The recently published review by Kodaira et al., Reflections on solid Earth research highlights the importance of having digital resources such as EarthChem. Their work emphasizes the value of collaboration across broad research fields and the need for making data persistently discoverable:

Databases comprising a substantial number of data points describing the geochemistry of rocks formed through Earth history, such as EarthChem, or the records of sedimentation recovered from ocean drilling since the 1960s, such as through the International Ocean Discovery Program. These digital resources are providing access to previously undiscoverable data, building a foundation for multidisciplinary research and opening the geosciences up to powerful data science and machine learning approaches.