Title: nominal reference material
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - nominal reference material
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.10020
Status: current

Definition
Material, sufficiently homogeneous and stable with reference to a specified nominal property, that has been established to be fit for its intended use in an examination.

Note
Nominal reference materials with or without assigned reference nominal property values can be used for control of examination precision, whereas only nominal reference materials with assigned reference nominal property values can be used for the control of examination calibration or evaluation of examination trueness.

Examples
1) Colour chart with one or more specified colours.
2) DNA compound containing a specified nucleotide sequence.

Related Terms
- examination: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/09984
- examination calibration: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/10021
- examination precision: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/10007
- examination trueness: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/10003
- nominal property: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/09979
- reference nominal property values: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/09998

Source
- PAC, 2018, 90, 913. 'Vocabulary on nominal property, examination, and related concepts for clinical laboratory sciences (IFCC-IUPAC Recommendations 2017)' on page 929 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2011-0613)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10020/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10020/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10020/xml

Citation: Citation: 'nominal reference material' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.10020
License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms.
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Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using.
Accessed: 2026-05-06T18:45:53+00:00