We first analysed the reagent compounds used during synthesis, which should consist of 2methylimidazole and Zn salts only. As can be seen in Figure , this is not the case: while methylimidazole was by far the most common linker molecule mentioned (Figure ), 34% of the synthesis protocols mentioned cobalt salts. In fact, 32% of the synthesis protocols omitted zinc entirely, indicating that these were synthesis protocols of ZIF-67 instead -the cobalt equivalent of ZIF-8. The remaining cobalt-mentioning synthesis protocols also contained zinc, indicating that they may be mixed-metal systems. This ambiguity highlights some of the key nomenclature issues with MOF materials -ZIF-8 and -67 are practically the same material in terms of synthesis protocol but this proximity is not reflected in the common name. The use of tools such as MOFid 30 can avoid this linguistic ambiguity, even accurately describing the continuous transition between the two frameworks. To further analyse the reagents used we grouped the metal salts used by anion type (Figure ), assuming that there was no consequence of using anhydrous versus hydrated salts. Nitrate was the most commonly used counterion, being present in 75% of syntheses. Ambiguous mentions of zinc and cobalt compounds were present in 17.2% of the 1600 protocols, encompassing minor zinc salts (e.g. Zn(OH)2 in the case of reference 61), indirect reference to zinc precursors in synthesis (e.g. "The sample obtained with Zn" 62 ), or mis-identified zinc compounds due to word tokenisation errors (e.g. "Firstly , 645 mg ( 2.469 mmol ) of Zn (NO3)2 .4H2O was dissolved" , where the space character between "Zn" and its counterions causes incorrect chemical parsing). Aside from nitrates and ambiguous mentions, the only other commonly-mentioned metal salt was zinc acetate (present in 11.5% of synthesis protocols). The presence of chloride, acetate, and oxide precursors indicate that the synthesis is compatible to a range of electrolyte environments, agreeing with experimental reports which have shown that counterion choice significantly alters crystal nucleation and growth rates. Despite the utility of these other salts, the overwhelming popularity of nitrate counterions found during our analysis indicates that other factors e.g. cost may have been prohibitive to their widespread adoption.