).

Contributing

If you want to contribute schema or documentation updates:

1. Fork the repository and create a focused branch.
2. Check Contributor Guides > Overview before changing established patterns.
3. Implement your extension following the Schema Development Guide.
4. Update docs according to the Documentation Writing Guide.
5. Open a pull request against upstream with a clear scope and test evidence.