The Liverpool materials discovery server: a suite of computational tools for the collaborative discovery of materials

The discovery of new materials often requires collaboration between experimental and computational chemists. Web based platforms allow more flexibility in this collaboration by giving access to computational tools without the need for access to computational researchers. We present Liverpool materials discovery server (https://lmds.liverpool.ac.uk/), one such platform which currently hosts six state of the art computational tools in an easy to use format. We describe the development of this platform, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages the methods used. In addition, we provide source code, a tutorial example, and setup scripts, and an application programming interface (API) to enable other research groups to create similar platforms, to promote collaboration both within and between research groups. The Liverpool materials discovery server (https://lmds.liverpool.ac.uk) provides easy access to six state of the art computational tools. Creation of such cloud platforms enables collaboration between experimental and computational researchers.