The BioSharing Registry: mapping the landscape of standards and databases resources in the life sciences

<p>BioSharing (http://www.biosharing.org) is a curated, web-based, searchable portal of three linked registries of content standards, databases and data policies in the life sciences, broadly encompassing the biological, natural and biomedical sciences. Our records are informative and discoverable, maximizing standards adoption and (re)use (e.g. in data policies), and allowing the monitoring of their maturity and evolution (Tenenbaum, Sansone, Haendel; Am Med Inform Assoc, 2014).</p> <p>With over 1,300 records, BioSharing content can be searched using simple or advanced searches, filtered via a filtering matrix, or grouped via the ‘Collection’ feature, according to field of interest or focus. Examples are the NPG Scientific Data and BioMedCentral Collections, collating and linking the recommended standards and repositories from their Data Policy for author. Similarly other publishers, projects and organizations are creating Collections by selecting and filtering standards and databases relevant to their work, such as the BD2K bioCADDIE project. As a community effort, BioSharing offers users the ability to ‘claim’ records, allowing their update. Each claimant also has a user profile that can be linked to their resources, publications and ORCID ID, thus providing visibility for them as an individual.<br>Launched in 2011 as an extension and evolution of the MIBBI portal (founded by the same Operational Team, led by Sansone), BioSharing is working with a growing number of journals and other registries; it is also part of ELIXIR-UK Node and contributing to the NIH BD2K CEDAR. Driven by an international Advisory Board (co-chaired by Tenenbaum, Haendel) the BioSharing userbase has grown by 40% over the last year, thanks to successful engagement with researchers, publishers, librarians, developers and other stakeholders via several routes, including a joint RDA/Force11 working group (co-chaired by Lawrence and Hodson) and a collaboration with the International Biocuration Society.</p> <p> </p

Eagle-i record-level citation widget.

<p>Eagle-i record-level citation widget.</p

Record-level versioning and release-level versioning.

<p>Record-level versioning and release-level versioning.</p

Contributions and roles related to content as they correspond to identifier creation versus identifier reuse.

<p>The decision about whether to create a new identifier or reuse an existing one depends on the role you play in the creation, editing, and republishing of content; for certain roles (and when several roles apply) that decision is a judgement call. Asterisks convey cases in which the best course of action is often to correct/improve the original record in collaboration with the original source; the guidance about identifier creation versus reuse is meant to apply only when such collaboration is not practicable (and an alternate record is created). It is common that a given actor may have multiple roles along this spectrum; for instance, a given record in monarchinitiative.org may reflect a combination of (a) corrections Monarch staff made in collaboration with the original data source, (b) post-ingest curation by Monarch staff, (c) expanded content integrated from multiple sources.</p

A summary of the 10 recommendations and their direct or indirect impact on different kinds of identifier roles.

<p>A summary of the 10 recommendations and their direct or indirect impact on different kinds of identifier roles.</p

Anatomy of a web-based identifier.

<p>An example of an exemplary unique resource identifier (URI) is below; it is comprised of American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters and follows a pattern that starts with a fixed set of characters (URI pattern). That URI pattern is followed by a local identifier (local ID)—an identifier which, by itself, is only guaranteed to be locally unique within the database or source. A local ID is sometimes referred to as an “accession.” Note this figure illustrates the simplest representation; nuances regarding versioning are covered in Lesson 6 and <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001414#pbio.2001414.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a>.</p

Desirable characteristics for database identifiers in the life sciences.

<p>Desirable characteristics for database identifiers in the life sciences.</p