| Workshop Website | Programme | Registration | Speakers |
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.
In order to create
a sustainable business model we can distinguish four scenarios:
1. The user/receiver/reader
pays
In this scenario, finding sources of funding requires insight into who is actually
using the resource and for which purpose. There is considerable unclarity about
sustainable modes of funding. It seems that the reluctance on the part of academic
biologists to pay for access to information resources is waning. (Chemists,
by contrast, who already have been using information resources in the pre-WWW
era, are used to pay for access.) From a higher level, direct payment for access
to a resource or free access to a funded resource just constitute two different
money streams.
2. The author/sender
pays
In this scenario, the information owner or creator pays to keep the information
accessible. One can see this as a kind of academic shared (library/archive)
service. In order to keep the information permanently (or for a certain period)
accessible one has to pay a certain amount of money. There are different pricing
models possible, for instance, a yearly contribution or an amount at once and
with the interest one can pay the costs. In this scenario each new project will
take the costs of this service into account in their initial budget.
3. An 'outside
agent' funds the information service
In this scenario, the information service is funded. Certainly, one may think
of EU-funding or any usual academic funding. The problem arises how to keep
the information sustainable for a long period of time. In the current internet
environment one may also consider the idea to get funding from advertising or
connected business models to the information service. For instance, the information
access is free of charge; however, the related journals are pointing to the
sponsor publisher X. Another possibility is to embed the information services
in other existing information services (for instance a academic or public library).
4. Any combination of 1, 2 and 3
Venue:
Fraunhofer Institute, Sankt Augustin, Germany
May 9-11, 2005
Preliminary
Programme:
Day 1:
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 are the characteristics of the content, in particular, what distinguishes
it from other content
• What do we mean with information services (functionality, 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?
Day 2:
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.
Day 3:
(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)
The prospective conclusion of the workshop will center around the following issues: how do business models compare with each other, what are their advantages and disadvantages, what are their prospects in the biological community.
The general format
of the first two days will be 50% presentation, 50% discussion. The third day
will be largely devoted to discussion.
Speakers:
1. Thure Etzold
(LION bioscience Ltd. UK)
2. Amos Bairoch (Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland)
3. Henning Hermjakob (European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK)
4. GeneBio: Frederique Lisacek and Pierre-Alain (Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics,
Geneva, Switzerland)
5. David Gonzalez Pisano (Universidad Comlutense, Madrid, Spain)
6. Joan Marsh (or colleague) (Wiley Interscience) TBC
7. Geoffrey Adams (or colleague) (Reed-Elsevier) TBC
8. Valérie Ledent and Richard Kamuzinzi (Free University of Brussels
and Belgian EMBnet node)
9. Les Grivell (scientific director of the E-BioSci initiative of EMBO)
10. Peter Lange (German Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, BMBF)
TBC
11. Bernd Hägele (Federal Office for Education and Science, SEB)
12. Mike Taussig (ESF Functional Genomics Programme) TBC
13. Karima Boubekeur (Head of External R&D Policy, F. Hoffmann-La Roche
Ltd, Basel, Switzerland)
14. Nicolas Grandjean (Head of Knowledge Engineering, Novartis Institutes for
Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland)
15. Ilias Iakovidis (Deputy Head of Unit - eHealth, European Commission, DG
Information Society, Brussels) TBC
16. Bernd Drescher (Chief Informatics Officer; German Resource Centre for Genome
Research (RZPD), Berlin) TBC
Registration is now closed.