Author contributions: ET and TZ evaluated systems and developed software; IC, PS and AJM provided use cases; AJM and TZ designed the evaluation; ET, TZ and AJM wrote the report with input from all authors.
Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge training and support from the SEEK and OpenBIS project teams, who also checked this document.The project evaluated two existing data management systems for a small set of users, who represent diverse needs within the SynthSys Centre, in order to inform wider adoption for biological research. SEEK’s strengths are support for the Investigation, Study, Assay (ISA) standard and a fine grained access control. This makes SEEK an excellent tool for collaborative work and publishing results. OpenBIS is well suited for automatic metadata processing and incorporation into analysis workflows. Both data management systems provided useful and complementary functionality, so our recommendation is that both are hosted for use in SynthSys. This also aligns well with the EU FAIRDOM project which is currently integrating SEEK and OpenBIS into one platform
