To enable faster and more efficient searching of the synthesis phase space, we used clustering to identify lower-dimensional sub-regions of the synthesis phase space which have been widely researched in experimental papers -essentially using a chemical combination's popularity as a proxy for its importance. The chemical identities used were encoded using TF-IDF vectorisation, then similar synthesis protocols were grouped by their density in the encoded space. The outcome of this clustering analysis is visualised using a 2-d projection in Figure and summarised in Table , where the distance between points is indicative of each protocol's similarity to its neighbours. Eight clusters of reagent combinations were identified each containing 2-4 chemicals of a total of 6 reagents. We posit that these clusters represent well defined strategies to synthesize ZIF-8, which can be explored separately, therefore reducing the total amount of information required to explore these regions of the synthesis space. . The well-defined synthesis strategies clustered in Figure are notably different from the analysis performed in the previous section. In the first instance, ethanol was fully absent signifying its insignificance as a reaction solvent and matching the earlier analyses. Separately, acetate salts are only identified in one cluster and only associated with water. This association is due to the lack of solubility of zinc acetate in methanol (ca. 15 g/L cf. 430 g/L in water), information which can only otherwise be gained by specific knowledge of the chemistry of zinc acetate. While obvious to those who already are aware of the system, this information may otherwise be overlooked by chemists naive to the intricacies of ZIF-8 synthesis -an example of chemical intuition. Therefore, clustering of similar synthesis protocols together can help users to avoid some common pitfalls when planning experiments for the first time.