"Science Gothic.enc" is a FontLab encoding file. Using it is not a requirement, but for people developing a font, it allows them to see all the slots that are planned to get glyphs, and no other slots, even before the glyphs are in place. It also allows for an arbitrary order of glyphs in the FontLab "Font Window". The file can be easily converted to a Glyph Order and Alias Database (GOADB) file.
The default location of the FontLab VI encodings folder is:
- macOS: "Macintosh HD/Users/Your_Name/Library/Application Support/FontLab/FontLab VI/Encoding/"
- Windows: "C:\Users\Your_Name\AppData\Roaming\Fontlab\FontLab VI\Encoding"
You can change the location in Preferences > General in FontLab VI.
For more info on this and other custom data files for FontLab VI, see https://help.fontlab.com/fontlab-vi/Custom-data-files-and-locations/