Veranstaltung

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09.05.2005 - 11.05.2005 | Sankt Augustin

ESF Workshop: Sustainability and Governance of Web and GRID Resources in Functional Genomics

Life scientists and bioinformaticians increasingly rely on web-based resources. The number of such resources, as well as the amount of available content continuously grows. The need for efficient interoperability is becoming important. Moreover, as data can easily propagate through such media, control on their quality and pertinence need close attention. In the context of the ESF Programme Integrated Approaches to Functional Genomics, two workshops have been organised to discuss the use of these resources, in particular for data integration. In both, but particularly during the last of these two workshops (Geneva, October 2003), it turned out that the sustainability and governance of web-based resources are becoming urgent issues. It costs money to set up and maintain a resource. Because biology, like any other field of scientific enquiry, is very dynamic, maintenance is labour-intensive. Users of the resource will generally want to be assured of its quality; in other words, a scheme of quality assurance has to be in place. Governance, or who is responsible for what, has to be clear for the community. A business model addresses these issues in their mutual dependence. Therefore, every resource comes with a business model, no matter whether their creators are aware of it or not.

Life scientists and bioinformaticians increasingly rely on web-based resources. The number of such resources, as well as the amount of available content continuously grows. The need for efficient interoperability is becoming important. Moreover, as data can easily propagate through such media, control on their quality and pertinence need close attention. In the context of the ESF Programme Integrated Approaches to Functional Genomics, two workshops have been organised to discuss the use of these resources, in particular for data integration. In both, but particularly during the last of these two workshops (Geneva, October 2003), it turned out that the sustainability and governance of web-based resources are becoming urgent issues. It costs money to set up and maintain a resource. Because biology, like any other field of scientific enquiry, is very dynamic, maintenance is labour-intensive. Users of the resource will generally want to be assured of its quality; in other words, a scheme of quality assurance has to be in place. Governance, or who is responsible for what, has to be clear for the community. A business model addresses these issues in their mutual dependence. Therefore, every resource comes with a business model, no matter whether their creators are aware of it or not.

Business models for resources are relatively new to biologists. The success of relatively old resources such as GenBank and Swiss-Prot shows, however, that the community has a real need for carefully maintained resources. Still, the continued existence of Swiss-Prot, now UniProt, was at stake at some point.

EU projects in the field of functional genomics often involve setting up a resource for sharing the data gathered by the project members. As a matter of course, this resource is made accessible to others as well. Current policy of the major funding institutions, however, is still that the generation of experimental data is funded rather than the structured storage of data and results in public databases, even if a portion of the budget can be allocated to the generation of such ressources. Dissemination and maintenance of the information generated in the course of a functional genomics project becomes a problem when the project stops. Quite a number of projects have already ended or are near their lifetime. In this way, the EU-funded research in functional genomics faces destruction of capital at an unprecedented scale.

A business model is not just a matter of finance and governance. Issues of content play a major role because content is what makes a web resource interesting or not. Therefore, groups who have set up and maintain web resources should have an opportunity to discuss these issues with the aim of strengthening the European infrastructure in functional genomics.

Because the infrastructure serves the goal of dissemination of scientific information, we may devote attention to web-based tools that take advantage of this mode of dissemination. We also will explore similarities and differences between the modes of operation currently found, such as commercial versus public access, the role of funding agencies (European, national, ?), and the role of service providers such as EBI.

Meeting programme

Monday, May 9th, 2005: presentations by creators/maintainers of web resources, and bodies who further such work: EBI of course, SIB, other groups who have been present at earlier meetings of the two Data Integration workshops at Geneva. A discussion framework will be set up to provide answers to questions such as:

What do we mean with information services (functionality, content, technology) ?
What are the cost drivers? (people, technology)
What are the possible scenarios for the business models and what are their consequences?
About which time frames are we talking when we speak about sustainability?

Tuesday, May 10th, 2005: presentations by funding bodies and companies: EU representatives, a representative from ESF and/or the ESF Programme on Integrated Approaches to Functional Genomics, Wellcome Trust, Novartis Foundation, national funding bodies, publishers. Discussion on the scenarios: pricing models, who can or should play a role.

Wednesday, May11th, 2005: (half day, to give people an opportunity to leave in time) round table, conclusions. This session will be structured by the organisers on the basis of the discussions of the previous days. One possible structure looks at the role played, for example:

Databases (Uniprot, EMBL nucleotide DB)
Service and research institutions (SIB, EBI, EMBL)
Funding bodies: current and future policies (EU, BMBF, OFES in Switzerland, NIH)
Companies who act as DB/ tools/ service institutions (GeneBio, LION, publishers).

Provisional list of speakers
1 Thure Etzold [LION bioscience Ltd. UK]; confirmed
2 Amos Bairoch [Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland]; confirmed
3 Henning Hermjakob [European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK]; confirmed
4 GeneBio: Frederique Lisacek and Pierre-Alain [Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland]; confirmed
5 David Gonzalez Pisano [Universidad Comlutense, Madrid, Spain]; confirmed
6 Joan Marsh (or colleague) [Wiley Interscience]; confirmation pending
7 Geoffrey Adams (or colleague) [Reed-Elsevier]; confirmation pending
8 Mike Dunn [British Society of Proteome Research]; confirmed
9 Valérie Ledent and Richard Kamuzinzi [Free University of Brussels and Belgian EMBnet node]; confirmed
10 Les Grivell [scientific director of the E-BioSci initiative of EMBO]; confirmed
11 Peter Lange [German Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (BMBF)]; confirmation pending
12 Bernd Hägele [Federal Office for Education and Science (SEB)]; confirmed
13 Mike Taussig [ESF buro and coordinator]; confirmation pending
14 Karima Boubekeur [Head of External R&D Policy, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Basel, Switzerland]; confirmed
15 Nicolas Grandjean [Head of Knowledge Engineering, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland]; confirmed
16 Ilias Iakovidis [Deputy Head of Unit ? eHealth, European Commission, DG Information Society, Brussels]; confirmation pending
17 Bernd Drescher [Chief Informatics Officer; German Resource Centre for Genome Research (RZPD), Berlin]; confirmation pending

Hinweise zur Teilnahme:
To register please complete the registration form by clicking on the URL mentioned below.

The deadline for registration is 4 April 2005!

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